Leonard Peltier
United States Prisoner #89637-132
“Where are our warriors? Why don’t they stand up and fight for their starving people?”
Anishnabe woman, 1958 (Peltier, 1999)
Beginning on October 12, 1492 and continuing to the present day, it has been the stated and unstated policy of the newly arrived Europeans and subsequently, the United States government to subjugate, enslave, terminate, and exterminate the native population that have lived on the North American continent for thousands of years. Prior to the invader’s arrival, the land now known as the United States was occupied by more than 500 separate nations of indigenous people. They spoke their own languages, observed their own customs, and performed their own ceremonies. Their cultures were rich with song, dance, and stories that connected them to the natural world. When European explorers first set foot in the New World, the native people greeted them with curiosity and wonder, but with kindness and hospitality also. Unfortunately, that kindness and hospitality was, and still is, repaid with imprisonment, exile, death, and unparalleled land theft. For those Indians who have stood up and fought to have their people treated as humans, not animals, the punishments have been even harsher.
The names of the brave are all familiar – Goyathlay (Geronimo), Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt (Chief Joseph), Tatanka Iyotanka (Sitting Bull), and Makhpiya-Luta (Red Cloud) – and their unfortunate fates are well documented, but they represent a time long gone; a bygone era relegated to history books and faded memories. The Indian’s struggles are over and largely forgotten; the white man prefers it that way. The less they are reminded of the brutality they brought on the “savages” who were in the way, the better. But we Indians are not extinct. We are all around and we have among us warriors and protectors who are not afraid to stand up to injustice, and sacrifice themselves for the sake of the people. That has not always been the case. This commentary is about just such a person – a modern warrior, someone who has fought and struggled for his people, someone whose name still resonates like the sound of thunder rolling across the plains.
Leonard Peltier (Anishnabe/Dakota) has spent the last 37 years in federal prison for a crime he did not commit. Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance, is his story and the story of the injustice he is forced to live with every day of his life. Leonard Peltier is serving two life sentences for the murder of two FBI agents on June 26, 1975. The murders took place during a firefight in an area called the Jumping Bull compound on the Pine Ridge Oglala Indian Reservation in South Dakota. The two agents, Jack Coler and Ron Williams, were on the Jumping Bull property presumably looking for a young Lakota man named Jimmy Eagle. It was reported that Mr. Eagle had gotten into a fight and stolen a pair of used cowboy boots. Agents Coler and Williams had been following a red pickup truck when they turned onto the Jumping Bull property. Because of who they were and where they were, the agents found themselves in a cross fire with members of the American Indian Movement (AIM). During the battle, both agents lost their lives and other FBI agents responding to the violence murdered Joe Killsright Stuntz, an AIM member. Of all the Indians tried for the firefight and murder of Agents Coler and Williams at the Jumping Bull ranch that day, only Leonard Peltier was convicted of the murders. Justice was done, right? Think again.
“I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream…the nation's hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.”
Black Elk
In order to fully understand the events of that June day – and all the days since, we have to step back and examine the conditions and history that brought AIM and the FBI together for that disastrous showdown. Leonard Peltier says we must go back to December 29, 1890. That is the day when the United States Seventh Cavalry opened fire on 350 unarmed Miniconjou Lakota at Wounded Knee Creek. Within minutes of the first shots, 150 men, women, and children lay dead. About 50 Indians were wounded and another 100 managed to escape the slaughter by running into the frozen countryside only to die of exposure and their wounds.
The Massacre at Wounded Knee effectively put an end to the last writhing spasm of Indian resistance in the West. The results of that day have colored every aspect of White/Indian relations to such a degree that we are still dealing with the repercussions today. Indians of all tribes look back and say, “That is how you treated us then and how little you think of us now. That is why we are still not yet second class citizens, but third and fourth class.” It is because of that horrible day and all the horrible days that followed that in 1968, Dennis Banks and Leonard Crow Dog, Clyde and Vernon Bellecourt, John Trudell, Russell Means, Eddie Benton-Benai, and George Mitchell all came together in Minneapolis and decided that they could no longer sit idly by and watch their people suffer under the corrupt dictates of the United States government in general, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) specifically. Peltier writes, “We were tired of the government setting the political agenda. We decided to set the agenda on our own.” (1999) Thus, the American Indian Movement was born.
