A comprehensive and impassioned account of American Indian activist
warriors: what they struggle for and why, what they and all
Americans stand to lose. Matthiessen (The Snow Leopard, etc.)
concentrates on the bloody shoot-out between FBI agents and Indians
that took place June 26, 1975, on the Pine Ridge Reservation and
ended in the execution of two wounded agents. Were they killed by
Indian warriors Dine Butler and Bob Robideau, acquitted of murder
charges in a Cedar Rapids court which heard evidence of FBI lies,
set-ups, and coercion? Or by Indian activist Leonard Peltier,
convicted of the same charges in a Fargo court which ruled most of
his defense "inadmissible" and sent him to prison for two
consecutive life terms? Matthiessen, who believes Peltier innocent,
builds a persuasive case for a new and fair trial. But Peltier, a
poor Indian turned activist, dogged by the FBI to violence,
railroaded into prison, and apparently set up by the feds to be
"neutralized" there, is only one example of what has been happening
to Indians all along. Matthiessen sketches the historical trail of
broken treaties and the dismal fate of Indian leaders - Red Cloud,
Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse - betrayed and bumped off by the
prevailing system of institutionalized greed. He traces the rise in
the late 1960s of the American Indian Movement (which wanted the US
to honor its treaties: that is, give back the uranium rich Black
Hills); the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee and the resultant
trials of AIM leaders Russell Means and Dennis Banks; the betrayal
(by FBI informers) and murder of one leader after another,
culminating in the diastrous shoot-out. The bottom line, according
to Matthiessen and the Indians he quotes profusely, is the land
itself, precious to Indians, raped by strip mining corporations
with the collaboration of Bureau of Indian Affairs puppet tribal
governments and their enforcing goon squads. It's a complex tale
and a grim one (fuller, here, than in Rex Weyler's recent Blood of
the Land, p. 929) - compellingly told all the way. (Kirkus Reviews)
"A giant of a book. Indescribably touching, extraordinarily intelligent."—The Los Angeles Times Book Review. Matthiessen's chronicle of a fatal gun-battle between FBI agents and American Indian Movement activists in 1975.
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