The long-intertwined communities of the Oglala Lakota Pine Ridge Reservation and the bordering towns in Sheridan County, Nebraska, mark their histories in sensational incidents and quiet human connections, many recorded in detail here for the first time. After covering racial unrest in the remote northwest corner of his home state of Nebraska in 1999, journalist Stew Magnuson returned four years later to consider the border towns' peoples, their paths, and the forces that separate them. Examining Raymond Yellow Thunder's death at the hands of four white men in 1972, Magnuson looks deep into the past that gave rise to the tragedy. Situating long-ranging repercussions within 130 years of context, he also recounts the largely forgotten struggles of American Indian Movement activist Bob Yellow Bird and tells the story of Whiteclay, Nebraska, the controversial border hamlet that continues to sell millions of cans of beer per year to the "dry" reservation. Within this microcosm of cultural conflict, Magnuson explores the odds against community's power to transcend misunderstanding, alcoholism, prejudice, and violence.

Descending 1,885 miles straight down the center of the United States from Westhope, North Dakota, to Brownsville, Texas, is U.S. 83, one of the oldest and longest of the federal highways that hasn't been replaced by an Interstate. Award-winning author Stew Magnuson takes readers on a trip down the road and through the history of the Northern Great Plains. The famous and the forgotten are found in stories he discovers in the Dakotas. Explorers Pierre de la Verendrye, Lewis & Clark, Jedediah Smith, are all encountered along with Chief Spotted Tail of the Brule Lakotas, TV sensation Lawrence Welk and rodeo superstar Casey Tibbs. The murderers, settlers, ballplayers and rail barons from yesteryear meet today's truckers, oil rig workers and ghost towns inhabitants as Magnuson launches his own Voyage of Discovery in a beat-up 1999 Mazda Protege. Published on the 125th anniversary of the year North Dakota and South Dakota became states, The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: The Dakotas, is a love poem to the natural beauty of the prairie and the fascinating people-both past and present-found along the road.

On the night of Feb. 27, 1973, beat-up cars carrying dozens of angry young men sped into Wounded Knee village. Members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) and local Lakotas had come to occupy the symbolic site on the Pine Ridge Reservation, where the army had massacred Chief Big Foot and his people in 1890. They would hold out against the firepower of the U.S. government for 71 days. By the time the occupiers left, the village had been destroyed, two were dead, one activist went missing, and a U.S. marshal was left paralyzed. Thirty-nine years later, key figures from the movement, Russell Means, Clyde Bellecourt and Dennis Banks arrived at the Dakota Conference at Augustana College, Sioux Falls, S.D., where the events and the meaning of the Wounded Knee Occupation would be discussed. There to greet them were former FBI Special Agent in Charge Joseph Trimbach and his son John, ardent, life-long critics of AIM. Never before had so many key occupation figures from the movement and the government been under the same roof at the same time. Accusations of murders and cover-ups began to fly from both sides, and organizers had to beef up security. This would be no ordinary academic conference. The vitriolic speeches and angry reactions from both the pro- and anti-AIM participants exposed the still festering wounds that have wracked Pine Ridge Reservation as a result of the occupation for four decades. Wounded Knee 1973: Still Bleeding gives readers an account of the major issues presented at the conference, along with a summary of the occupation itself, the Banks and Means leadership trial in St. Paul, Minn., and the bloody years on Pine Ridge that followed. It also addresses the enduring unsolved mystery of civil rights activist Ray Robinson, who entered the occupied village, and was never seen alive again.

The long-intertwined communities of the Oglala Lakota Pine Ridge Reservation and the bordering towns in Sheridan County, Nebraska, mark their histories in sensational incidents and quiet human connections, many recorded in detail here for the first time. After covering racial unrest in the remote northwest corner of his home state of Nebraska in 1999, journalist Stew Magnuson returned four years later to consider the larger questions of its peoples, their paths, and the forces that separate them. Examining Raymond Yellow Thunder's death at the hands of four white men in 1972, Magnuson looks deep into the past that gave rise to the tragedy. Situating long-ranging repercussions within 130 years of context, he also recounts the largely forgotten struggles of American Indian Movement activist Bob Yellow Bird and tells the story of Whiteclay, Nebraska, the controversial border hamlet that continues to sell millions of cans of beer per year to the "dry" reservation. Within this microcosm of cultural conflict, Magnuson explores the odds against community's power to transcend misunderstanding, alcoholism, prejudice, and violence."Like all good stories, The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder spins against the way it drives. Even as the people of Sheridan County despise, scorn, exploit, assault, and kill one another, their lives, like objects slipping out of control, become more and more inseparable. Indians and whites coexist and, against all odds, somehow get along, sharing space they really don't want to share. This countercurrent is the source of the many unexpected stories Magnuson brings forth." --Pekka Hamalainen, from the foreword