David Treuer traces America's relationship with violence back to the frontier

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

This message comes from the Natural Resources Defense Council. Join the 3 million people backing NRDC's fight for air, water and wildlife. Donate at nrdc.org/fresh, and your gift will be matched five times.

Tonya Mosley (0:15)

This is Fresh Air, I'm Tonya Mosley.

There's a familiar line in writer David Treuer's new book that sounds almost like a warning. The call is coming from inside the house.

He's talking about America and this belief that the violence we associate with our country's past isn't simply behind us. It's something we've learned to carry within ourselves. Treuer is Ojibwe and grew up on the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. He spent much of his career challenging the idea that Native American history is a story of defeat and disappearance. His acclaimed book, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, challenged that narrative. Now in his new book, The Savage Mind, An American Legacy, Treuer turns his attention to the country itself. He traces America's relationship with violence back to the frontier, where the taking of Native land and the subjugation of people were justified in the name of civilization. His argument is that the frontier didn't disappear when Westward expansion ended. Its violence has become part of American life through our institution, through our stories and the ways we think and act. And he argues that even the people who recognize that history aren't necessarily free from it.

Treuer has written this book as a letter to his three children. It's also a deeply personal reckoning with his own fears, the contradictions within his family and the stories he inherited. Treuer's mother was Ojibwe and saw America as a country that had tried to destroy her people. His father was a Jewish refugee who escaped the Nazis and saw America as the country that saved his life. And David Treuer, welcome back to Fresh Air.

David Treuer (1:59)

Thanks for having me back. It's a pleasure.

Tonya Mosley (2:01)

Yes, it was a pleasure to read this book. And I actually want to start our conversation with the way that you started the book. You take us to the reservation. You are a young man. You're with your cousins and your other relatives, your brother, and you guys are at home by yourselves, and you get this very weird phone call, and then you see down the street that there's a fire at a house, and you guys are scared. You're so scared that you grab a gun, and you sit on the couch prepared to defend yourself.

And I'd love for you to read what happened next.

David Treuer (2:45)

Deprived of everything, including our imaginations, which are the only thing that will save anyone, we instead did something very American. We found a gun, a single-shot, break-action 20 gauge. We loaded it and gave it to my brother and sat on the couch facing the door, the hammer drawn back, the barrel resting on my brother's bony knees, and we waited.

The only thing that occurred to us was to kill whoever came through the door by blowing their brains out.

I don't know how long I sat on that couch with your uncle and our cousin. I don't know if I've stopped. I think some essential part of me is still there. And here's the thing about terror, although it may well be true of grief too. It robs you of so much. It steals your sense of yourself and your place in the world, and it murders time.

I am here now writing this to you, and I am there on that couch still. I am there then hoping I will be around now to write about it. I'm 55 I'm nine years old. I'm too old to have old fears, and I am too young to be able to quiet them myself.

Tonya Mosley (4:04)

Thank you for reading that. Eventually, your uncle arrives, and he snatches the gun before you guys could hurt anyone. But as we heard you say, you write that some part of you is still sitting on that couch.

What is it about that night that has never left you?

David Treuer (4:27)

We were just another night in the village. Then as you mentioned, we got this call, a stranger called the house and said, we're going to come burn down your house with you in it.

We're terrified, right? There were so many things we could have done. We could have run across the road to our other uncle.

SPEAKER_4 (4:49)

You could have called someone.

David Treuer (4:51)

Could have called someone, could have gone to my grandparents' house, could have gone to my other, I mean, the village, they're all relatives. None of that occurred to us. And I think that's a part of me that stays stuck, you know?