I finished The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee (David Treuer, 2019) last night. It took a few weeks of on-and-off reading; it’s close to 450 pages (without the references) and small print. And dense.

I knew some of the pre-1890 history from reading other books, but the way it was presented in the first section of this book made me think about it in a completely different way. It had never dawned on me how different the pre-1890 experience was for different tribes. Different geographies, different cultures, different relations with their neighbors, different encounters with colonizers, different experiences with disease, different and shifting alignments during times of warfare. And so on. The first section of the book opened my eyes to how richly varied things were.

Subsequent sections dealt with 1890-present and most of that material was new for me. I came away from the book with (I think!) a much more realistic and nuanced understanding of Native America. Highly recommended.

Recently watched: A trio of films from John Carpenter on the Criterion Channel: Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), Vampires (1998), Ghosts of Mars (2001). Went to the movies on cheap night and saw One Battle After Another (2025).

Books: Recently finished A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick, which I really enjoyed. There were a few twists that I did not see coming. Working my way through The Place of Dead Roads by William Burroughs.

Recently read: The Chaos Protocols (Gordon White). Still reading The Living Great Lakes (Jerry Dennis), started The Red Goddess (Peter Grey).

Recently watched: Twin Peaks: The Return (2017), Thief (1981), Space is the Place (1974). Got interested in watching Space while listening to a Weird Studies podcast during a train ride across Michigan.

(By the way, you should subscribe to Weird Studies. It is really good.)

Recently watched: The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), Twin Peaks seasons 1 and 2 (and started season 3 last night), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces (2014).

Reading: The Living Great Lakes (Jerry Dennis) and The Chaos Protocols (Gordon White).

The movie watching spree continued this week with THX 1138 (1971) and the six minute long Planet X (2006). I have absolutely no idea what to make of the latter.

Started reading The Simulacra by Philip K. Dick. Ken Layne recommended it on one of the Desert Oracle programs/podcasts and I picked it up a while ago. I started it back in early December but got sidetracked, so I started it from scratch this week. I’m hooked so far.