In the Spirit of Crazy Horse: The Story of Leonard Peltier and the FBIs War on the American Indian Movement by Peter Matthiessen

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse: The Story of Leonard Peltier and the FBIs War on the American Indian Movement Reviews

• 
  Juliet Rose

  This was a very important book and I highly recommend it. However it is very dense to read and comes across like a long legal court document. I would love if it was made into a documentary, as I feel it would be easier to follow all of the different players and their stories. At times I needed to backtrack to make sure I followed who was connected to who. All in all a great but very long read.
• 
  Liz Muñoz

  This book really affected me. It made me angry at the injustice that happened to these people. Mattiessen really did his research for this book. It's a detailed account of the incident at Wounded Knee in the 70's, AIM (American Indian Movement) and the trials that followed thereafter. Thankfully, the FBI lost in it's attempt to prevent this book from being published. It's an important book and we have the right to learn about the attrocities committed against the Native Americans. I feel strongly that this should be required reading in high school. This is not an easy read, but will definitely keep you interested. I also recommend watching the documentary "Incident at Oglala: The Leonard Pelteir Story".
• 
  Howard

  In June 1975, two FBI agents were gunned down on the Pine Ridge Sioux Reservation near the village of Oglala, South Dakota. Two years later, Leonard Peltier, a member of the American Indian Movement (AIM), was tried and convicted of two counts of murder, and was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences.
  
  Forty-four years later, he is still in prison.
  
  It is important to note that the subtitle of Peter Matthiessen’s book is The Story of Leonard Peltier and the FBI’s War on the American Indian Movement.”
  
  Q: Is it true, as Matthiessen maintains, that the FBI suppressed and tampered with evidence and also threatened and otherwise intimidated witnesses who testified against Peltier?
  
  A: Yes.
  
  Q: Is Matthiessen’s book an objective account of the trial and conviction of Peltier?
  
  A: No. He leans heavily toward a sympathetic view of Peltier’s plight and is highly critical of the FBI’s investigation of the case and the Justice Department’s prosecution.
  
  Q: Does this mean that Matthiessen believes that Peltier was innocent of the charges?
  
  A: No. He doesn't know. It does mean that he thinks that Peltier did not receive a fair trial.
  
  Q: Do you think Leonard Peltier killed the FBI agents?
  
  A: I don’t know.
  
  Q: Do you think he received a fair trial?
  
  A: NO.
• 
  Socraticgadfly

  Free Leonard Peltier!
  
  Why?
  
  Well, you have to read this book, but here's a synopsis that nobody but the most diehard 1970s FBI defender can try to deny.
  
  Matthiessen documents years of FBI spying on the American Indian Movement, including "turning" insiders, coupled with intimidation tactics and more. Often the FBI in South Dakota was working, if not hand in hand, at least on parallel tracks in this thuggery with folks such as a corrupt Pine Ridge Indian Reservation leadership, then-Attorney General and now disgraced former Congressman Bill Janklow, BIA cops and more.
  
  While Matthiesen looks at bits and pieces of AIM's history elsewhere, he focuses on Pine Ridge and its Sioux, as this area, through things such as a temporary takeover of Mount Rushmore, was a center of AIM activity.
  
  In trials related to the events in and around Pine Ridge, FBI agents repeatedly intimidated witnesses into changing testimony, coached witnesses, sprung last-minute surprise witnesses at trials (which is against the law, if you didn't know), suborned perjury and otherwise made a mockery of justice.
  
  Things reached a climax June 26, 1975 when two FBI agents approached the Jumping Bull property on the Pine Ridge Reservation, ostensibly looking for Jimmy Eagle on a weapons charge. According to all Indian accounts, the two agents began opening fire on the property.
  
  Both were eventually shot in a return of fire. They were later killed at close range.
  
  After three other AIM leaders at the site were all acquitted of murder charges in the FBI agents' deaths, the FBI appeared determined to hang the case on Peltier by any legal or illegal means possible.
  
  Aided by a viciously biased judge giving one-sided bench rulings, the government did exactly that.
  
  Read how things reached this point, what AIM's grievances were, how the FBI infiltrated them, and more.
  
  But, above all, read the story of Leonard Peltier both before and after his conviction.
  
  Is Leonard Peltier a political prisoner? Read this book and decide for yourself.
• 
  Evan

  Sioux at Standing Rock defending their land against big oil and their State minion armies, circa 2016. So you think shit has changed?
  
