Rudy Yellow Shirt, a full-blooded Oglala Sioux and a criminal investigator with the Pine Ridge Public Safety Department, spends most nights locking up drunk and disorderly Indians, frequently including his own ciye, his older brother Mogie. They live on the Pine Ridge Reservation, the home of Crazy Horse's tribe, where the Indian wars ended with the massacre at Wounded Knee, and where so many Oglala people try to maintain their ancient dignity while living on welfare checks and cans of surplus commodity foods distributed by the government. But when Rudy falls and hits his head on a rock, the spirit of Iktomi, the trickster, starts messing with his life. . Soon Rudy finds himself taking on the alter ego of the Avenging Warrior and dispensing swift vigilante justice to unlucky criminals. Then, one night, the Warrior decides to firebomb one of the liquor stores that hug the border of the reservation, and Iktomi plays his most diabolical trick, starting a chain of events that will change Rudy and Mogie's relationship forever.