The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee Author David Treuer on Why We Need to Change the Way Indian Stories Are Told

When the Ojibwe writer David Treuer was growing up, he says, there were a few things that showed up in every Indian household he would visit: a Sears catalog, a Bible, a picture of John F. Kennedy and a copy of the book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown's influential chronicling of 19th-century Native American history. But the contents of that book, famous as it was, proved complicated for him.

When the Ojibwe writer David Treuer was growing up, he says, there were a few things that showed up in every Indian household he would visit: a Sears catalog, a Bible, a picture of John F. Kennedy and a copy of the book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown's influential chronicling of 19th-century Native American history. But the contents of that book, famous as it was, proved complicated for him.