  
  Elegant, passionate investigative muckraking in the grand style: messy, gnarly, informative, memorable and anger-inducing. This is a sweeping, detailed novelistic tour de force that raises more questions than it answers and sometimes has you questioning the author's veracity while at the same time having you shaking your head in agreement over his findings and conclusions. In investigating the state's case against Leonard Peltier and his cohorts, Matthiessen presents a disgraceful historical litany of the underlying causes of American Indian anger. This book ends on an enigmatic and somewhat unsatisfactory note, but in getting there is a mind-massaging and unforgettable journey, and should be required reading for all Americans.
  
  (KevinR@KY, read in 2008; reviewed retrospectively -- and regrettably without benefit of detail -- in 2016)
• 
  Dan

  In the Spirit of Crazy Horse is one of the best non-fiction books that I have read. The story is a volatile cocktail of violence, poverty, intimidation and historical oppression. And then when the FBI gets involved the problems only escalate from there.
  
  This book logs in at nearly 800 pages. The first 200 pages are slow going and quite unnecessary if you already have background on modern Sioux history and the American Indian Movement. The story really gains traction with the events in the summer of 1975 surrounding the tragic shooout between FBI agents and Leonard Peltier and his associates. These events on the Pine Ridge Reservation are the central focus of the remainder of the book continuing right through the epilogue and afterword.
  
  This book was quite controversial when it was released in 1983 and for many decades since. The author, Peter Matthiessen, was certainly sympathetic to the members of the American Indian Movement. He was even sued by the governor of South Dakota and FBI agents because of the unflattering light in which they were portrayed. All of the claims of libel against Matthiessen were eventually dismissed after years of litigation. Following the dismissal of the libel suits, books could be sold again and by the 1990's the book and events were covered in some depth by the major networks.
  
  Why is this book is so riveting? First off, Matthiessen is a phenomenal writer pure and simple. Secondly Matthiessen incorporates a large amount of first hand research and quotes. He interviewed everybody associated with the American Indian movement and those witnesses of the tragic events. Lastly Matthiessen lays a seemingly exhaustive set of facts out there for the reader to interpret. Ultimately Matthiessen states his belief in Leonard Peltier's innocence. Few people today contest whether the FBI fabricated evidence, but I don't share the same view that Peltier is innocent nor did I buy the concocted story of Mr. X. When the FBI accuses you of murder, it's best to not try and pin it on a Mr. X and refuse to provide his identity.
  
  The fundamental themes of this book center on oppression, dispossession and aggression. Regarding the latter there is an FBI agent, the one who later sues the author, who describes why law enforcement uses overwhelming force in dealing with these movements, even though this is almost certainly going to lead to violence. A force of 200 law enforcement vs. 30 suspects may seem overwhelming to a lay person but he says they want 1000 men because no FBI agent wants to die for just doing their job. So you see this life and death tug-of-war play out between law enforcement against an aggrieved people, some of whom have very checkered pasts.
  
  To a large degree that is what makes this book so riveting. It is about multiple miscarriages of justice. The situation evokes sympathy for FBI agents and their families in a no win situation and then their predictable reactions when there are no willing eyewitnesses who come forward regarding the executions. The story evokes sympathy for people who live on a reservation with murder rates far exceeding the worst American cities. The story evokes sympathy for the plight of Native Americans when the U.S. government does not live up to its treaties and commits the same sins of aggressions like those at Wounded Knee nearly a hundred years earlier.
  
  In summary, it's a thought provoking book by an author who is honest about where his sympathies lie.
• 
  Sean Kottke

  This saga of the conflict between the U.S. government and Native Americans picks up where Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee leaves off, and makes the critical point that as excellent as that earlier book is, contemporary readers might get a false sense of complacency from it, that we live in a more enlightened age and the struggles exist in the past. This book, which focuses mainly on the events surrounding the shootout on the Pine Ridge reservation in 1975 and the story of Leonard Peltier, serves as a strong corrective to that. Ironically, the current edition contributes to that impression by ending on a positive note. After 16 years in prison, Leonard Peltier's case received increased media attention, and the book ends with optimistic visions of a long struggle finally coming to an end. However, the book's coverage ends in 1991. Twenty years later, Leonard Peltier is still in prison, and his defense committee hasn't produced a fresh newsletter or blog post in over three years. The only thing new on their website is a ticker that updates every second to document his total time of imprisonment, 13040 as of today.
• 
  Christine

  I'm not sure I can write a review of this, there are so many thoughts about it running though my head. I picked this up a few years ago at the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian (you should go). Matthiessen book (opinionated but heavily noted) is dense and isn't the beautiful nature writing that makes up
  The Snow Leopard (read it), this a different type of book.
  
