First published 1997
Peter Matthiessen examines the violent confrontation that erupted on a June morning in 1975 between FBI agents and American Indian Movement members on remote South Dakota land. The shootout left two federal agents dead and resulted in murder indictments against four AIM activists. Only Leonard Peltier received a conviction, earning him consecutive life sentences in federal prison. Matthiessen traces the complex historical forces that led to this tragedy, connecting the incident to centuries of conflict between the Lakota people and the U.S. government. His investigation spans from Red Cloud's nineteenth-century resistance and the Battle of Little Bighorn to the systematic discrimination that sparked renewed Indian activism in the 1970s. The author reveals how decades of broken treaties, cultural suppression, and economic marginalization created the conditions for this modern confrontation near the site of the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre.
Genres: 20th-century, native-american, activism, american-history
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: historical-drama, social-justice
Setting: South Dakota, Wounded Knee
Period: 1975, 19th-century, 1890
688 pages · Paperback · Penguin
Content warnings: violence