In the Spirit of Crazy Horse: The Story of Leonard Peltier and the FBI's War on the American Indian Movement

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Description

On a hot June morning in 1975 a brutal shoot-out between FBI and American Indians erupted on a remote property near Wounded Knee in South Dakota. The confrontation ended with the death of three men, including two FBI officers; eventually, four Indians were indicted on murder charges. One of them, Leonard Peltier, is now serving two consecutive life sentences. This book suggests that Peltier may be innocent. Looking at the larger issues behind the Pine Ridge shoot-out the book offers a comprehensive history of what Indian activists have been doing to bring these issues to the forefront of American life.

Reviews

By the time I had turned the final page, I felt angry enough [] to want to shout from the rooftops, Wake up, America, before its too damned late! For Matthiessen, in this extraordinary, complex work, powerfully propounds several large and disturbing themes which the white majority in America will ignore at extreme peril.
Nick Kotz, The Washington Post

A giant of a book . . . indescribably touching, extraordinarily intelligent.
The Los Angeles Times

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse is really about contemporary America and the way American law is seen through the eyes of American Indians. . . . It is one of those rare books that permanently change ones consciousness about important, yet neglected, facets of our history.
The New York Times Book Review

[Matthiessen] is neither gullible nor uncritical. He realistically portrays individuals, landscapes, customs, and problems that, though wholly American, are unfamiliar to most American citizens.
The New Yorker

One of the most dramatic demonstrations of endemic American racism that has yet been writtena powerful, unsettling book that will force even the most ethno-pious reader to inspect the limits of his understanding.
The New York Review of Books

Author Bio

Peter Matthiessen was the cofounder of the Paris Review and is the author of numerous works of nonfiction, including In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, Indian Country, and The Snow Leopard, winner of the National Book Award.