BELCOURT, N.D. (AP) — Greater than 50 years after a shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation landed him in federal jail, Leonard Peltier stays defiant.
Regardless of being convicted and sentenced to life in jail, he maintains his innocence within the killings of two FBI brokers in 1975 and sees his newfound freedom — the results of a commutation from former President Joe Biden — as the start of a brand new part of his activism.
“I’m going to spend the rest of my life fighting for our people, because we ain’t finished yet. We’re still in danger,” Peltier, now 80, mentioned in an unique interview with The Related Press at his new house on the Turtle Mountain Reservation, his tribal homeland in North Dakota, close to the Canadian border.
There among the many rolling, typically snow-covered hills, he’ll serve out the remainder of his sentence on home arrest.
Born into an period of violent hostility between the American authorities and Indigenous peoples, the previous American Indian Motion member has now stepped into one other politically risky second within the nation. He mentioned he understands properly the threats the rise of the far proper, in addition to the federal authorities, pose to tribal nations and Indigenous peoples. He believes that, like earlier administrations, President Donald Trump will come for minerals and oil on tribal lands.
“You don’t have to get violent, you don’t have to do nothing like that. Just get out there and stand up,” he instructed AP this week, in his first sit-down dialog with a journalist in over 30 years. “We got to resist.”
The FBI and Native American activists: A risky combine
Peltier was a part of a motion within the late Nineteen Sixties and Nineteen Seventies that fought for Native American rights and tribal self-determination, typically occupying federal and tribal property.
The motion grabbed headlines in 1973 when it took over the village of Wounded Knee on Pine Ridge, resulting in a 71-day standoff with federal brokers. In addition they protested at Alcatraz and the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters. For a lot of members of the American Indian Motion, or AIM, their activism was a part of legacy of resistance stretching again to the nation’s founding.
The day of the shootout got here amid heightened tensions on the Pine Ridge reservation, the place residents felt the FBI’s heavy presence was a menace to the individuals’s autonomy. Peltier and different AIM members acquired right into a confrontation with brokers Jack Coler and Ron Williams when the brokers drove onto a rural property the place the AIM members had been staying. Each brokers had been shot and killed, together with Joseph Stuntz, one other AIM member.
The FBI says Peltier shot the brokers at shut vary. In a letter despatched to Biden final 12 months opposing his launch, former FBI director Christopher Wray referred to as Peltier a “remorseless killer.”
His guilt is obvious to many, together with North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong.
“More than 20 federal judges upheld his conviction, and he was denied parole as recently as last July,” Armstrong mentioned in a press release to the AP. “There was no legal justification for his release. He should still be in prison.”
Peltier was not pardoned; Biden mentioned he was commuting Peltier’s sentence due to his age, his declining well being, and the lengthy interval he had already been in jail.
Peltier has acknowledged he was on the shootout, however he says he acted in self-defense and wasn’t the one whose bullets killed the brokers. He believes the FBI and prosecutors had been on the lookout for somebody to take the blame, after his two co-defendants had been exonerated for self-defense.
“They wanted revenge, and they didn’t know who was responsible,” Peltier instructed the AP from the kitchen desk of his new house. “And they said ‘Put the full weight of the American government on Leonard Peltier, we need a conviction.’ And when they say that you don’t have no rights,” he mentioned.
Amnesty Worldwide and scores of political leaders around the globe referred to as Peltier a political prisoner of the U.S., questioning the equity of his trial and conviction. James Reynolds, a former U.S. Lawyer for Northern Iowa, whose workplace oversaw post-conviction proceedings, urged clemency in a letter to Biden in 2021. He wrote that prosecutors couldn’t show Peltier fired the deadly pictures and referred to as his imprisonment “unjust”.
Peltier’s grandson, Cyrus Peltier, remembers visiting him each weekend at Leavenworth, a federal jail in Kansas. He didn’t at all times perceive why his grandfather wouldn’t simply inform the parole board he was sorry for the crimes, and hopefully win his freedom.
“And he would say ‘Well, that’s just not what I’m fighting for, grandson,’ ” Cyrus Peltier, now 39, recalled from his house in North Dakota this week. ”‘I’m sorry for what occurred to these brokers, however I’m not going to take a seat right here and admit to one thing I didn’t do. And if I’ve to die in right here for that, I’m going to.’”
A life behind bars, however at all times hope for freedom
In jail, Peltier’s fame solely grew, as he amassed the help of distinguished political leaders across the globe and celebrities within the U.S. and have become an emblem of the injustices in opposition to Native People.
He mentioned it was all their letters of help and acts of protest for his launch that saved him going.
Peltier mentioned there have been moments in the previous few years the place he started to lose hope that he would ever see freedom. His denial of parole in July was one other crushing blow.
“They gave me the strength to stay alive and to know what I was in prison for,” he mentioned.
Many Indigenous individuals, leaders, and organizers lobbied for many years for Peltier’s launch.
Nonetheless, some who consider Peltier was concerned within the homicide of AIM member Anna Mae Pictou Aquash in 1975 fought in opposition to his launch. Two different AIM members had been convicted of the crime.
“Their ability to say that he is free and he gets to go home negates the whole fact that Anna Mae never got to go home,” mentioned Aquash’s daughter, Denise Pictou Maloney.
In his interview with the AP, Peltier denied having any data of Aquash’s dying.
‘I didn’t give my life for nothing’
In the long run, Biden listened to the counsel of former Secretary of the Inside Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna and the primary Native American to guide the Inside Division. Peltier was launched on Feb. 18, and returned to North Dakota.
Every week later, he nonetheless typically wakes up at evening terrified that it’s all a dream and that he’s nonetheless in a cell.
Peltier stays confined to his house and close by group. However he now has entry to routine medical therapy for his many well being points, together with an aortic aneurysm. He will get round with the assistance of a cane or a walker.
He’s heartened by the many individuals who come to go to him and drop off items like beaded medallions, letters and paintings, that are piling up in his house.
Peltier needs to make a residing promoting his work, as he did in jail, and he plans to jot down extra books. He additionally needs to coach younger activists in regards to the threats they may face.
When he was in jail, mendacity in his bunk at evening, he would typically marvel if his protest efforts resulted in any change. Seeing younger Native activists as we speak persevering with to combat for a similar issues offers which means to the 49 years he was incarcerated.
“It makes me feel so good, man, it does,” he mentioned, holding again tears. “I’m thinking, well, I didn’t give my life for nothing.”