Holtzbrinck Lecture

The Savage Mind: Understanding Violence in America

Ever since Columbus arrived in the Caribbean, America has had a violence problem. Even before it achieved nationhood, the country and its cultural character were formed by the violent theft of land and freedom from human beings. This early brutality, and its constant reinvention and redeployment, has shaped us as a country and it carries through to the present day. In this lecture, David Treuer—son of a Native American mother and  Jewish Holocaust-survivor father—describes America’s “savage mind” in its past and present incarnations and aims to reframe its causes and effects—and, ultimately, to change it.