  Matthissen investigates the AIM (American Indian Movement) shooting of two FBI agents at Pine Ridge Reservation (which borders Standing Rock). Matthiessen first details the treatment of Native Americans at the hands of the US government (including the breaking of treaties by the US government) before moving into the events of the shooting and the trials that follow. In many ways, too, it also gives one a new look at Standing Rock.
  
  If you are reading this or having read this, I highly suggest searching the names of the central players as information as come out since the publication of the book.
• 
  Pam Walter

  An excellent retelling of the life of Leonard Peltier. The very grim lives of the Lakota Sioux Indians are documented from the second Wounded Knee incident, to the Shootout at Oglala. The latter landed Leonard Peltier 2 consecutive life terms. Matthiessen has researched and very well documented this story, lending credence to AIM (American Indian Movement) and shedding light on the actions of the FBI, BIA and their GOONS (Gaurdians Of the Oglala Nation). Whether in fact Peltier, among others, was resposible for the killing of 2 FBI agents may never be known as there was so much misinformation manufactured by the FBI and Government Prosecutors. Truth to tell is that Peltier did not receive anything close to what could be called a "fair" trial. Disseminating misinformation, falsifying documents, and acquiring prosecution testimony under great duress were just a few of the actions that convicted him.
  
• 
  Karis North

  Detailed almost to the point of excrutiating, but overall excellent recitation of the events leading up to the killing of 2 FBI agents in Oglala, on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Matthiesen's research is painstaking, and once I realized how the book was organized it made sense and I could follow it (he hides his explanation in the notes for each section). The facts are incredibly convoluted, and there are so many layers to what happened. Matthiesen does a pretty good job of tryin to sort it all out. I'm not sure I'm convinced of Peltier's "innocence" but I certainly believe that justice was miscarried in the desparate acts of the FBI and the office of the US Attorney, to get vengance for the killings.
  
  
• 
  Suzanne Arcand

  How one talk about a book that is so bias and so necessary? The author Peter Matthiessen does not pretend to be objective but admits up front that this book was written to right a grievous injustice.
  
  An injustice that didn’t start with the incident in Oglala in which three people were killed, an Indian and two FBI agents who were shot at close range, and of whose death Leonard Peltier has been held responsible and for which he is still doing time.
  
  While this incident and the “frame up” of Leonard Peltier are the obvious subjects of the book, the author puts them in context by going back to the Wounded Knee massacre and the decades of injustice that lead to this 1975 shoot out. To understand, even just a little, the frame of mind of the Indian protagonists, one as to walk a little in their shoes and this is what Mathiessen does by telling of the oppression, the injustice and the poverty that has been their lot.
  
  Reading this book I could not help being moved by the strength and leadership of the AIM leaders who had decided that they had enough. In front of such injustice they showed a lot of discipline. Mathiessien doesn’t make them out to be saints. He shows them with their flaws and all but he always portray them with compassion.
  
  The author did a very thorough research and, in his effort to show us the context and clear Peltier’s name he goes into minute details about the lives of the protagonists, the incident of 1975 itself and the trial. So much so, that I had difficulties at times following the different characters - especially when the book moves back and forth in time - but at other times the book reads like a legal thriller.
  
  When I closed the book, felt that I knew these people better and I wanted to learn more about what happened to them since the book was published. I also wanted to know more about the life and death of Annie May Aquash, who is one of the major women characters in this book.
  
  Was I convinced about Peltier’s innocence? Not necessarily, but I was convinced that there was ground for a new trial.
  
  As with any book discussing the plight to the North American Indian I can’t help feeling guilty. I am descendant of the people who took their land and the prosperity of my people was founded on pillage and genocide of their ancestors. There is also the fact that I live in a country, Canada, where there are pockets of people living in third world conditions and that a lot of those people are from the First Nation.
  
