Speaking of the need for investigations into the abuses by the FBI and the DOJ, Peltier should have been paroled in 1993 when he first became eligible because by then it had been revealed that the FBI had withheld exculpatory evidence from the court during Peltier's trial. This included the FBI stopping a vehicle which bore no resemblance whatsoever to the one that they had been looking for. It was also never determined who actually fired the first shots and that the FBI agents were driving unmarked cars on private property where the members of AIM, which Peltier was a member, had been given sanctuary. The judge refused to allow Peltier's lawyers to make a self-defense argument despite there having been another so-called 'Native American' group in the area, known as the 'Goon Squad', which had been at war with AIM but who had been getting clandestine support from federal authorities, in the form of money and firearms as well as looking the other way when they committed criminal acts, which included ambushing AIM members, that often resulted in deaths or serious injuries.

The 1992 movie, 'Thunderheart', was loosely-based on the incidents that took place in 1975 at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, which lead to Peltier being charged with murder and subsequently convicted: