The Lakota

On December 29, 1890, the United States 7th Cavalry under the command of Col. James Forsyth surrounded a band of about 350 Miniconjou Lakota near the banks of Wounded Knee Creek in what is now South Dakota. The Indians, led by Big Foot, believed they were being given passage to the Pine Ridge Reservation not far away. According to Black Elk, an Oglala holy man, a young warrior named Yellow Bird refused to give up his weapon to a soldier and during the scuffle, the gun discharged, killing the soldier (Neihardt, 1932). What ensued was the massacre of about 300 Indian men, women, and children. Thirty-one soldiers were killed, almost all by friendly fire, and 18 soldiers were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for their part in the killings. In one afternoon armed Indian resistance on the Plains came to a halt. The great leaders, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, were dead and with no place else to go, the once mighty Lakota retreated to Standing Rock and Pine Ridge, and all the other reservations in the Dakota Territory to live at the mercy of the corrupt policies of the United States government.

Some would say that the winter of 1890-91 was the end of the Indians, as they had traditionally been known – fearless, cunning, and, wrongly of course, bloodthirsty savages. Indeed, to this day there are people, young and old alike, who believe there is no longer any such thing as real Indians. The Lakota, once feared and admired as the most valiant warriors and buffalo hunters to ever roam the West, have, it seems, been relegated to the dusty shelves of mythology and fable.

That fateful day in 1890 was not, however, the end of the Indians; it only seemed like it. For the next several decades all the Indian nations of North America suffered mightily at the hands of the white man. Corrupt reservation agents; rotten and spoiled rations; land theft; children kidnapped to “Indian” schools; and an indifferent Bureau of Indian Affairs were all attempts to demoralize and destroy the American Indians. The Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Comanche, Apache, Kiowa, Nez Perce, and scores of other nations struggled mightily to survive – and somehow did. The Lakota (the subject of this essay), however, deserve a closer look. More than any other tribe, the Lakota and the seven “sub-tribes” that comprise them – the Sihasapa or Blackfoot, Hunkpapa, Miniconjou, Oohenupa or Two Kettle, Oglala, Itazipacola or Sans Arc, and Sicangu or Brulé – have, over the years, come to symbolize, or rather stereotype, what an Indian is. When people today think about Indians, they think of muscular, face-painted, feathered, warriors riding on a magnificent painted horse with an idyllic scene of the Great Plains in the background. In so many movies, past and present, the cavalry is fighting the “Sioux.” When people want to imitate Indians, they tap their hands to their mouths and call out, “Woo-woo” as they imagine the “Sioux” still do.

The importance of mentioning all this history is to illustrate the point that the Lakota, as well as many other tribes, have faced innumerable adversities, setbacks, and stereotyping since 1890 and before, and they still deal with many of the same problems today. “The Indian had no racial immunity, and when yellow fever, smallpox, measles, or scarlet fever were introduced by a passing white, the Indian community was decimated by the disease.” (Hirschfelder & Montaño, 1993, p. 69) The wholesale slaughter of the Lakota’s primary food source, the buffalo, had an even greater impact. White hunters did the government’s bidding by killing the animals, skinning them for their hide, and leaving the carcasses to rot on the prairie. “By 1885, the government estimated that only 200 buffalo were alive in the wild.” (“History Learning Site: Buffalo,” 2006)

The legalized theft of Indian lands through the establishment of the Reservation system in the 1860s, the Dawes Act of 1887, and House Concurrent Resolution 108 (Indian Termination Policy) of 1953 left the Indians with only a fraction of their ancestral lands (Hirschfelder & Montaño, 1993). Finally, and worst of all, the establishment of federal assimilation policies that created the Indian school system provided for the mandatory removal of Indian children to schools hundreds of miles away from their homes. Once there, their hair was cut off, their traditional clothes were taken and burned, and they were forbidden to speak their own language. It was the job of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, the Riverside Indian Boarding School in Oklahoma, and scores of other day schools and boarding schools, on and off the reservations, to teach Indian children how to be white. If successful, as conventional wisdom went, the Indian “problem” would be eradicated by turning “red savages” into productive white people. Luther Standing Bear, a Lakota warrior, recalled riding a train to a boarding school in the East. Some of his friends were so frightened “they began to sing the death songs of Sioux warriors approaching battle” (“Through Indian Eyes,” 1995). Because of their people’s prolonged and stubborn fight against the white man, Lakota children were hit the hardest. Faced with gross overcrowding, substandard student care, and the daily threat of beatings for the most minor offense – including speaking their own language – hundreds of Lakota children either ran away in hopes of returning home, but were caught and returned to school, or chose suicide as the only way out. 

