David Treuer: The Savage Mind

Overview

National Book Award finalist David Treuer, author of The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, joins us for the launch of his new book of nonfiction, a masterful blend of memoir, history, and political reportage — The Savage Mind: An American Legacy.

Over the course of four novels and three works of nonfiction, David Treuer has challenged conventional narratives about American history and identity. In The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, he offered a sweeping history — and counter-narrative — of Native American life from the Wounded Knee massacre to the present. Written in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder and the January 6 insurrection, his new book The Savage Mind began as a letter to Treuer’s family as he grappled with a nation in crisis, in the tradition of James Baldwin’s seminal The Fire Next Time. The end result is a powerful blend of memoir, history, and reportage to examine the legacy of frontier violence and its enduring influence on American life.

Drawing on the remarkable story of his parents — a Jewish Holocaust refugee and the first American Indigenous woman judge — and centuries of American history, Treuer traces the legacy of frontier violence from the nation’s founding to the present day. He argues that while the physical frontier may have closed, the mindset it fostered continues to shape our institutions, our national conflicts, and our imaginations.

At the launch of his new book, hear Treuer in a thought-provoking conversation about how the violent history of America’s frontier has migrated overseas in our foreign policy, and into our hearts and minds — and how we might begin to imagine a different path forward.

“David Treuer’s The Savage Mind is unlike anything I have read... this book will make a mark.” — Percival Everett