Officially closed, the reservation system was officially in full swing. It was a time of great change but the beginning of what we think of as modern america, the end of what we think of as native American Life. Those things were more complicated than we think. Host why do you view it that way . Guest 1890 was the last Armed Conflict between native folk and the American Government, the massacre of wounded knee in south dakota, 150300 lakota men, women and children were massacred by the cavalry. That moment came to stand in for so much of American History up to that point. Host december 29, 1890, what happened . Guest it was the tail end of the murder of sitting bull, things were unsettled and people were looking for shelter and there was a band of native people, they left where they were on horseback, and intercepted by the cavalry who rounded them up and tried to starve them. It is unclear what happened next. The cavalry started shooting, opened fire with hotchkiss guns and murdered 550 people. The government was nervous about what they were convinced would be an upbringing uprising on the planes. Really they were worried about people trying to find shelter. And it was a fundamentalist movement in some ways where if you do these dances in a certain way you abstain from alcohol and get along with white people, you will be a cleansing of the earth, you will be lifted up and saved if you do these things and white people will be wiped out. You can see why it would be an attractive religion at that time. How important was what happened at wounded knee . L frank bomb, author of the wizard of oz said that is a good start, we should wipe out all the indians and other reporters said this is just another instance in a long list of injustices against native people. There is wide coverage. My book isnt just about that. I wanted to get started before we move on. The book came out in 1970, bury my heart at wounded knee. Is there a connection . There is. I read bury my heart at wounded knee in 1990 on the 100th anniversary of the massacre at wounded knee and it is the bestselling book about American Indian history. There are 7 million copies in print, it has never been out of print, published in many different languages. He says on the first page this is about the plains tribes and started in 1850 and ended in 1890 at the massacre of wounded knee where the culture of the American Indian was finally destroyed. He goes on the second page to say if you travel to a contemporary reservation and noticed the squalor, perhaps by reading my book you will understand why. I read that when i was 20 years old and left my reservation in minnesota. I was in college and was so upset because there is more to my life and my reservation than poverty and hopelessness and squalor. Our civilization was not destroyed in 1890. It was a low point but a point from which native people across the country have been working and thriving and living. We have been since that point making our own history, not only at schools of our choosing but making our own history, making our own lives but d brown was expressing a pretty widely held belief that america has an indian path and the modern present, indians are necessarily of the past and i disappeared and are gone to make way for america. That is just not true. Host in your book you write i launched my life as a fiction writer and was occupational at the time. I make multicultural fiction engage in cultural show and tell. What does that mean . Guest in fiction and movies people, and in life, people like the indians but in specific ways. People like their indians to be dead, of the past, necessarily spiritual, some sort of ethnic alternative to the ruination of society if youre a liberal, People Like Us to be exotic. People dont like to imagine us as lawyers like my mother, and American Indian woman lawyer, judge, they dont like us to be professors, they dont like us not to wear feathers, they dont like us to be modern americans. To be native and modern at the same time. I have written against the grain, tried to upset the apple cart just today. Host you write about your life and how much you missed it when you went off to college. Guest i did. Like a lot of kids, when i was living my life in my parents home, in my community, i could not wait to leave and in many ways just as most americans persist in thinking about indians that were gone, the past, india life as it exists now is not life at all but a state of perpetual suffering. That is what most americans think that in many ways as native folks, we have internalized those thoughts too because that is how i felt, there is nothing good happening here where i am from, theres nothing happening here accept suffering and i want out. As soon as i left him as soon as i left i went to college in jersey and missed it. I didnt miss the suffering or the poverty. I missed what i could then recognizes the richness of my community. The complexity of it. The energy, cultural, spiritual, professional energy of the place i was from. It is a beautiful place full of interesting people. I thought where i was from was where good ideas go to die and only after leaving did i realize there is life here. Nobody understands that and even i didnt understand it. It is not just need cleaning our lives to outsiders but it is a way for me to understand for myself what our lives mean. Host david treuer, the continental us, 2. 4 billion acres controlled by indian tribes. 