  A book such as “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse” is still necessary thirty years after it was published because, over and over again, Indians have been victims of racism and injustice. Even as I’m writing, the authorities and the public are showing cruel indifference the hundred of aboriginal women who have gone missing in Canada.
  
  As Dino Butler wrote:
  
  We must always fight for what we believe in. We must never tire in our fight. It does not really matter how we fight what matters is what we are fighting for.
  
  So for the scope of the book and its righteous aim, I give it four stars.
  
• 
  Vicki

  This is an important book, and I'm impressed with the amount of research and time Matthiessen put into it, and I think the story needed to be told. That said, I spent the vast majority of it wishing that an unbiased journalist would come shove him away from his computer, steal his notes, and take over writing the book for him. I agree with him on pretty much everything, but still he was so biased that he undermined his own point of view. At one point he actually argued that the fact that the murder of an Indian on an Indian reservation was even investigated was proof of conspiracy against Indians. And if that's not enough for you, he spends many other parts of the book arguing that failure to investigate murders of Indians is proof of governmental indifference to the plight of Indians on reservations.
  
  Look, Matthiessen, I appreciate your hard work, and I overwhelmingly agree with you, both in perspective and conclusions. But your editor did you no favors by not calling you on your bullshit. I stopped reading this book in irritation about 300 pages in and never would've picked it back up if I hadn't seen the movie William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe.
• 
  Mr.B

  Nonfiction. Two words... Leonard Peltier. Two more words... Oglala Shoot-out. Two more words... FBI tampering. Enough said.
• 
  Gary Butler

  33rd book read in 2017.
  
  Number 339 out of 598 on my all time book list.
• 
  Kate

  Incredibly well-told. Whether or not Leonard Peltier killed the FBI agents seems beside the point. Reading this I felt long-held ugly suspicions about the FBI confirmed and detailed. At this point I think it’s profoundly understood that there was a lot left out of my public school history classroom so I don’t need to beleaguer that point but I find it astonishing the things I’m learning at 35.
  
  The violence permitted, abetted and committed by the US government on the Pine Ridge reservation and elsewhere in the time of AIM’s ascension is grueling enough to read about but the COINTELPRO tactics of terrorizing, infiltrating and dismantling autonomous communities of support by fracturing them : dividing people and planting seeds of distrust- is completely heartbreaking. So many lives, on all sides, terminated or wasted.
  
  There are so many reasons to be paranoid. Who is being protected? From what?
  
  Peter Matthiessen writes about this clearly and beautifully. I look forward to reading more of his writing.
• 
  Chinook

  This is the longest audiobook I've listened to so far - and I'm glad it occurred to me to speed it up a bit because I was enjoying the information provided but it was starting to drag on a bit long and the library hold was about to expire for the second time.
  
  I think this is a good book for everyone to better understand the background to the No DAPL movement. The connection isn't made until much later in the book, but it's eventually suggested that the attempts by the FBI to disrupt AIM and liken them to communists was driven by land grabs for resources, especially related to power production. It also ties into a lot of he work being done right now to show the abuses by police and courts against innocent suspects that was made popular by Serial.
  
  I found the background to the book being suppressed by court cases fascinating as well.
• 
  Ian

  I don't think you can hold the shortcomings of this book against Matthiessen. As with any complicated, partisan event, each perspective offers only one piece of the patchwork. And this is an important one, even if some of the information that's emerged since its publication challenges some of aspects of Peltier's defenders' arguments.
  
  Nonetheless, the book is commendable for its examination of the renewed wars against Native Americans as the coal, oil and uranium under their lands became increasingly important to industry interests. And although it's hard to judge the extent to which he was impartially critical of the evidence of government wrongdoing in the case -- what he pulls together is pretty staggering, a good civics reminder.
  
