>> thank you. thank you so much, senator gillibrand. >> this is booktv on c-span2, television for serious readers. here's our prime time lineup. tonight at 9 p.m. eastern, merle comber talks about her experiences as an as heymer's caregiver. at ten on "after words," the story of a tragic car wreck due to texting while driving. our prime time programming continues at 11 p.m. on vaccinations. that all happens tonight on c-span2's booktv. >> host: and we're pleased to be joined by david treuer. here is one of his -- or his only nonfiction book. mr. treuer, what does it mean to be from the res? >> guest: great question. and it was a question even though i'm from a resignation, i grew up on a resignation, and -- reservation, and i moved back for various long periods of my life, i didn't have an answer to that. reservations are so varied, so complex, i think so crucial both to the indians from them and to the rest of the country, i didn't have a good answer and that's sort of, in a sense, why i wrote the book. >> host: you used the word indian, not native american. >> guest: yeah. this is only me, and i'm only talking for myself, but i use all three interchangeably just to keep things spicy. other people care a great deal, but i don't want. >> host: does it make you more authentic? >> guest: what? >> host: being from the reservation. >> guest: that's one of the things i explore in the book. but there's this perception that if you're a native but you're not from a vez ration, didn't grow up really, really hard in poverty and with trauma and drug abuse, then you're not somehow authentically native. and that's one of the things i argue against in the book. i try to show that the american indian life, reservation life is many things. it might be hard, but it's not just that. that reservation lives aren't simply lives of trauma, aren't simply bay -- basins of suffering. there's all sorts of amazing things at play, politics and language and culture and history, and those things need to be noted and remembered. most books and most conversations about res life focus on what they think of it, tragedy of our existence. and i can tell you we don't live on reservations because they suck, we live on them because we love them, we care about them. they're important places, vibrant, interesting places in ways that even other native people don't can understand. so this book is really meant to explore what reservations mean for native people and what they mean for the country of america. >> host: from your book, res life: indian land makes up 2.3% of the land in the u.s. we number slightly over two million. up significantly from not quite 240,000 in 1900. first of all, why 240,000 in 1900? >> guest: turn of the sently, you know -- century, you know, basically after the massacre at wounded knee in 1890-'91, that period -- which happened on the plains, and it happened to the lakota, but writ large, the turn of the century was the low point for tribes across the cup. our numbers were down, our traditional forms of leadership had in many ways been compromised or completely destroyed, culture was under assault through boarding schools and forced assimilation. it was -- we had no economic systems in place to replace our tribal way of living. it was the low point. it was like the worst point of our history, i think. since 1900 or since 1890-1900, we have been climbing out of the hole of history. our numbers have been increasing. our power, we've been consolidating our power, making our own government, we've been revitalizing our culture and our languages. and we're on the rise, i have to say. and this is nowhere more keenly felt than in an issue than, say, the issue of mascots for the washington redskins, you know? the team has enjoyed that racial slur in peace for a long time, but now we're powerful enough, our voices are loud enough, we are savvy enough and smart enough, and that name -- the days are numbered for the washington head since. and that's -- washington redskins. and that's because we continue to exist and we're growing and we're getting stronger. which runs counter to the narrative of us as disappeared and gone and all that which is also what res life is written against. >> host: what made you write this? >> guest: i never wanted to write nonfiction. i had no ambition to write nonfiction. but after the school shooting on red lake reservation in 2005, i was sickened by the news coverage of that shooting which persisted in portraying indian lives as tragic, as necessarily tragic, as sort of inherently tragic. and the school shooting really brought that home, and it brought sort of this story of the tragic indian, made it sort of broadly national and very timely. and i went to morgan, and i said i'mic of that story. -- i'm sick of that story. i'm sick of that way of telling the story of indian lives, and he said, so am i. let's do a book. and i was really, really grateful to him and his vision. and i tried to write something that got beyond tragedy. so i had to do that in nonfiction. it was sort of -- but it was really, the shooting was very personally felt by me. i used to work in that high school, and i've got family and friends from that reservation. it's just up the road from mine. and i wanted our lives to matter more than simply examples of lives gone wrong. >> host: david treuer, what's your heritage? where'd you grow up? >> my father's jewish, and he's from austria, he's a holocaust survivor. and he fled austria at age 12 largely on his open and made it to the states where he was reunited with his apartments, but the rest of -- with his parents, but the rest of his family all were murdered in austria by the regime. so i suppose there's a lot of blood on both sides of my family since. >> host: how did your parents meet? >> guest: my father is a man of many lives, and he did many, many things. in many places before he finally moved to just off the reservation and taught high school on the reservation in cats lake, minnesota, and he told me just recently that he lived for -- he'd been around for maybe 45, 50 years. it was only when he moved to the lake that he finally felt like he had a home. he was rejected in austria, rejected in american society, rejected everywhere he went, and on the reservation he said he finally felt accepted and that people understood him as a refugee, as a holocaust survivor. so he set up shop, raised his first three children there. he and his wife separated, kids grew up, he met my mother. they were working on the same health care program on the reservation. they were coworkers, essentially. and fell in love and had the troublesome chirp they have now -- children, my older brother, myself, my younger brother and sister. >> host: here is the cover of book. you talk about that life is not all bad on a reservation for an american indian. >> guest: yeah. >> host: but then you include this picture. >> guest: yeah. >> host: who is this? >> guest: this is my cousin jesse, he's my first cousin, he's my uncle sonny's son, and he's been in prison for a while for a number of charges. he'll be getting out very soon. and our lives may not be -- i may argue that our lives aren't tragic, but they're hard for some of us. my cousin jesse, we might be first cousins, we grew up very close to one another, but he's had it much harder than i've had it. and so even in one family you have a range of experiences. but jesse, i think, would be the first person to say that his life isn't a tragedy, and he's getting out of prison soon, and he plans to make a fresh start. and i'm really, i'm really hopeful, and i'm really proud of him. >> host: have indian casinos been good for reservations? [laughter] >> guest: well, have corporations been good for america? yes and no, right? casinos are good and bad. multi-national corporations are good and bad. they provide tax revenue and jobs and income, and they help, right? casinos provide revenue and income and jobs and infrastructure. reservations don't collect taxes from their citizens. so we need to build roads and hospitals and housing for the elderly and schools, etc., etc. we use casinos to do that. do they contribute to some unhealthy lifestyles? absolutely. do they encourage gambling, drinking and smoking? sure. definitely. so like any big business, they are very complicated. not all good, not all bad. but they've certainly changed the face of reservation life on many, but not all, reservations without a doubt. >> host: how much time do you spend away from your home base now at the university of southern california, how much time do you spend at leech lake? >> guest: it's kind of lately been about -- i can't even count. i'm home about three and a half, four months a year, and i'm in los angeles about eight months a year. i love my job. i love teaching. i love my students, and usc is a great place to teach. but, man, i get homesick. i get so homesick. i love being home at leech lake. and so at some point in my life there will be balance, if not parity. someday. >> host: david treuer, here's the book, "res life: an indian's journey through reservation life." thank you for being on booktv. >> next, from the nixon presidential library and museum, pat buchanan describes when richard nixon rebounded from two election losses for president in 1960 and california governor in 1962 to win the presidency in 1968. monday, september 8th, marks the 40th anniversary of president gerald ford's pardon of richard nixon. >> tonight's a great night because we've got a very special treat for you. we have someone who's spent a number of years at richard nixon's side. and remember that when he lost the two elections, the presidential in 1962 and the gubernatorial in 1960 -- pardon me, in '60 and the gubernatorial in 1962 -- people wrote him off. they said richard nixon is gone.