The blow to the Lakota culture, lifestyle, and psyche cannot be overstated. Today, on the Pine Ridge, Standing Rock, and Cheyenne River Reservations, the Lakota suffer from rampant alcoholism; substandard living conditions; a suicide rate that is twice the national average; an almost 80% unemployment rate; widespread poverty; and a dropout rate that hovers around 62% (“UNPO,” 2005). On the Pine Ridge Reservation alone the median income is $2,600 per year, infant mortality is 300% higher than the national average, 60% of all housing is substandard without water, electricity, phones, insulation, or sewage systems, and the average life expectancy is 45 years (“Hidden Away in the Land of Plenty,” 2002). Violence, drunkenness, despair and apathy are facts of life and many young people easily turn to drugs or alcohol just to dull the pain of being an Indian. But then there are those who don’t, and they are keeping the Lakota traditions, arts, and culture alive.

For years, since the Lakota finally retreated to the Reservations, there has been a battle, or at least quiet animosity, between those who hung on to the traditional ways and those who sought to work and live in the white man’s world. The “Traditionals” remembered the stories of the people and passed them on to the younger generations in the oral tradition; they remembered and followed the ceremonies that had been handed down from their ancestors; they continued to practice the crafts that had been taught to their grandparents by their grandparents; and they followed the tradition of Tiospaye, the extended family, which meant that the children were taught by their uncles and aunts and practically anyone might be considered an uncle or aunt. It is the way the Lakota have lived for centuries. The non-Traditionals do not believe in these things and they often find themselves very much at odds with the Traditionals. This situation came to a head in the 1970s when Dick Wilson, the head of the Oglala Tribal Council, employed GOONs (Guardians Of the Oglala Nation) to terrorize, abuse, and murder members of his own tribe – notably Traditionals (“Who Should We Believe,” n.d.).

One of the strongest traditions among the Lakota is the oral handing down of the people’s common wisdom through folktales and myths from one generation to the next. There are a wealth of creation stories; trickster tales; stories of love and war; and animal tales meant to teach and amuse. Many of these stories attempt to explain natural phenomenon, how the Lakota gained certain skills, or exemplified bravery in battle as a virtue to strive for. In almost all of these stories, animals can talk, as can rocks, trees, water, and even the sun, moon, and earth. The stories of the Lakota relate to the natural world the originators of the stories experienced thousands of years ago. One human creation story tells of a rabbit who finds a clot of blood on the ground and after kicking it around for a while, the blood clot is eventually formed into a human being (Rabbit Boy). When Rabbit Boy grows up, he is sent to live with the other humans. Iktome (the trickster) kills Rabbit Boy out of jealousy, cuts him into small pieces, and throws him into a soup pot. Miraculously, Rabbit Boy escapes the pot, his pieces fit back together, and he ascends to the heavens to gain more power. Finally, Iktome sings his “mock” death song wrong and he is cut into little pieces – a victim of his own trickery (Erdoes & Ortiz, 1984, p. 5-8). This story explains how there are magical powers that simply exist without explanation, how people can misinterpret someone else’s good intentions, and how we can fall victim to our own treachery if we are not careful. It was, and is, through stories like this and The Woman Among the Wolves (Swann, 1994, p.428-9) and Iktome Sleeps With His Wife By Mistake (Erdoes & Ortiz, 1984, p. 372-4) that the Lakota taught their children bravery, self-control, compassion, an understanding of the world as they knew it, and all the values that we try to impress on our own children today.

Indian education today has taken a much different turn since the days of the Carlisle School, but there are still large gaps in learning due in large part to social conditions and children’s unease at learning in the “white” way. It is not the case that Indians teach Indians; more often than not, reservation teachers are white. This is due, in part, to the high dropout rate among students in primary and secondary school, the low numbers of Indians who attend college, and the even lower number that actually graduate. It is a vicious cycle, but conditions on the Lakota reservations do not foster, or encourage, student participation in school. In their 1991 report, The Indian Nations at Risk Task Force found that “many primary and secondary schools have not adequately prepared students to take advantage of postsecondary opportunities” (U.S. Department of Education, 1991, p. 6). The same report, however, does outline strategies for improved Indian education through tribal and parental participation and responsibility, making the native language a core component of the curriculum, and creating an Indian Student Bill of Rights.

Lakota children are at a distinct disadvantage when their white teachers do not understand how Indians learn best. All the “best practices” mean nothing when teachers do not know how to teach Indians. Indians have, for centuries, learned by listening to and observing their elders pass on the oral history and culture of their people as well as teaching by demonstration social, hunting, and domestic skills. It is also very important to know that Indian children will not perform an activity publicly until they are certain they have mastered it. This is a foreign concept to whites that believe in the Nike ad – Just Do It. Another aspect of Lakota culture that affects education is the fact that their strong sense of community and co-operation is completely at odds with a system that encourages individualism and competition (Hirschfelder & Montaño, 1993, p. 99). Lakota social culture is based on the community – not on the individual. It’s no wonder students feel alienated and disaffected by a system set up to help them, but that confounds and frustrates them.

