The long-intertwined communities of the Oglala Lakota Pine Ridge Reservation and the bordering towns in Sheridan County, Nebraska, mark their histories in sensational incidents and quiet human connections, many recorded in detail here for the first time. After covering racial unrest in the remote northwest corner of his home state of Nebraska in 1999, journalist Stew Magnuson returned four years later to consider the larger questions of its peoples, their paths, and the forces that separate them. Examining Raymond Yellow Thunder’s death at the hands of four white men in 1972, Magnuson looks deep into the past that gave rise to the tragedy. Situating long-ranging repercussions within 130 years of context, he also recounts the largely forgotten struggles of American Indian Movement activist Bob Yellow Bird and tells the story of Whiteclay, Nebraska, the controversial border hamlet that continues to sell millions of cans of beer per year to the “dry” reservation. Within this microcosm of cultural conflict, Magnuson explores the odds against community's power to transcend misunderstanding, alcoholism, prejudice, and violence. “Like all good stories, The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder spins against the way it drives. Even as the people of Sheridan County despise, scorn, exploit, assault, and kill one another, their lives, like objects slipping out of control, become more and more inseparable. Indians and whites coexist and, against all odds, somehow get along, sharing space they really don’t want to share. This countercurrent is the source of the many unexpected stories Magnuson brings forth.” —Pekka Hämäläinen, from the foreword
A native of Omaha, Nebraska, Stew Magnuson is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist and the author of The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder, an award-winning nonfiction book published by Texas Tech University Press.
The Nebraska Center of the Book named the work the 2009 Nebraska Book of the Year in the nonfiction category. Graphic artist Lindsay Starr was also honored for her work on the cover design.
In addition, the book won ForeWord magazine's bronze medal in the regional nonfiction category. The Center of Great Plains Studies also nominated the work as the 2008 Great Plains Distinguished Book of the Year. It was also nominated as the Writers' League of Texas nonfiction book of the year.
In 2006, Amazon.com Shorts posted an abridged excerpt of the book, "The Battle of Whiteclay," which was named by the editors as one of the top five nonfiction pieces published during the website's inaugural year.
Magnuson is a former foreign correspondent who has filed stories from Japan, Cambodia, Burma, Laos, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, Mali and Indonesia. He has worked as a reporter for The Cambodia Daily, the Asahi Shimbun, Kyodo News Service, Space News, Education Daily, and is now managing editor of National Defense Magazine. He has contributed articles to the Christian Science Monitor, Reuters, Defense News, and numerous other publications.
He was part of the team that successfully published a daily newspaper during a coup d'etat in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in July 1997.
He was a resident of Tokyo on March 20, 1995 when the apocalyptic cult, Aum Shinrikyo, released nerve gas in the subway system. He has published one novel, The Song of Sarin, based on his experiences and research into the incident (Xlibris, 2003).
Magnuson has traveled to all 50 U.S. states and visited or lived in 47 countries, including the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, where he served in the Peace Corps, and Peshawar, Pakistan, where he worked with the Afghan resistance in the late 1980s. He has also attended games at 107 professional baseball parks.
Magnuson began work on The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder in 2003 after wrapping up a year of freelance writing in Southern California -- although his interest in the Nebraska-Pine Ridge border towns dated back to 1999 when he covered unrest in the town of Whiteclay for the Christian Science Monitor.
During the intervening years, he kept track of the ongoing problems in Whiteclay, a hamlet that sells million of cans of beer per year to residents of the reservation, where alcohol is banned. He always thought that there might be a larger story to investigate, but his career had taken him out of the area -- first to Washington, D.C, then to Los Angeles.
"Freelancing is not free," he explains. "I made a living in L.A., but I had little savings to show for it."
He found himself in Papillion, Nebraska, in 2003 between jobs and between coasts, as he looked for a permanent reporting job. To occupy his time, he attended hearings on Whiteclay at the Nebraska Unicameral, and demonstrations protesting the state's border-town law enforcement policies. An offer to cat-sit for friends in Lincoln was a turning point. While there, he followed up on a lead from a UNL law professor, who had offered him Nebraska State Patrol documents and video tapes of the 1999 Whiteclay troubles. At the same time, he spent his days researching the topic at the Nebraska State Historical Society.
It was while pouring over microfilm when he first heard about the controversial 1972 death of Raymond Yellow Thunder in Gordon, Nebraska. Believing that there was an important, untold story about the 130-year shared history of the white settlers of Sheridan County, Nebraska, and the Oglala Lakotas of Pine Ridge, South Dakota, he decided to end his job search and throw himself into the project.
"It was kind of a 'if not now, when?' situation," he says. "But I didn't have any money."
To raise funds for the research, he secured a job in a salmon-canning factory in Ketchikan, Alaska. At one point, he worked seven weeks without a day off -- often at 16-hour stretches. The experience earned him enough money to live for four months in Gordon, where he carried out the bulk of the research. Since then, he has returned to the area a half-dozen times. In total, he conducted more than 70 interviews for the project.
Magnuson graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1987 with a degree in English. He attended the university's School of Journalism and worked for several years at the student newspaper, The Daily Nebraskan.
In September 2007, Texas Tech University Press accepted The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder as part of its Plains Histories series, which is edited by UNL professor of history and journalism, John. R. Wunder.
