Peter Iverson certainly knows what happened at the Battle of Little Big Horn Battle. It was one of the last great battles in the centuries-long war between different American Indian nations and European-Americans. The Sioux won that battle, of course, brining death and ignominy to General Custer and the Seventh Cavalry. But is also led to the 1890 massacre of Sioux men, women and children at Wounded Knee, which was the final battle in the four-centuries-long war between the indigenes of North America and those settlers who came later. These two battles - one last stand by brave but hopelessly outnumber people and then their final slaughter - are often presented as the final chapter in the story of how the first peoples of what would become the United States were vanquished.
But while Iverson understands the importance - in both symbolic as well real historical, strategic terms - of these two battles, he does not think that they are quite as important as other scholars have argued because in focusing on these battles, traditional histories of Native Americans (as well as traditional stories of the United States in general and the American West in particular) would lead one to believe that there are no American Indians left in the United States, and certainly no American Indian culture.
This is certainly not true - as Iverson carefully documents in this history that begins with Wounded Knee and runs to the present. Without in any way dismissing the importance of what had been lost to American Indian groups since European colonization of North America (from loss of land to loss of languages, religion, and material culture), Iverson presents a picture of different peoples who have survived through adaptation.
He dismisses - gently but firmly - the idea that non-Indians should view the Indians as tragic victims: To view Native Americans through the perspective of Wounded Knee (or the Long Walk of the Navajo or the Trail of Tears) i...