They Met at Wounded Knee

"Eick’s project aligns with efforts to study settler colonialism and its abuses relationally. Thus, she underscores resonances between post-Civil War assaults on African Americans and persistent moves by Congress and a series of US presidents to suppress Native people. Through such details, linking the Eastman’s personal and professional lives with this larger historical narrative, They Met at Wounded Knee provides an informative critique of structural racism."
—Sarah Ruffing Robbins, English Department, Texas Christian University

“Historian Gretchen Eick has employed biography to write a brilliant history of the US genocidal policy of elimination or assimilation as the choice presented to Indigenous Peoples of the United States. The Dakota physician, author, and activist, Charles Eastman, used his own assimilation to promote self-determination, while his ‘friend of the Indians’ Euroamerican wife and writing partner of three decades chose assimilation, destroying their marriage. This is a gripping text exploring the nadir of Native American nations' existence from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century.”
—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States
 

"With rich social and political context and a sympathetic biographical flair, They Met at Wounded Knee brilliantly tells the story of one of the most intriguing couples in American history.  Gretchen Eick sure-handedly demonstrates the ways that individual lives reveal the structural dilemmas of settler colonialism, representational politics, and the painful entanglements of race, class, and gender."
—Philip J. Deloria, professor of Native American and Indigenous Studies, Harvard University

"An inherently interesting work of seminal and meticulous scholarship by history professor Gretchen Cassel Eick, They Met at Wounded Knee: The Eastmans' Story is an extraordinary and unreservedly recommended addition to community, college, and university library Native American Studies collections and supplemental curriculum lists."
—Midwest Book Review

"Eick communicates massive amounts of material that any reader of history will enjoy perusing."
—Bookin with Sunny