In 1969, most Americans knew very little about Indians and cared even less. That was about to change. On November 20, 1969, members of AIM climbed aboard boats in the San Francisco Bay and made their way to Alcatraz Island – home of the abandoned federal prison there. In an effort to draw attention to the plight of American Indians, as well as propose a cultural park and social and education center to be built on the island, as many as 5,600 Indians occupied Alcatraz over the course of 18 months. The members of AIM had discovered an old federal law that gives Indians first claim to lands abandoned by federal agencies and decided to put the law to a test. Alcatraz had been abandoned for years, so why shouldn’t AIM make a legitimate claim for it? Unfortunately, the government didn’t see it that way. They refused almost all of the demands of the Indians and on June 11, 1971, U.S. Marshals removed the last of the occupiers from the island. Despite the lack of progress made by the occupation, the Indians had at last made their presence known to the general public. As Vine Deloria Jr. stated, “Alcatraz was a big enough symbol that for the first time this century Indians were taken seriously.” (Redhawk’s Lodge, 2002)
In 1972, after seeing what could be accomplished through direct action, Leonard Peltier joined the American Indian Movement. In November of that year, AIM organized a cross-country march and demonstration called the “Trail of Broken Treaties.” The purpose of the demonstration was to highlight to the American public the long string of broken treaties that had been made between the United States and countless Indian nations. The demonstration took place in Washington, D.C. and was intended as a way to discuss a 20-point agenda of critical issues including an overhaul of the BIA, putting it under Indian control, and the establishment of a commission to examine treaty violations by the government. It was also intended to be a peaceful rally. Instead, AIM and its members took over and occupied the BIA office building when government officials reneged on a promise to meet with the Indians. For seven days AIM and its supporters holed-up in the BIA building, ransacking it and confiscating documents. In his autobiography, Where White Men Fear to Tread, Russell Means writes that “…it would be more than six weeks before operations could resume – and no one missed it!” (1995)
It was during the BIA takeover that the FBI officially marked Leonard Peltier as an “AIM agitator” and “key extremist”. What would happen to him in the next few years came as a direct result of this distinction. The FBI saw AIM as a radical organization just as it did the Black Panthers, SDS, the Weathermen, and the Communists. And it saw Leonard as one of its key leaders who needed to be silenced.
After the BIA incident, Leonard was repeatedly harassed, arrested, and jailed for any number of baseless charges. Local police, paid thugs, and FBI agents baited him into confrontations and then filed trumped-up charges when he tried to either walk away or defend himself. One such incident occurred in Milwaukee when two police officers began shouting racial slurs at Leonard and two friends in a bar. When the men tried to leave, the white officers confronted them with drawn weapons. Leonard was arrested on a phony charge of attempted murder, savagely beaten by the police, and thrown in jail for five months. Evidence at his trial showed that the FBI had conspired with local police to “neutralize” him. Peltier writes, “Target us, set us up, arrest us, beat the shit out of us, hang a phony rap on us, drag us off to court and jail, impoverish us with legal expenses even if we never did a damn thing. That, we later learned, was what the FBI called ‘neutralization’” (1999)
“What happened was inevitable. The way it happened was unconscionable.”
Last of the Dogmen
All of these things are pieces of a larger puzzle that put Leonard Peltier on the historical map of the United States. They are part of the lead-in to why he is wallowing in a cell in Leavenworth prison as this is being written, but there is one more piece to the puzzle that must be looked at to fully understand what happened and why.
In the early 1970s, things were getting worse and worse for Indians all over the country. On the reservations unemployment was making a mockery of an honest job, alcoholism was skyrocketing, and Indians were suffering at the hands of an unjust and corrupt government agency (the BIA) that simply wanted them to disappear. The government’s policy of termination had forcibly relocated reservation Indians to cities like Minneapolis, Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Chicago. And on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, a group known as GOONs (Guardians of Our Oglala Nation) began terrorizing their own people. At the behest of the FBI, the GOONs (many of them Oglala Lakota themselves) were murdering, maiming, and intimidating the reservation Indians – particularly the Traditionals; those who wished to live their lives according to the “old” ways. Between 1973 and 1975, sixty Indians were murdered at the hands of the GOONs. It’s not surprising that this era is remembered as the “Reign of Terror.” It was with this situation as a backdrop that on February 27, 1973, AIM and its supporters on the Pine Ridge Reservation overtook the small town of Wounded Knee and held it for 71 days. It was symbolic to make their stand there – at the killing fields; the right place to honor their ancestors who had been massacred simply for being Indians.
The details of the Siege at Wounded Knee are many, but better suited for another narrative. This is not to diminish the event or those who died there, but in order to gain the best vantage point in this look at Leonard Peltier’s place in history, one only need know that it happened and why.
After Wounded Knee, the GOON’s “Reign of Terror” didn’t end. For the next three years, under the guidance of the FBI and BIA, they engaged in a bloody killing spree as retribution against the Lakota people. During that time there were countless unsolved murders at Pine Ridge – not to mention hundreds of tribal members who were harassed, beaten, and maimed. No one was ever brought to trial for any of those incidents. It was like the Deep South of the early 20th Century; the GOONs were the Ku Klux Klan of the Indian world.
