Examines the trajectory of Native American cultures over the centuries, detailing how they have retained their long standing values and traditions in the face of war, disease, resettlement and assimilation.

"A group of Native American kids from different tribes presents twelve historical and contemporary time periods, struggles, and victories to their classmates, each ending with a powerful refrain: we are still here"--

Because of their intense struggles to preserve their language, their traditions, their families, and their very existence--the story of American Indians since the end of the nineteenth century to the present is one of unprecedented resourcefulness and reinvention. In The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, Treuer melds history with reportage and memoir. Tracing the tribes' distinctive cultures from first contact, he explores how the depredations of each era...

In the early decades of the nineteenth century, the US government forcibly removed numerous Native American tribes from the country's eastern states. In long, often merciless marches in which many of the Indians died, soldiers relocated them in selected regions of the American West.