Peter Matthiessen

In 1983, Peter Matthiessen’s controversial book, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, was returned to store shelves. After eight years of legal battles, the acclaimed author and his publisher, Viking Press, won a $49-million lawsuit brought against them in 1975 and ended what had become the longest-running literary lawsuit in history.

But it’s still not over says Matthiessen, who visited UO on April 23 as the School of Journalism and Communication’s 15th Richard W. Johnston lecturer. In a lecture entitled, “The Writer, the Truth

and the Law,” Matthiessen discussed his ongoing concern with the free speech limits he faced after chronicling the case of Leonard Peltier in his book.

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse is one of 17 books of nonfiction by Matthiessen, who has also penned nine volumes of fiction, including the recently released Bone by Bone. Matthiessen is the only American writer to be nominated for the National Book Award in both the nonfiction and fiction categories, and The Snow Leopard—perhaps his most famous book— won the award in 1979. A founder of The Paris Review, Matthiessen has enjoyed an internationally celebrated writing career for the past 45 years.

With support from the Law School, the environmental studies program and the William Randolph Hearst Visiting Professor Fund, Matthiessen spent three days on campus conducting a writing workshop for graduate students in creative nonfiction, creative writing, environmental studies and landscape architecture, and delivering the Johnston lecture to the public. The event honors Richard W. Johnston, a gifted magazine editor, writer and war correspondent. After graduating with a degree in journalism in 1936, Johnston was a founding editor of Sports Illustrated and went on to become its executive editor.

“Even though we won, it cost Viking Press’ insurance company $3-million in fees. What kind of victory is that? Leonard Peltier is in prison. We didn’t win. We just made them angry for a while.” —Peter Matthiessen

The subject of Matthiessen’s lecture was the controversy surrounding In the Spirit of Crazy Horse. In the book, Matthiessen examines the Lakota Indians’ long struggle with the U.S. Government, from Red Cloud’s War and Little Big Horn to the Indian wars of the 1970s. In his lecture, Matthiessen recounted the stories of both the libel suits filed against him by Gov. William Janklow of South Dakota and the FBI, as well as his account—and opinions—about American Indian Movement (AIM) leader Leonard Peltier, who was convicted for murder during a 1975 shoot-out with the FBI at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Matthiessen said he and the Viking Press lawyers felt there was no legal basis for a suit whatsoever. They saw it as simply harassment. “As if they were saying, ‘Don’t do this and don’t do it again or it’s going to hurt you,’” Matthiessen explained. “Even though we won, it cost [Viking Press’] insurance company $3-million in fees. What kind of victory is that? Leonard Peltier is in prison. We didn’t win. We just made them angry for a while.”

Matthiessen, who has been hailed for his social activism, realized when he was writing In the Spirit of Crazy Horse that he had been writing about Indian people since his earliest writing.

“My first novel has a young Indian guy in it who is victimized by stupidity. And my very first nonfiction has many references to Indian people showing what our destruction of the wild game and the wildlife in this country and the pollution of the water was doing to their cultures.

“We’re still up to this,” Matthiessen reminded the audience. “We’re awfully good at preaching to other countries about their human rights records. Take a good look at our human rights records. It’s smelly; it’s very bad, not only bad but hypocritical. ”

Matthiessen said that Leonard Peltier’s story evoked such passion in him because he was frightened to realize that the suppression of information about oppression—in this case, the suppression of the book—was possible.

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, he said, “is not about whether Leonard Peltier did or did not kill those two young guys. The book is about him being railroaded....

If you permit a government set up where minorities can be prosecuted and discriminated against like that, you’re not all that far from the holocaust or something.”

Matthiessen went on to point out that Leonard Peltier’s treatment should be everyone’s concern. “We’re all capable of this; we’re human beings. We can all do it; human beings are capable of this sort of thing. That’s who we are. And that’s OK as long as we understand that, we can then deal with it.”