Smith is the author, with Robert Allen Warrior (Osage), of "Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee" (1996). This account of American Indian activism "has already become a classic and essential interpretive work". The book focuses on three pivotal events in Native American activism, the 1969 Occupation of Alcatraz, the 1972 Trail of Broken Treaties to Washington, DC, and subsequent takeover of the Department of Interior headquarters, when the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) offices were occupied; and the 1973 Wounded Knee Occupation at Pine Ridge Reservation.