Peter Matthiessen, the author of In the Spirit of Crazy Horse and a staunch defender of imprisoned American Indian Movement activist Leonard Peltier, died on Saturday. He was 86.

In the critically-acclaimed took, Matthiessen detailed the Wounded Knee occupation in 1973, the events leading to the deaths of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975 and the legal and political aftermath. Peltier was convicted of murder in 1977 and is serving two life sentences in federal prison.

The late former South Dakota governor Bill Janklow, a controversial figure in Indian Country, sued Matthiessen's publisher over comments in the book about the rape of a Native woman named Jancita Eagle Deer. The case was dismissed.

An FBI agent who was at Wounded Knee also sued the publisher. That case too was dismissed.

Get the Story:
Writer-environmentalist Peter Matthiessen dies (The Washington Post 4/5)
Peter Matthiessen, Lyrical Writer and Naturalist, Is Dead at 86 (The New York Times 4/6)

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