Peter Matthiessen left this life on April 5, 2014. His obituary appeared in the Arts section of the New York Times, a fitting tribute to the only writer to win the National Book Award in both fiction and nonfiction.

Indian Country remembers Matthiessen for his book, “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse,” an indictment of the U.S. government’s prosecution and conviction of Leonard Peltier in the killing of two FBI agents at Pine Ridge in 1975. The book became a lightning rod for non-Indian attacks. Two lawsuits delayed distribution of the book at a crucial time in Leonard’s legal appeals, when an FBI agent and a former South Dakota governor each sued Matthiessen and his publisher for libel. Courts eventually dismissed the suits, but the costs to defend the book amounted to two million dollars.

Matthiessen wrote with breadth and depth about subjects around the globe. The New York Times obituary listed a sample: “‘Under the Mountain Wall: A Chronicle of Two Seasons of Stone Age New Guinea’ (1962); ‘Oomingmak: The Expedition to the Musk Ox Island in the Bering Sea’ (1967); ‘The Shorebirds of North America’ (1967, revised as ‘The Wind Birds’ in 1973); ‘Blue Meridian: The Search for the Great White Shark’ (1971); ‘The Tree Where Man Was Born’ (1972), a contemplative account of East Africa; and ‘Sand Rivers’ (1981), about a safari in the Selous Game Preserve in Tanzania.”

“In the Spirit of Crazy Horse”—like other exposés of the government’s efforts to imprison leaders of the American Indian Movement (AIM)—riled not only the FBI and a governor, but also some reviewers. Two negative reviews of particular significance were in Newsweek magazine (March 28, 1983) and The New York Times Book Review (March 6, 1983).

The Newsweek reviewer, Peter Prescott, found the book “bloated” with interviews and documents, but nevertheless said, “Matthiessen argues convincingly that…Peltier…was railroaded into an illegal conviction…. The accounts he gives of federal lawlessness…become in time stupefying.”

In an astonishing turnabout, however, Prescott concluded that Peltier did not deserve further attention because his case is “not particularly interesting. Its manifold injustices are in no way unique or even uncommon.”

In other words, the Newsweek reviewer dismissed the significance of Leonard’s case on the ground that the same injustices are happening to other people all the time! This perspective contradicts human rights and the bill of rights, but it passed the editors of a national magazine.

The New York Times reviewer was Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz. Despite his reputation as a constitutional and criminal law scholar, Dershowitz did not regard the evidence of an FBI frame-up as very significant. He wrote, “Matthiessen…fails to convince.” Dershowitz’s review was replete with white guilt clichés, like the comment that it will be “impossible for any sensitive reader ever again to enjoy Mount Rushmore.”

Dershowitz waxed romantic about the historical Crazy Horse—”a noble 19th-century leader of Indian resistance”—but as for Leonard Peltier and AIM, they were “violent…self-destructive…self-appointed…radical(s)” who “exploited their…heritage for their own personal ends.”

Dershowitz concluded, like Prescott, with the suggestion that Peltier “ended where (he belongs)—in jail.” Dershowitz’s book review prompted a protest in his office by Harvard students and members of the Massachusetts Indian community, who accused him of “insult” and “slander” of Indians.

Without Matthiessen’s understanding of Indian people and culture, the book never could have been written. No amount of “objective interest” would have been enough to gain admittance to the homes, hearts, minds, and memories of the numerous Indian people whom Matthiessen interviewed. Too many Indians have been affronted by too many well-intentioned whites—from authors to missionaries to lawyers—for any Indian person to easily share information with a writer or reporter, especially on a topic of potentially lethal significance.

Matthiessen’s ability to enter people’s lives gave him access not only to Indians present at the shoot-out and involved in previous and subsequent events, but also to crucial informants on the other side—most notably David Price, the FBI Special Agent whose aggressive surveillance of AIM leaders made him a key figure in the prosecution of Leonard Peltier.

Matthiessen didn’t idealize anything to conclude that Leonard Peltier’s conviction and imprisonment amount to an injustice. Matthiessen’s interviews—revealing fabricated testimony, intimidated witnesses, suppressed evidence, and other prosecutorial wrongs—were confirmed in 12,000 pages of documents obtained from the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by Peltier’s attorneys. These documents eventually led Matthiessen to conclude that “Leonard Peltier deserved a new trial, not only because of dishonest proceedings…but because of accumulating evidence that the authorities had wanted him out of the way whether he was guilty or not.”

“In the Spirit of Crazy Horse” includes chapters about the American Indian Movement (AIM) in the late 1960s and early 1970s, providing a valuable addition to that period of American history. Despite the enormous publicity focused on AIM during its periods of high conflict, no comprehensive account of the movement and its organization occurred until Matthiessen’s book. His interviews with most of the key figures and many observers offer a definitive history of AIM.

Matthiessen also includes a very useful chapter on the Wounded Knee trials, showing the misconduct and political aspects of those prosecutions. Still other chapters discuss the impact on AIM of COINTELPRO, the FBI secret counter-intelligence project directed against domestic protest groups—including a discussion of the activities of then South Dakota Assistant Attorney General William Janklow cooperating with the FBI’s program to “neutralize” AIM.

The bulk of “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse” consists of a very detailed presentation of the 1975 Pine Ridge shoot-out and its aftermath in criminal prosecutions. Separate chapters present the shoot-out itself from the viewpoints of the Indians and the FBI. Matthiessen provided extensive documentation and interview material, and carefully reviewed every aspect of each event in an attempt to come as close as possible to what may be said to be the truth. In the course of several chapters, a full, moving history emerges.

Ultimately, the central thread of “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse” becomes an exploration of the long conflict between whites and Indians, showing it as attempted cultural genocide. Matthiessen helped us understand that the Indian wars have not ended. Today, rangeland is less important than the minerals beneath it, and the forces of giant energy corporations have supplemented the cowboys.

The overall coordination of the Indian wars is still in the hands people whose vision of the world is dominated by the quest for ever-greater accumulation of material wealth. In this context, “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse” demonstrates that a shoot-out between Indians and FBI agents at Pine Ridge reservation in 1975 was a battle and not simply a crime.