07.03.2021 - By Prairie Public
This new book by David Treuer, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, is long, winding, and sometimes exasperating. I was making my way through its treatment of Indian relocation in the 1950s when suddenly the author launched a rangy exposition on the building of interstate highways--how they enabled rapid transit across the regions of America, and how turkey buzzards, taking advantage of the increased roadkill, followed the asphalt into whole areas of the country they never had inhabited before.