Carrie and Mary Dann are feisty elderly Western Shoshone sisters who live and ranch in north central Nevada. They have always grazed their livestock on the range outside their ranch. That range is part of sixty million recognized by the U.S. as Western Shoshone land in the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley. In 1974, the U.S. sued the Dann sisters for trespassing on United States Public Land without a permit. Their dispute swept to the United States Supreme Court and eventually to the United Nations. Contrasting the Dann's personal lives and political actions, American Outrage examines why the United States would spend millions prosecuting and persecuting two elderly women grazing a few hundred horses and cows in a desolate desert?