  As a journalist, I would have preferred he erred more on the side of explictly sourcing more of his material.
• 
  Ray

  This is a lengthly and sobering account of the American Indian Movement in the 60's and 70's, and the continuing conflict between Native Americans and the U.S. Government. There are references to broken treaties between our government and Indian tribes, racism, and the poor conditions on Indian Reservations. The main element of the book concerns Leonard Pelteir, convicted of murdering two FBI agents on a reservation during a shoot-out between Native Americans and the FBI. Apparently, the publishing of this book was delayed by eight years due to lawsuits brought by the FBI to prevent damaging information about its conduct leading up to the incident, and during the prosecution of the case. Matthiessen was clearly sympathetic to the Indian cause, but it's not hard to understand why. The book does a good job in telling a neglected story, but it's a sad reminder of past unjustices.
• 
  Anne

  This book was long, detailed, well researched and exhausting. I learned a great deal about the Wounded Knee occupation and about the Oglala shoot out-
  occurrences that I recall hearing about in the 70s. Matthiessen spent an incredible amount of time and effort researching and writing this book. His opinion is pretty clear but his reporting seems balanced. It's an eye opener regarding our government's attitude and treatment of Native Americans, (or Indians, as they identified in the book) in the modern day. Not much changed from 1890 to 1975 in that way.
• 
  Matthew

  I am very sympathetic to Native causes, and the repeatedly nauseating abuse they suffer time and time again at the hands of white imperialism throughout the entirety of our shared history. It is so frustrating to see these issues STILL continuing, with the Dakota Access Pipeline on Standing Rock land.
  
  Peter Matthiessen did good research, and clearly built a lot of goodwill with the principal figures of these events. His storytelling is incredibly biased, even if 100% true, but it is bias that the Native people deserve. His detailing is laborious, though, and he loses my attention numerous times as he recounts reams of facts and eye-witness accounts.
• 
  David

  I grew up in Minnesota and didn't hear the name Leonard Peltier until I was in my late 20s. That doesn't feel right to me. I don't mean to blow anyone's mind here but it seems to me that the way this country has treated and continues to treat the people whose ancestors were living here before Columbus arrived is pretty fuckin' sick. It's sort of odd, until the very end it doesn't feel like this book is even necessarily trying to demonstrate that Peltier is innocent. By the time I was convinced that Leonard Peltier was not, in fact, the killer of two FBI agents on that summer morning in 1975, I had already been convinced that it doesn't really matter whether he was or not.
• 
  Anna

  Sped through this incredibly engaging and super disturbing (like everything about the history of America and its absolutely horrifying behavior toward indigenous populations) book. I'm glad I came across it at my mom's house right now, as I'm involved in convos at work about native invisibility. looking up pictures of all the people along the way, remembering bury my heart at wounded knee. And "songs my brothers taught me" from Sundance a bunch of years ago. and STANDING ROCK.
• 
  Mimi

  One of the most powerful books I have ever read. A piece of history that for the most part has been forgotten. Why is it that white people have such a hard time owning up to what they have done to Native Americans? Can any white republican politician or FBI official ever say they really "f..ked up"?
  
  FREE LEONARD PELTIER!
• 
  James F

  One of the most important events happening in the country today, though eclipsed in the media by the Clinton-Trump circus, is the resistance by Native Americans and their allies to the Dakota Access Pipeline. This book is important background to the Standing Rock struggle. Despite the mention of Crazy Horse in the title, this is not a book about the nineteenth century genocide against the Indians, which is covered in a first chapter only as background. What it is, is an account of the resurgence of traditional Indian beliefs and the defense of Indian lands against the energy companies and the government beginning in the 1960s, largely though not entirely through the influence of the American Indian Movement (AIM), and the government's attempt to destroy that movement, culminating in the trial and imprisonment of Leonard Peltier.
  
  This is not an impartial account, but an indictment of the United States government's disregard of law, due process, and elementary decency in their campaign against a movement that threatened the profits of the energy companies. The book does not gloss over the faults of AIM, which are admitted by many of the AIM leaders themselves; they had a confrontational strategy and an unrealistic view of the possibilities of armed struggle against the government, and did not seek the sort of alliances that might have aided their cause -- the Black Hills Alliance and other attempts to unite with the general environmental movement, which led up to the current movement at Standing Rock, all came later. However, the book also documents that most of the important confrontations were forced on the activists by the government, the corrupt and violent tribal government on the Pine Ridge Reservation, and the right-wing vigilante groups, and that there was an element of paranoia on the part of the FBI (remember this was the era of COINTELPRO) which resulted in a virtual state of war, with murders, rapes, assaults, and home invasions on the part of the FBI and the BIA and their supporters. The judicial process was constantly subverted in all the trials of AIM activists, not just in the case of Leonard Peltier.
  
