The Forum with David Treuer
Grace Cathedral, San Francisco
Co-presented with Litquake
In the wake of George Floyd's murder and January 6, National Book Award finalist and bestseller David Treuer decided to hold himself and his family together the only way he knew how: he sat down to write a letter. Ranging from Treuer's upbringing on the Leech Lake reservation in Minnesota to the experiences of his parents, a Jewish Holocaust refugee and the first American Indigenous woman judge, The Savage Mind reveals the terrifying essence of our nation: frontier violence, which has defined our country, culture, and very selves.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young, dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Treuer about his searing exploration of American violence, which poses the question: How do we understand America, ourselves, and the impulses that seem intent on destroying both?
Recorded at Grace Cathedral on October 11, 2026.
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About the Guest
New York Times bestselling author and editor David Treuer is Ojibwe from Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. He is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, three Minnesota Book Awards, and fellowships from the NEH, Bush Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation, and was a Fellow at the American Academy Berlin. Treuer's forthcoming book, The Savage Mind: An American Legacy, will be released on October 6, 2026. His most recent book, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present, was a New York Times bestseller, a National Book Award Finalist, a Minnesota Book Prize winner, a California Book Prize winner, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, and was a finalist for the Carnegie Medal. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and Harper's. He is a contributing writer for Atlantic Monthly Magazine and is an editor-at-large for Pantheon Books. He divides his time between his home on the Leech Lake Reservation and Los Angeles, where he is a professor of English at the University of Southern California.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum's host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Learn more about The Forum here:
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