1 or 2 . Guest 500 years ago. Host you use the word indians in your book. Guest i do. Some people care a great deal. Some native people prefer native americans, some prefer American Indians, some dont like either and want to be referred to in their tribal languages. I just use all of them for verisimilitude. I have to use all the words as a writer. Im not beholden to any one of them. It is just my opinion, not anyone elses. Host we have to take some calls. Lets hear from jeff in providence, rhode island. Caller good afternoon. Can you hear me . I know a little bit about this subject. His situation. My ancestry i would say is my germanic ancestry, and it happened. The indians, native americans were either effect from their lands or vanquished. The gentleman is a very bright individual, but the United States, a lot of people dont realize, was forged through conquest. Take a look as we were going west, the indians were removed and or killed, millions were killed and we went even further. We went to hawaii and told the queen we are going to take it off of you and theres nothing you can do about it. Guest i am going to interrupt and interject and push back a little bit. My tribe outside the home and around the great lakes, we still live there. Our native communities are still there. In hawaii there are still native hawaiians in hawaii. This is the thing. People think about native tribes as being demolished and destroyed by american society. We think of what remains as Little Islands of native communities but that is not the case. Whats the first thing american colonists did to protest the british . Dumped t in boston harbor. They dressed up as mohawk indians and empty in boston harbor. After the revolution when the Founding Fathers were looking around for an alternative form of government where do they look . They looked to the iroquois confederacy. That is where they looked. America has been made in relation to us since the beginning. Host we are going to go to our next call because we only have a few minutes with david treuer. Iris is in michigan. Go ahead. Caller whatever indian is supposed to be, i was wondering how they came here in the first place because they didnt grow out of the ground, they are not turnips. None of us are turnips, we dont grow out of the ground. We all came from someplace. Do a lot of people who are indian speak words in hebrew . I just want to know, did we all come from someplace . Guest we are not turnips. The only native people who speak any hebrew are native people who are native and jewish like myself. My father is jewish but i dont know any hebrew. Where do native people come from . Depends on who you ask. Archaeologists and biologists think there was a migration to the new world, new archaeological evidence is pushing the date back 10,000 years. In south america they found evidence going back 55,000 years. If you ask native people we emerged here as people according to our legends, according to my tribe we were lowered down here and were meant to be here. According to the comanche, they are rows out of the ground. According to the dna they engaged in a long migration and emerged in the southwest where they currently live. Where we emerged as human organisms is one question, where we emerged as people is a different question. One is answered by science, the other is answered by culture. Host when did the American Indian movement begin . In the late 60s and really gathered steam in the 70s and reached a climax around 1975. Host what did it achieve . Guest it was a complicated political movement. It started in urban areas. We really live in rural a reservation communities, half of native people live in cities like chicago and cincinnati and la and denver. The American Indian movement was an urban movement, largely an activist movement meant to draw americas attention to continued existence. And it was meant to draw peoples attention to wave the American Government has refused to honor its treaties and agreements with native tribes, which are in perpetuity and should continue to honor. To do that, engaged in lots of highly visible theatrical takeovers, protests and marches. They took over the bureau of affairs in dc and occupied the building for how many days . I forget the year. They accomplished a lot, i think. They were very effective at grabbing americas attention. Host david treuer, you mentioned your folks, mom, lawyer, judge, native american father, jewish. How did they meet . Guest in minnesota on my moms reservation my father had moved to Teach High School and they met back then and my mom became a nurse, working on a healthcare initiative, my father stopped teaching by that point and was working on the same healthcare program. They were coworkers both trying to improve healthcare on minnesota reservations and fell in love and had my brother and me and my younger brother and sister. Host next call for david treuer from denise in lincoln park, new jersey. Caller a pleasure to speak to david treuer. One of my favorite books was bury my heart as wounded knee and i would like to know if you can tell me how each book compares and contrasts to one of my heroes. The second part of my question is programming mostly on the pbs channels about what happened to lakota indians, that is the tribe in the dakotas and the pipeline, the federal government trying to push into sacred ground. The back burner as far as i can see. In terms of indian affairs, how are present author, continuing d browns special set of issues, indian women and what is going on. Host i am going to cut you off. That is a lot to work with. David treuer, go. Guest my book is related to d browns. His book like i was talking about focuses he starts like he said in 1850 and to 19 1890 where he says native American Life, culture and civilization was destroyed. My book starts in 1890, the year d brown left off with the opposite thesis, that it was not the end of our culture or civilization or community. It might have been a low point from which we have been emerging ever since. 