The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee

In 1992, the US federal government canceled plans to celebrate the quincentenary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in North America after Indigenous activists threatened to stage a mass protest. Two years later, Berkeley, California, renamed Columbus Day “Indigenous Peoples Day.” Though the activism that spurred a reassessment of Columbus’s legacy remains strong, many Indigenous people have turned inwards. One way of doing this has been through the study of Indigenous languages. In 1990, Congress passed the Native American Languages Act, which provided funding for instruction in Indigenous languages. This was one way to “undo the damage done by residential boarding schools” (430), where children were forbidden from speaking in their native tongues.

The 2013 revision of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act was also significant for Indigenous communities. Tribal courts now had power “to charge and prosecute non-Natives who raped or assaulted Native women on Native land” (430). Most Indigenous women are married or partnered to non-Indigenous men and are usually assaulted in or near their residences.

Others have found more mundane ways of encouraging self-preservation. Treuer uses the anecdote of a young Ojibwe and Creek woman named Sarah who started a fitness group on her reservation, helping fellow tribal members reassess their eating habits and, particularly, their relationship with alcohol.