The Lakota have always been steeped in tradition and ceremony. These things permeated the everyday lives of the people. There was a right way and a wrong way to enter another man’s tipi; there were, and still are, giveaways by families who hosted a celebration (the host family gives their belongings to their guests), and boys were taught to hunt and fight, girls to bead, cook, and prepare hides. In addition, there are many ceremonies such as the Inipi or Sweat Lodge, Taku Wakan or Sundance, and Chanupa or Pipe Ceremony. All of these play a part in the collective culture of the Lakota and they are passed down to each generation just as they have been for thousands of years. Even today the Lakota keep these traditions despite every adversity they face.

But some adversity cannot be escaped or ignored. Because of the inhuman conditions that the Lakota were forced to live with for almost a hundred years and because of the treatment they received from the FBI, local police, and Dick Wilson and his GOONs, on February 28, 1973, members of The American Indian Movement (AIM) led by Dennis Banks (Anishnabe/Lakota) and Russell Means (Lakota) took over and occupied the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. For two months the Indians held the town during which time two Indians were killed by sniper fire from the FBI. By the time the town was finally relinquished, Indians and whites alike knew the plight of the American Indian. The injustices and inequalities of being treated as second-class citizens had finally come to a head and a new era of Indian pride began to appear.

Although it had been brewing for years, Indians began to assert this newfound pride by challenging the American government on long-broken treaties, calling for tribal sovereignty, and demanding the return of ancestral lands (“Through Indian Eyes, 1995). Lakota musicians, writers, actors, and artists began to be more visible in the mainstream: the band Indigenous, Indian flutist Calvin Standing Bear, singer Nellie Two Bulls, singer and actor John Trudell, actor and author Russell Means, artist Alan Yellowhawk, painter Merle Locke, among many others. It is through this new sense of identity and pride that Lakota children are beginning to see the world. It is a world of stories by and about the people, and those stories are affirmations of the Lakota as a nation. Children and adults are connecting and reconnecting to their heritage through books like Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions, Prison Writings, Black Elk Speaks, The Flight of Red Bird, On the Rez, American Indian Myths and Legends, Coyote, The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses, Iktomi and the Ducks, and scores more.

So it is that the Lakota traditions, lifestyles, culture, values, families, and most important, education have endured across the thousands of years since the time when, as legend has it, the Lakota first stepped out from the Paha Sapa, the Black Hills. All of these things – adversities and victories – impact the lives of the people, especially the lives of the children. They are the future of the Lakota, and what they learn from their elders will be what they carry proudly, as a badge of honor, into the world.

Bibliography

Erdoes, R., & Ortiz, A. (1984). American Indian Myths and Legends. New York: Pantheon

Frazier, I. (2000). On the Rez. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Goble, P. (1990). Iktomi and the Ducks. New York: Orchard

Goble, P. (1978). The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses. New York: Bradbury

Hirschfelder, A., & Montaño, M.K. (1993). The Native American Almanac: A Portrait of Native America Today. New York: Prentice Hall

Lame Deer, J., & Erdoes, R. (1972). Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions. New York: Washington Square

McDermott, G. (1994). Coyote: A Trickster Tale From the American Southwest. New York: Harcourt Brace

Neihardt, J.G. (1932). Black Elk Speaks. New York: Morrow

Peltier, L. (1999). Prison Writings. New York: St. Martin’s

Rappaport, D. (1997). The Flight of Red Bird: The Life of Zitkala- Sa. New York: Puffin

Sapa, W. Who Should We Believe? Tribal Councils, Traditionals, Survivors Associations, Newspapers, or Others? Retrieved August 17, 2006, from http://www.dickshovel.com/WKb.html

Schwartz, S. (2002). Hidden Away, In the Land of Plenty: 2002 Current Statistics Concerning the Pine Ridge Oglala Lakota (Sioux) Reservation. Retrieved August 17, 2006, from http://www.nativevillage.org/Messages%20from%20the%20People/Hidden%20Away%20in%20the%20Land%20of%20Plenty.htm

Through Indian Eyes. (1995). New York: Reader’s Digest

Trueman, C. (2006). Buffalo. Retrieved August 16, 2006, from http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/buffalo.htm

Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (2005). Lakota Nation. Retrieved August 16, 2006, from http://www.unpo.org/member_profile.php?id=35

U.S. Department of Education. (1991). Indian Nations at Risk: An Educational Strategy for Action. (Publication No. 1992-0-318-429). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Leonard Peltier: 89637-132

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.

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