  The book is divided into three parts; the first part is background on AIM and the Wounded Knee occupation, the second part deals with the shoot-out for which Peltier was arrested and the trials, and the final part deals with the struggle to get the conviction overturned. I remember that the first significant political meeting I ever attended, was to hear an AIM spokesman, Lee Brightman, talk about Wounded Knee at the Upper West Side Militant Forum in New York, when I was a college student. This is a book that is difficult to read, simply because it made me so angry I had to stop reading every few minutes to cool off. I hope it has the same effect on other readers. After being published in 1983, it was suppressed due to lawsuits by Governor Janklow of South Dakota, and an FBI agent mentioned in the book; it was not republished until 1991. Leonard Peltier remains in prison; every President from Bush through Obama has refused to pardon him or commute his sentence, despite the documentation of government misconduct, falsified evidence and lack of due process at the trial.
  
  Although Matthiessen was a good writer, this is not a particularly well-written book. Perhaps because of the mass of information he had to deal with, it is poorly organized and much of the information is presented out of order, skipping backwards and forwards in a confusing way; and often it was hard to remember who some of the minor characters were when they reappear later on. The information about the role of the energy companies in the Black Hills, which makes sense out of the whole government policy, is introduced at the beginning of Part III. But for all its faults, this is an important book for anyone who wants to know what lengths the US government will go to to crush dissent when it threatens the interests of the energy companies, as we are seeing today at Standing Rock and elsewhere.
  
  As I was reading this, and also following Standing Rock on the Internet (it's not being adequately covered in the media) I saw two other things: the largest land grab of Indian lands since the nineteenth century is being considered now in Congress; and one of my Facebook friends was just arrested tonight for protesting another pipeline in New York.
• 
  Robin Powell

  I feel bad giving this a 3 star rating, because I still want people to read it.
  
  It's a book about how the US government (mostly the FBI's Cointelpro project but touches on the government during the treaty of 1868 till present) has been committing atrocities against Native Americans. The story centers around the Leonard Peltier incident and the before and after of that event. The book succeeded in making me mad/sad about all of the injustices that the US govt and justice system has committed against indigenous people. Also, how INSANE is it that the FBI and governor literally stalked the author because they were mad that he published this? I think everyone needs to know this story, and it's not taught in schools, which is why I want people to read the book...
  
  However, I felt like I was reading the author's unnecessarily long inner monologue with random facts and quotes interjected here and there. It was so hard to keep track of the characters and follow the story. I tried taking notes but there were too many specific people and events to write down. My favorite parts of the book were quotes from other people and books, not from the author himself.
  
  The first 200ish pages of the book are probably skimmable if you know a good deal about the history of US govt relations with indigenous people. Included in the beginning is an extremely detailed account of everyone involved in the AIM organization and their entire life stories. I didn't feel as if that info was relevant to the actual Peltier story, and don't think it was necessary for me to read about every single skirmish that these people got into when they were barely mentioned in the later parts of the book.
  
  If you don't want to spend hours reading this book, at least research Leonard Peltier and the FBI's nutty behavior towards indigenous people. I think this issue deserves a lot more of our attention.
• 
  Joe

  This is an unusual book by the author of The Shadow Country, one of my all time favorite books. "In the Spirit of Crazy Horse" is an obsessional catalog of historical facts, a vast array of individuals, profound controversies and injustices, large and small. The heart of the book is an excruciatingly detailed discussion of the shoot out between the FBI and other law enforcement agencies and Native Americans living on the Pine Ridge Reservation, and members of AIM ( the American Indian Movement). The confrontation on June 26, 1975 resulted in the death of two FBI agents and one Indian. Much of the book is concerned with the arrest, extradition (from Canada), trials, appeals and incarceration of AIM leader Leonard Peltier, currently serving 2 consecutive life sentences for the murder of the agents.
  
  At times the voluminous details and lengthy verbatim transcriptions of interviews and depositions is mind numbing. At others, it is fascinating and gripping. I'm glad I read this book, but it is not for everyone. (I nearly put it down a few times.) It feels like the book is an act of bearing witness rather than of literary or artistic ambition.
  
  The idea of bearing witness is what helped me stick with it through 600 pages. The book does not settle the question of who shot who, when. But Peltier has never had a fair trial, appeal or parole hearing. The claims of Native Americans remain so threatening in the United States that justice long ago gave way to repression and punishment. The story is complex and tragic, but the only appropriate response is outrage.