In the Spirit of Crazy Horse

About this record

Peter Matthiessen's landmark 1983 (Viking) book-length investigation of the FBI's war against the American Indian Movement on the Pine Ridge Lakota reservation in the 1970s, the 1975 Oglala firefight that left FBI agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams and AIM member Joseph Stuntz dead, and the federal frame-up of Leonard Peltier. Held off bookstore shelves for years by litigation from FBI agents and former South Dakota governor William Janklow — both lawsuits ultimately dismissed — the book remains the definitive long-form journalistic account of the AIM-era state-repression campaign and the case against Peltier.