Journalist to present Yellow Thunder book; writing U.S. 83 work

Journalist and Nebraska native Stew Magnuson will read and discuss his new book, The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder: And Other True Stories from the Nebraska-Pine Ridge Border Towns, at the McCook City Library on Thursday, Sept. 17 at 7 p.m. Magnuson will also talk about a new book-length project, in which McCook will be featured.

Magnuson said he's working on "The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down Highway 83," in his vacation time.

The Center of Great Plains Studies nominated his book on Yellow Thunder as the 2008 Great Plains Distinguished Book of the Year and it won ForeWord magazine's bronze medal in the regional nonfiction category.

The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder takes an in-depth look at the one of the seminal moments in the history of American Indian activism.

On Feb. 12, 1972, four white men abducted and beat Native American ranch worker Yellow Thunder, stripped him from the waist down, and tossed him into the Gordon, Neb., American Legion Hall during a dance. Eight days later, he was found dead in the back of a pickup truck in a used car lot. His death brought the American Indian Movement, and its charismatic leaders, Russell Means and Dennis Banks, to the area for the first time. The book provides the first, full account of Yellow Thunder's death, the AIM march and occupation of Gordon's city auditorium, and the sensational trial of the perpetrators in Alliance, Neb. Magnuson is the only journalist to have interviewed Les Hare, the ringleader of the crime.

The Nebraska Center for the Book Newsletter in a review by University of Nebraska-Lincoln Professor Emeritus Paul Olson, called the work "an invaluable account of the wars against our Native American citizens."

Scott Zesch, author of the novel Alamo Heights and the narrative history The Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier, in a recent review on PeaceCorpsWriters.org said, "Part journalism and part history, this fine work of narrative nonfiction reads like a collection of related short stories, skillfully weaving together threads from the distant past, the recent past, and the present."

Magnuson will sign copies afterwards.

The library is located at 802 Norris Ave, McCook, Neb. 69001. For more information, call (308)-345-1906.

Omaha native

A native of Omaha, Stew Magnuson is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist and the author of The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder, a nonfiction book published by Texas Tech University Press.

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'état 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 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.

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.