Welcome to this Forthright Radio for October 9, 2026. Returning once again to Forthright Radio is University of Southern California Professor of Literature, David Treuer. He was our guest in 2019, when his book, THE HEARTBEAT OF WOUNDED KNEE: NATIVE AMERICA FROM 1890 TO THE PRESENT, was published. His latest book, THE SAVAGE MIND: AN AMERICAN LEGACY, was in October by Little, Brown and Company.
It’s part memoir, and part seering history and analysis. When I first typed that, I “misspelled” searing, meaning severe criticism, marked by extreme intensity, harshness or emotional power; as “seering”, which autocorrect auto-corrected, but I self-corrected auto-correct right back to my original spelling, because in his book, he is a seer, both in the sense of “one who sees,” and “a person credited with extraordinary moral and spiritual insight.”
In THE SAVAGE MIND, David recounts growing up on the Leech Lake Ojibwe Indian Reservation. His mother, Margaret Seelye Treuer, was Minnesota’s first female Native American attorney in 1977, as well as tribal court and federal magistrate judge. His father, Robert Treuer, was an Austrian, Jewish Holocaust refugee, reservation high school teacher, and life long social justice worker both within, the federal government and without.
David left the reservation as soon as he could to attend Princeton University, where he developed an obsession with the art and discipline of fencing, pursued a degree in Anthropology, and then added a focus on Literature. His thesis advisor was Nobel Laureate,Toni Morrison. When she and David’s mother met, his mother thanked Morrison for teaching her son, who replied, “you’re welcome. It wasn’t easy.”
We spoke with David Treuer on October 2, 2026 via Zoom.
Image Credit of David Treuer above: Jaida Grey Eagle
Articles, etc. pertinent to this interview:
The Fencing Master https://granta.com/the-fencing-master/
I Went to Princeton in Search of Greatness and Came Back Mediocre https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/02/opinion/indian-identity-princeton.html?searchResultPosition=1
Indigenous Peoples Day: A Contrarian Perspective About Truth, Reconciliation, Health and Longevity (Anton Treuer) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b6r0Um57nY
‘Let our voices be heard’: the splendor of Native American and Indigenous poster art – in pictures https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2026/oct/04/native-american-indigenous-poster-art-show-new-york
How do you cope when your sacred land becomes Times Square? The art of the first Native New Yorkers https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/sep/30/native-american-lenape-art-exhibit
The misperception that keeps bystanders from intervening and how to short‑circuit it https://theconversation.com/dozens-of-men-failed-to-stop-an-alleged-gang-rape-at-cornell-heres-the-misperception-that-keeps-bystanders-from-intervening-and-how-to-short-circuit-it-293321
Is It For Freedom? · Sara Thomsen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw2epFUC594&list=RDzw2epFUC594&start_radio=1
