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Customer Reviews of In the Spirit of Crazy Horse

FREE LEONARD PELTIER - or at least give him a new trial
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>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. <
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>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. <
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>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. <
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>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. <
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>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. <
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>Both were eventually shot in a return of fire. They were later killed at close range. <
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>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. <
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>Aided by a viciously biased judge giving one-sided bench rulings, the government did exactly that. <
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>Read how things reached this point, what AIM's grievances were, how the FBI infiltrated them, and more. <
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>But, above all, read the story of Leonard Peltier both before and after his conviction. <
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>Is Leonard Peltier a political prisoner? Read this book and decide for yourself.

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Shock & Awe In America
This book picks up where "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee" left off, and unfortunately for Indian people the story does't get any happier. This book should be required reading for every high school student, journalist, politician or law enforcement professional. It shows us that despite the fine and uplifting words of the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Declaration of Independence that support our democracy, human dignity and civil rights always need to be fought for and protected by people. Unfortunately for all of us, sometimes innocent people lose the battle, and this is a story about some of them. Please read this book, you will not be sorry you did.

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strange combination of journalistic objectivity and bias
The net effect of Matthiessen's effort to be journalistically unbiased is that the book is a reflection of South Dakota politics. South Dakota is several times referred to as the most racist state in the union, a racism that dates at least as far back as Wounded Knee (1890). The author makes no attempt to assuage these antagonisms but just reports them.
The author is much clearer than Dee Brown in the early chapters on the early antagonisms between Indian and white. For the rest, only a few episodes strike me as being
especially interesting, just as only a few characters stand out as especially interesting, among them, Peltier of course, but also Anna Maria Asquash, Myrtle Poor Bear (both of these rather pathetic figures), Bob Robideau, Robert Hugh Wilson and on the "other side"--because that's what it is,the other side--SA David Price, Richard Wilson, and William Janklow. For the most part when Matthieson "sits down" really spends some time with an individual, interviews him or quotes him at length, then that individual comes across clearly. In between these clear passages are long passages of conflicting evidence which is a reflection of the murky nature of the case. Mathiesson also outlines the main complaints of the Indian against the white man but these passages which run the length of the book are only occasionally brought out in the crystal clear. But since the author returns to them again and again, in the context of AIM demands, by the end most readers would be convinced.
Still the overall impressionistic effect of reading the book is that you will be much better informed than if you had not read it. The book also has a very cosmopolitan atmosphere which will transport the reader throughout the American West, including Los Angeles, Seattle, New Mexico, Canada, and of course the Pine Ridge Reservation. I thought the story of the Marion Penitentiary and the jailbreak from Lompoc was one of the most interesting episodes in the book. Many times the book gets bogged down in legalese jargon or in endless lists of AIM members who were present at Pine Ridge on June 26, 1975, however.
One of the book's main themes,emphasized over and over again, is AIM's paranoia about the intentions of the FBI and white men in general; for the most part Matthiesson's view is that AIM's paranoia is justified, and that Peltier was just a scapegoat who was set up by the FBI to take the blame for the crime.