In 1975, a group of Oglala Elders asked AIM for protection from the GOONs; Leonard Peltier was one of the respondents. He and several other AIM members set up a camp on the Jumping Bull family property to protect against attacks. On the morning of June 26, 1975 an unmarked car carrying FBI agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams drove full-speed onto the Jumping Bull property. Knowing full well that GOONs, FBI agents, or both were on constant prowl around the reservation, Leonard and the other AIM defenders grabbed their weapons intending to defend themselves. The Indians were sure that whoever was in that car was intent on doing harm and so they opened fire. Agents Coler and Williams, without ammunition or back up were killed at point-blank range. During the firefight, Leonard and about two-dozen others managed to escape the area and go into hiding. By November 25, a federal grand jury indicted four men for their roles in the deaths of the two FBI agents – Bob Robideau, Dino Butler, Jimmy Eagle, and Leonard Peltier.
For two and a half months Leonard remained a fugitive. He made it to Canada, but on February 6, 1976, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Vancouver, British Columbia arrested him. Finally, on December 16th Leonard was extradited to the United States to stand trial. In the ten months since his arrest, Bob Robideau and Dino Butler had been acquitted of all charges and all charges were dropped against Jimmy Eagle. That left just Leonard to answer for the murders.
The FBI was so bound and determined to make someone pay for the murders of its agents that they resorted to “every trick in the book” – witness harassment, questionable evidence, fabricated evidence, and withholding of evidence that would prove Leonard’s innocence. In one case of witness intimidation, Anna Mae Aquash was executed with a bullet in the back of her head and her hands cut off because she refused to give false testimony, despite death threats from the FBI. One woman, Myrtle Poor Bear, was coerced into giving false testimony and Leonard’s conviction was based largely on that testimony. On April 18, 1977, Leonard Peltier was convicted for the murders of FBI Agents Coler and Williams and sentenced to two consecutive life terms in federal prison.
Despite the fact that millions have called for Leonard’s pardon and release, no court in the land will re-hear his trial – not even the Supreme Court. In 1986, at Leonard’s hearing for a new trial, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals acknowledged “that there had been fabrication of evidence, withholding of exculpatory evidence, coercion of witnesses, as well as improper conduct by the FBI.” (Peltier, 1999) In fact, during a separate appeals hearing, the original prosecutor stated for the record that the government had no idea who killed the agents – “We did not have any direct evidence that one individual as opposed to another pulled the trigger.”
Leonard Peltier’s role in history is that of a political prisoner in a facility run by the United States government. He rots in his cell for a crime he didn’t commit, and his jailers admit they aren’t sure he committed either. We as Americans find it very easy to deride other countries for maintaining political prisoners. Our leaders say that all men and women should be granted the freedom to say what they want on any subject without the fear of prosecution. We write letters calling for justice and expect it to be so. Why, then, is an innocent man languishing in prison and his government that admits it is wrong for him to be there won’t release him to his people? Leonard Peltier is a reminder that the United States has far to go in granting justice to its citizens. More than that, however, Leonard Peltier is a reminder that the United States government’s history of its dealings with the indigenous people of this country is based on deceit, lies, and subjugation; it has been a history of a foreign invader seeing it all and taking it. Until Leonard Peltier is free, American justice will remain what American Indians have always seen it as – a myth.
Addendum: Since this essay was written, Leonard Peltier was savagely beaten by fellow inmates at the United States Penitentiary, Canaan in Pennsylvania in 2009. He is now incarcerated at Coleman Federal Correctional Complex in Coleman, Florida.
Addendum: Since this essay was written, Leonard Peltier was savagely beaten by fellow inmates at the United States Penitentiary, Canaan in Pennsylvania in 2009. He is now incarcerated at Coleman Federal Correctional Complex in Coleman, Florida.
Bibliography
Last of the Dogmen. Dir. Lance Hool Perf. Tom Berenger, Barbara Hershey, Kurtwood Smith, Steve Reevis. Carolco Pictures, 1995. Film.
Means, R. (1995). Where White Men Fear to Tread: The Autobiography of Russell Means. New York: St. Martin’s
Peltier, L. (1999). Prison Writings: My Life is My Sun Dance. New York: St. Martin’s
Redhawk, W. (2002). Redhawk’s Lodge. Native Peoples Magazine: Fall 1999 Article page #2, “Alcatraz, Indian Land” by Ben Winton. Retrieved April 11, 2007 from http://siouxme.com/lodge/alcatraz_np.html
Strom, K. (1995). The Massacre at Wounded Knee. Retrieved April 11, 2007 from http://www.hanksville.org/daniel/lakota/Wounded_Knee.html
