Leonard Peltier, an Anishinabe-Lakota political prisoner, has spent the last 24 years of his life in prison despite the fact that the government has admitted on numerous occasions that they do not know who is responsible for the crime he was convicted of. Because of the glaring Human and Constitutional violations that have been made in the overall targeting, prosecution, and continued imprisonment of Peltier, millions have come to know of his case and support his freedom. Some of whom are the late Mother Theresa, Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, Amnesty International, the European Parliament, the Italian Parliament, the Belgium Parliament, the Green Party, 50 members of U.S. Congress, Robert Redford, the National Congress of American Indians, and Jesse Jackson among others.
Leonard Peltier is 54 years old and was born in Grand Forks, North Dakota. He came from a large family of 13 brothers and sisters. At the age of 8 years he was taken from his family and sent to a residential boarding school for Native people run by the US Government. This was his first experience with the intrusion of the United States Government into the lives of Native peoples.
As a teenager he returned to live with his father at the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota. It was one of three reservations which the United States Government had chosen as the testing ground for its new termination policy. The resulting protests and demonstrations against this policy which forced First Nations families off their reservations and into the cities, was his first experience with Native resistance to the United States Government's efforts at assimilation.
During one particularly difficult winter on the Turtle Mountain Reservation Leonard Peltier recollects protests by his people to the Bureau of Indian Affairs about the lack of food on the reservation. Following these protests, B.I.A. social workers came to the reservation to investigate the situation. Leonard and one of the organizers on the reservation went from household to household before the arrival of the investigating party to tell the local people to hide what little food they had. When he got to the first house, he found that there was no food to hide and the same story was repeated in each of the households that he went to. This experience awakened him to the desperate situation for people on his reservation. Because he worked with his father as a migrant farm worker, he often traveled from reservation to reservation. He came to learn that policies of relocation, poverty, and racism were affecting all Indigenous peoples in the U.S.
In 1965, Leonard Peltier moved to Seattle, Washington, where he worked for several years as part owner of an auto body shop which he used to employ Native people and to provide low-cost automobile repairs for those who needed it. During the same period, he was also active in the founding of a Native half-way house for ex-prisoners in Seattle. His community work involvement included Native Land Claim issues, alcohol counseling, and participation in protests concerning the preservation of Native owned land within the city of Seattle.
In the late 1960's and early 1970's Leonard Peltier lived in Washington and Wisconsin and was working as a welder, carpenter, and community counselor for Native people. In the course of his work he became involved with the American Indian Movement and eventually joined the Denver Colorado chapter. He worked as a community counselor confronting job issues, alcohol problems and better city housing.
Leonard Peltier's support for the American Indian Movement led to his involvement in the 1972 Trail of broken Treaties which took him to Washington D.C., in the non-violent occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building. He became strongly involved in the spiritual and traditional programs of AIM.
Leonard Peltier's involvement in AIM is what brought him to Pine Ridge in 1975. During that time the reservation was rife with conflict between the conservative tribal chairman and his supporters and the traditional people who wanted to keep their land, language, culture, and spirituality. The tribal chairman and his hired vigilantes know as "GOONS" carried out a campaign of violence against those in opposition to his policies. In a period of three years over 60 traditional people were murdered on Pine Ridge and over 300 were severely beaten, several of whom were involved with AIM. During this period the reservation had the highest ratio of FBI agents to citizens than any other area in the US. Despite this, no murders or beatings were ever investigated. Furthermore, one GOON leader has since gone on record to say that in fact, the FBI intentionally turned their heads to such behavior and moreover, helped to arm those carrying out these crimes.
It was for this reason Leonard Peltier along with other AIM members were asked to come to Pine Ridge to help the people who were being targeted. It was in this climate of fear that a shoot out broke out on June 26, 1975 between two FBI agents in unmarked cars and local residents and members of AIM. The two agents and one Native man were killed. Three people went to trial for the deaths of the agents, one of whom was Leonard Peltier. No investigation of the Native man's death took place. Two of those who went to trial were found innocent on grounds of self defense. Leonard Peltier, who had fled to Canada, was tried later, in a different district by a different judge, after being illegally extradited from Canada. He was found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to two consecutive lifes in one of the most controversial trials of the century. When faced with previously withheld evidence on appeal pointing to Leonard Peltier's innocence, the prosecution admitted, and later established that they in fact could not prove who actually shot the agents or what involvement Leonard Peltier may have had in their deaths. Despite this Mr. Peltier remains in prison. For this reason, there is an international outcry for his freedom and Leonard Peltier has become a notorious symbol of injustice against Native Peoples. Millions are asking President Clinton to grant him Executive Clemency.
From prison, Leonard Peltier has continued to advocate for the human rights of Indigenous peoples and in doing so has won numerous human rights awards. He was recently declared an official Human Rights Defender at the Human Rights Defenders Summit in Paris which commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He has also established himself as a talented artist, using oils to paint portraits of his people which portray their cultures and histories. Leonard has been an integral part of the movement to establish access to the practice of Native religions in prison. He says that it is the sweat lodge, the love and support of so many people, and his relationship with his grandchildren that allows him to keep hope from what has been a long, dangerous and trying twenty-three years.