1890 our populations were the lowest they have ever been, 200,000 native people left in the United States, now there are 3 million. Our land base was the smallest it has ever been, it has been regrown in many ways. Our communities lack infrastructure, political organization, our religions are being reborn and flourishing. Our political system is becoming healthier and people are living longer and longer and that is what it is about. It is not about indian death which is what d brown is writing about but about native American Life and that is the crucial difference. Host soming else crowley is indian casinos. Are those a Success Story . Guest everyone asks about casinos. And. Host thats a lot of peoples only connection. Guest fair enough. And people a guest and people have, people usually have a pretty strong opinion when they ask a a question. I get asked can more often than not what it was like, but how have they destroyed native American Life. You can tell me how apple has destroyed anglo life, ill tell you how casinos have destroyed native life. If you canat tell me how microst has destroyed french culture, ill tell you how casinos have destroyed native culture. Its not so simple. Are corporations generally good for, say, the cup of madagascar . The country of madagascar . Its mixeded. Are casinos good for native communities . Mixed. They provide revenue. They provide funding for infrastructure and schools and Retirement Homes for our elders. They provide funding for arts initiatives and i powwows and language revitalization programs. But its the also another lifestyle economy like taxfree cigarettes or, you know, maybe not the healthiest for communities thatty already in se ways struggle with addiction. So, yeah, its a mixed bag. Some s communities have been radically reshaped by the advent of indian gaming in the 80s, and some have barely changed at all. Host what is the story about native americans today that in your view,t, that you want to guest the story that doesnt get out, in my opinion, is the story that i mentioned this earlier, but karl marx said all make history, just not always with tools of their choosing, not always as they please. And thats theas thing that gets lost in most g of americas myts about us, about our suffering, aboutbo our disenfranchisement, about according to our friend jobs, our complete destruction. What its missed are the ways in which we haves been always makig our own history, and in doing so, shaping the fabric of this country herself. So, for example, between 19 the 60s through the 1990, the United StatesSupreme Court heard more cases about federal indian law than any other genre of law. In the postwatergate years, in the postvietnam years as america was trying to rethink what kind of country it wanted to be, the most vexing, perplexing legal question through which it sort of remade itself and reimagined itself involved native people. You know, the first test of states rights versus the federal government was not over the question of slavery, it was over the question of the removal of the five civilized tribes in the southeastern United States in the 1820s and 30s which pitted the federal government against the state of georgia and thee cherokees, seminoles, choctaw tribes of that region. That was the first test that shaped power of federal rights, and that was related to indian communities. As america has been making itself and its history since the beginning through its relations to us. And the protests in north dakota at Standing Rock in 201617, that was a protest of native peoples trying to protect native homelands. But by extension, what they were doingoi was protesting on behalf of all americans what kind of country do we want to live in, the one that values extractive capitalism or one that privileges the common good . That was the fight we saw at stand thing rock. Stand, again, it was native peoe leading that fight for all americans. So thats what people missed. Host the book is called the heartbeat of wounded knee. The author, david treuer, thank you for joining us on booktv. Guest thank you so much. Every yearbook tv covers book fairs and festivals around the country, and heres a look at some of the events on the calendar. On october 10th12th, its the fall for the book festival in fairfax, virginia. That same weekend, tune in for our live coverage of the southern festival of books in nashville. On october 19th and 20th, the boston book festival will welcome over 300 speakers, and well be live that saturday from the wisconsin book festival in madison which anticipates over 15,000 people in attendance. And later in the month look for us in austin during our live coverage of the texas book festival. For more information about upcoming book fairs and festivals and to watch our previous festival coverage, click the book fairs tab on our web site, booktv. Org. Tonight on booktv in prime time, tune in for the 84th annual wolf book awards presented for important contributions to our understanding of racism and our appreciation of the rich diversity of human cultures. Also on our Author Interview program after words, Washington TimesNational SecurityColumnist Bill gertz reports on chinas efforts to become a global, military and economic superpower, and youll also see a reair of in depth with naomi klein. That all starts tonight at 6 50 p. M. Eastern. Check your Program Guide for more information. The house will be in order. For 40 years cspan has been providing america unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the Supreme Court and Public Policy events from washington, d. C. And around the country so you can make up your own mind. Created by cable in 1979, cspan is brought to you by your local cable or satellite provider. Cspan, your unfiltered view of government. Next on after words, paul towing reports on the challenges and costs of a college education. Hes interviewed by the author can and founding director of the hope center for college, community and justice. After words is a weekly Interview Program with guest hosts interviewing top nonfiction nors about their hatest authors about their latest work. Host well, paul, youve written a terribly inciteful and even sometimes surprising insightful read, and im happy to be talking about this book with you. So one of the things i really like about the book is that you really spent time with students and their families, and we know that todays College Students are so different from the students who used to attend college. My team has taken to calling them real College Students. Im really