Book Of The Month -- February 17, 2019

For those of us/you who thought the history of the American Indian / Native American ended with Wounded Knee (ignoring the current fascination with Pocahontas of Oklahoma City) there is a very, very interesting book, c. 2019: The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America From 1890 to the Present, David Treuer.

Despite its subtitle, its first chapter cover the period 10,000 BCE to 1890.

The author: an Ojibwe from the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. The author, based on the photo on the jacket, is unrecognizable as a Native American except for his high cheek bones. He has written for all the major newspapers and is the author of four novels. He has a PhD in anthropology and teaches literature and creative writing at my alma mater: the University of Southern California. Whoo-hoo!

Part I, 10,000 BCE to 1890, has a large segment on the midwest, the Lakota.

Part 2 begins with his conversation(s) with Kevin Washburn, a Chickasaw who served as the assistant secretary fo the interior for Indian affairs. He is currently (or when the book was written) a professor of law at the University of New Mexico.

Part 3, covering the period from 1914 to 1945 might be one of the more interesting "chapters" in the book.

Part 4 begins with the author's desire to learn about the postwar years for the Plains Indians. It begins with his cross-country drive from Rapid City, South Dakota, to Browning, Montana. Wow, my backyard.

The author returns to his home, northern Minnesota, when he begins part 5, becoming Indian, 1970 - 1990. It will be interesting to see if he mentions how Elizabeth Warren "became Indian." My hunch: he avoids the subject. We'll see.

Two more chapters and an epilogue.

Elizabeth Warren? Wow, wow, wow. That name does not appear in the index. How does one write a 455-page history of the American Indian with an emphasis on the last three decades and not eve mention Ms Herring aka Pocahontas.

Two other books to complete the trilogy, today:

• The Indians Wars, a National Geographic coffee-table book, by Anton Treuer (note the name), c. 2010; and, 
• a little one of those airport softcover Penguin Library books, The Lakotas and the Black Hills: The Struggle for Sacred Ground, Jeffrey Ostler, c. 2010. Ostler is a professor of history at the University of Oregon.

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Spring Has Sprung

The availability of tulips in America lasts only a few months in the spring. But they are now here!

Sophia and I put out bird seed every morning for the birds and these are our regular visitors:

• three dark-eyed Juncos
• three cardinals (adult male, adult female, juvenile)
• two mourning doves
• two blue-jays (both adult males)
• two or three big black birds -- either crows or ravens
• overhead, we often see a red-tailed hawk (usually in the evening)
• in the distance, we often hear an owl or two (also, usually in the evening)

I tell her every day that we should soon see the first robin. We don't see many robins in north Texas during the summer, but we see a fair number every spring.