Freedom Archives Search Engine

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How does this work?: There are many ways to search the collections of the Freedom Archives. Below is a brief guide that will help you conduct effective searches. Note, anytime you search for anything in the Freedom Archives, the first results that appear will be our digitized items. Information for items that have yet to be scanned or yet to be digitized can still be viewed, but only by clicking on the show link that will display the hidden (non-digitized) items. If you are interested in accessing these non-digitized materials, please email info@freedomarchives.org.
Exploring the Collections without the Search Bar: Under the heading Browse By Collection, you’ll notice most of the Freedom Archives’ major collections. These collections have an image as well as a short description of what you’ll find in that collection. Click on that image to instantly explore that specific collection.
Basic Searching: You can always type what you’re looking for into the search bar. Certain searches may generate hundreds of results, so sometimes it will help to use quotation marks to help narrow down your results. For instance, searching for the phrase Black Liberation will generate all of our holdings that contain the words Black and Liberation, while searching for “Black Liberation” (in quotation marks) will only generate our records that have those two words next to each other.
Advanced Searching: The Freedom Archives search site also understands Boolean search logic, specifcally AND/+, NOT/-, and OR operators. Click on this link for a brief tutorial on how to use Boolean search logic. Our search function also understands “fuzzy searches.” Fuzzy searches utilize the (*) and will find matches even when users misspell words or enter in only partial words for the search. For example, searching for liber* will produce results for liberation/liberate/liberates/etc.
Keyword Searches: You’ll notice that under the heading KEYWORDS, there are a number of words, phrases or names that describe content. Sometimes these are also called “tags.” Clicking on these words is essentially the same as conducting a basic search.

Native American Movement Prisoners

This collection contains materials on Native American Political Prisoners such as Leonard Peltier, Patrick "Hooty" Croy, Norma Jean Croy, and others.

Subcollections

Norma Jean Croy
Norma Jean Croy served 18 years for a 1979 incident in which she was shot by an off duty FBI agent. Although she did not hold a gun during the incident, which a judge ruled an accident, she was forced to remain in prison until 1997.
Patrick Hooty Croy
Patrick Hooty Croy is a Karok-Shasta Indian from Yreka, CA who shot and killed a police officer in self-defense in July 1978. Croy was sentenced to death but after a second trial was ultimately acquitted on murder charges and released.
Eddie Hatcher
Eddie Hatcher was a Native American activist who fought government corruption in Robeson County North Carolina. Hatcher was imprisoned a number of times and died in prison in 2009.
Bear Lincoln
Bear Lincoln became an icon for Indian rights and social justice activists after he was acquitted of murdering a deputy sheriff on the Round Valley Indian Reservation in 1995.
Leonard Peltier
Leonard Peltier is a Native American activist who was convicted of aiding in the killing of two FBI agents during a shootout on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975. Sentenced to prison in 1977, Peltier is still incarcerated today.
Little Rock Reed
Little Rock Reed was a Native American activist and author. While incarcerated he violated parole, citing that he was a political prisoner which was upheld by the 1995 ruling of Judge Peggy Nelson in New Mexico.