David Heska Wanbli Weiden is an award winning author, professor, and an enrolled citizen of the Sicangu Lakota nation. He received his MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts, his law degree from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, and his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. He's professor of English and Native American and Indigenous Studies at Stony Brook University and also serves on the faculty of the Cedar Crest Pan-European MFA Program. He lives in New York and Colorado with his family.

Hw is the author of Wisdom Corner, forthcoming in July, 2026 from Ecco/HarperCollins. He's also the author of the national bestseller Winter Counts (Ecco, 2020), which was the winner of many awards, and was a New York Times Editors' Choice, an Indie Next pick, main selection of the Book of the Month Club, and named a Best Book of the year by NPR, Amazon, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, The Guardian, and other magazines. The novel is included in Time magazine's list of the 100 best mystery and thriller novels of all time.

We talk about his book Wisdom Corner, Native Americans, his book Winter Counts, the broken criminal justice system on Indian Reservations, Native American boarding schools, the word "Indian" and whether or not it is offensive, the Sicangu Lakota Nation, Native American history, bison, life of the Indians before Europeans came, the slaughter of the bison, passages from the book, religion, Buddhism, Lakota spirituality, treaties made and broken, the future of Native Americans, football, writing a best seller as a first novel, the role of fiction in bringing about social change, teaching creative writing, writing dialogue, books, short stories, favorite authors, movies, the Native American Literary renaisance, and more.