Fueled by a “doom cycle” of violence in the country, author David Treuer sat down to write a letter to his children.
“I was having a really hard time,” Treuer explained in a recent What We’re Reading interview on the KAXE Morning Show.
“I was suddenly and crushingly just afraid, afraid for myself and afraid for my kids. This country seems to be caught up in a doom cycle, and I was looking for a way out of that fear…So in order to move from being sort of mute and afraid, I was trying to reach understanding through writing.”
The letter became Treuer’s eighth book, The Savage Mind: An American Legacy.
George Floyd’s murder in Minnesota, the January 6 United States Capitol insurrection, the war in Gaza, and ICE, were among recent events that weighed down on him, but Treuer noted that American violence or “frontier violence” has a very long history. Part of his book explores the history of violence in America.
He explained, “It's the part of the frontier that never left us and that lives inside of us. Because I came to see … frontier violence as, America's original sin that that informs all of our ongoing cruelties: racial cruelty, economic cruelty, all sorts of things like that.”
Interwoven into The Savage Mind are Treuer’s personal stories and in particular, reflections on his parents--his mother, for whom “this country was a country that was poised to take, and it would always do its worst,” and his father, a Jewish Holocaust survivor whose life was saved by taking refuge in America.
Treuer said, “So in order to tell the story of this country, which has two faces, I talk about my mom and I talk about her life. And in the second half of the book, I talk about my father and his life as a way to bring the bifurcated and conflicting versions of this country into contact with one another.”
As for Treuer himself, he grew up on the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota, but by age 17, he left for college, vowing never to return.
“I bought what America was selling when I was a kid,” he explained.
“I believed what the country was telling me about my tribe and my reservation, right? That it's a nothing place full of nobody people, that nothing good happens there, that the only thing that happens there is suffering and pain. And I bought it.” Treuer would eventually return.
Resolving America’s history with violence and ongoing cruelties seems insurmountable. And resolution wasn’t what Treuer intended with The Savage Mind. But he does have insight into what might help.
“America is only really good at talking about how it's been hurt. But that's only half of it. It has yet to have a discussion with a full heart, with a sharp mind about the grief it's caused. Until that's a part of the discussion, nothing much is possible.”
Treuer continued, “[The Ojibwe] have whole ceremonies that are about reconciling with the grief we've caused, not just the pain that we've suffered. And I think America could take a page out of our book. We'd be better for it.”
David Treuer will be celebrating the release of The Savage Mind at Four Pines Bookstore in Bemidji, Thursday, Nov. 12 at 6 p.m. This is a ticketed event.
Learn more about David Treuer and The Savage Mind: An American Legacy on his website.
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