Includes bibliographical references (pages 461-488) and index.

Books like Dee Brown's 1970 mega-bestselling Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee promote the idea that American Indian history ended with the 1890 massacre when 150 Sioux died at the hands of the U.S. Cavalry-- as well as Native civilization. Growing up Ojibwe on a reservation in Minnesota, training as an anthropologist, and researching Native life past and present for his nonfiction and novels, David Treuer has uncovered a different narrative. They did not disappear-- and not despite but rather because of their intense struggles to preserve their language, their traditions, their families, and their very existence. The story of American Indians since the end of the nineteenth century to the present is one of unprecedented resourcefulness and reinvention. Treuer melds history with reportage and memoir. Tracing the tribes' distinctive cultures from first contact, he explores how the depredations of each era spawned new modes of survival. The devastating seizures of land gave rise to increasingly sophisticated legal and political maneuvering that put the lie to the myth that Indians don't know or care about property. The forced assimilation of their children at government-run boarding schools incubated a unifying Native identity. Conscription in the U.S. military and the pull of urban life brought Indians into the mainstream and modern times, even as it steered the emerging shape of self-rule and spawned a new generation of resistance. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee is the intimate story of a resilient people in a transformative era.