David Treuer — The Savage Mind: An American Legacy — at Conn Ave
David Treuer presents *The Savage Mind: An American Legacy*, a deeply personal examination of American violence and its continuing effects. Combining memoir, history, and reportage, Treuer considers how frontier violence shaped the nation’s culture and identity, and how those patterns persist in contemporary conflicts, including the war in Gaza and school shootings in the United States.
Treuer draws on his upbringing on Minnesota’s Leech Lake Reservation and the lives of his parents—a Jewish Holocaust refugee and the first American Indigenous woman judge. He argues that the frontier’s violence did not end when geographic expansion ended in the late nineteenth century; instead, it moved abroad and into the country’s collective consciousness. The event also explores how acknowledging this history might make national and personal healing possible.
When: October 9, 2026
Showtime: 7:00 p.m.
Venue: Politics and Prose at 5015 Connecticut Avenue NW, 5015 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC 20008
Tickets: Free, with first-come, first-served seating
Author: David Treuer
About the author: Treuer is an Ojibwe writer from the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota and a professor of English at the University of Southern California. His previous book, *The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present*, was a New York Times bestseller, National Book Award finalist, Minnesota Book Prize winner, California Book Prize winner, Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, and Carnegie Medal finalist. His writing has appeared in *The New York Times*, *Los Angeles Times*, *The Washington Post*, *The Atlantic Monthly*, and *Harper’s*. He divides his time between the Leech Lake Reservation and Los Angeles.
Event book: *The Savage Mind: An American Legacy* was published October 6, 2026. The paperback is listed at $32, and the hardcover at $30.
Accessibility: Requests for accommodations or accessibility information should be sent to events@politics-prose.com, ideally at least one week before the event. The venue says it will try to accommodate requests made up until the event.