Leonard Peltier
         A Native American story that will move you.

A Dear Native American Who Has Been
WRONGFULLY Imprisoned For Twenty-five Years~

Leonard Peltier, a citizen of the Anishinabe and Lakota Nations, is a father, a grandfather, an artist, a writer, and an Indigenous rights activist. He has spent the last twenty-five years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Amnesty International considers him a "political prisoner" who should be "immediately and unconditionally released." Despite political pressure and the efforts of various groups former President Clinton did not pardon Leonard and in doing so has left an innocent man imprisoned.

What can you do?

~ Start a support group, or join an existing one.

~ Subscribe to the newspaper, SPIRIT OF CRAZY HORSE, to keep informed.

~ Donate to the LPDC to help fund their efforts. Organize benefits.

~ Have your nations/tribes, churches, student councils, unions, city councils, etc. pass resolutions in support of freedom for Peltier.

~ Educate yourself as to the facts of the Peltier case and spread the word! Ask for more in depth resources.

~ Write editorials for your local paper. Copy and distribute this and other LPDC literature.

~ Write to Leonard Peltier: (he can receive US postal money orders, photos-not Polaroid, and paper back books) USPL Leonard Peltier #89637-132 PO Box 1000 Leavenworth, KS 66048

Want more information?

To read more about Leonard Peltier you can visit his site with more information, click here to go there, and remember to book mark ours before you leave!

Leonard Peltier A Native American story that will move you. Anyone who has even a basic understanding of the history and plight of Native Americans recognizes their terrible treatment at the hands of the U.S. Government. That history cannot be altered. Nothing can change the broken promises and treaties and subjugation of the first peoples to inhabit this continent.

In 1975, a man named Leonard Peltier was among those trying to prevent violence that was breaking out on the reservations due to the U.S. governments idea to merge the remaining tribes together. Peltier was an AIM (American Indian Movement) warrior heading an armed defensive encampment near the village of Oglala on Pine Ridge. On June 26 of that year, two (also armed) FBI agents, Jack Coler and Ron Williams--roared up to the camp, to search for a young Indian accused of stealing a pair of cowboy boots.

The agents had been to the camp the day before and had determined the "suspect" was not present. On that fatal morning, their aggressive entry was met with gunfire, and shortly thereafter, both agents and an AIM member--Joe Stuntz Killsright--were dead.

There followed one of the greatest "manhunt" in FBI history. While no determination has ever been made as to the circumstances of Stuntz's death--or any of the other AIM casualties of this period--the Bureau quickly decided that the killers of its agents were likely four Indian men: Jimmy Eagle (the individual supposedly sought in the boot caper), Bob Robideau, Dino Butler, and Leonard Peltier, all of whom walked cross-country and escaped the massive dragnet--including helicopters and armored personnel carriers--the feds threw across the reservation immediately after the fire fight.

Eagle was apprehended but never brought to trial; "lack of evidence" was cited. Robideau and Butler, captured in the wake of the explosion of their car near Kansas City, were brought to trial in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and acquitted amidst a controversy concerning FBI misconduct in the prosecution of their case (no effort has ever been made to investigate the FBI in this connection).

Peltier, earlier on, had sought asylum amongst the Cree people of western Canada. Apprehended by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at the behest of the FBI, he formally petitioned the Canadian government to grant him status as a political refugee, contending that regardless of his guilt or innocence in any criminal matter, he could not receive a fair hearing in the U.S. because of his position as an AIM activist.

The FBI responded by providing the Canadians with two demonstrably fabricated "eyewitness" affidavits signed by one Myrtle Poor Bear, a clinically unbalanced Lakota woman who, it was later revealed, had never laid eyes upon Peltier and who was more than 50 miles from Oglala the day of the fire fight. The Canadians thereupon honored the U.S. extradition request.

With Robideau and Butler acquitted, and with its own conduct in question, the FBI was desperate for a conviction. The feds sought, and received, a change of venue from the scene of their disastrous prosecution in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to a new location in Fargo, North Dakota. Along with the site change came a change in the trial judges. The new one, Paul Benson, proved more accommodating to federal interests than had his predecessor; virtually the entire defense case which had won dismissal of charges against Butler and Robideau and which had exposed at least a portion of the FBI "investigative techniques" being utilized, was ruled inadmissible. The prosecution, on the other hand, enjoyed free reign. Despite prosecutor Lynn Crooks statement, "We can't prove who shot those agents." Leonard Peltier was sentenced to serve two life sentences for the "murder" of federal agents.

In appeals to the 8th Circuit Court in St. Louis, the defense was able to demonstrate severe procedural and evidentiary problems in the handling of Peltier's trial. Chief Judge William Webster duly noted these and found them "disturbing" and then determined a retrial was nonetheless not called for. Shortly afterward, Webster was named to head the FBI. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately refused even to hear the case. A judicial impasse had been reached.

Nevertheless, Peltier defense team members developed a second strategic approach, filing under provisions of the Freedom of Information Act for the release of FBI file documents related to the case. As of this writing, some 12,000 of the estimated 18,000 pages of FBI material have been secured. (The Bureau maintained the balance could not be released for reasons of "national security" but more lately says it has "lost" all the remaining documents.)

He has yet to be granted a new trial, despite court findings that the government withheld evidence favorable to him that "casts a strong doubt on the government's case".

Leonard Peltier is 57 years old and was born on the Anishinabe (Chippewa) Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota. He came from a large family of 13 brothers and sisters. He grew up in poverty, and survived many traumatic experiences resulting from U.S. government policies aimed to assimilate Native Peoples.

At the age of eight he was taken from his family and sent to a residential boarding school for Native people run by the US Government. There, the students were forbidden to speak their languages and they suffered both physical and psychological abuses.

As a teenager Leonard Peltier 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 chose as the testing ground for its new termination policy. The policy forced Native families off their reservations and into the cities.

The resulting protests and demonstrations by tribal members introduced Leonard Peltier to Native resistance through activism and organizing to help Native Americans. In the course of his work he became involved with the American Indian Movement (AIM) and eventually joined the Denver Colorado chapter. In Denver, he worked as a community counselor confronting unemployment, alcohol problems and poor housing. He became strongly involved in the spiritual and traditional programs of AIM.

Leonard Peltier's participation in the American Indian Movement led to his involvement in the 1972 Trail of broken Treaties which took him to Washington D.C., in the occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building.

Eventually his AIM involvement would bring him to assist the Oglala Lakota People of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota in the mid 1970's. On Pine Ridge he participated in the planning of community activities, religious ceremonies, programs for self-sufficiency, and improved living conditions. He also helped to organize security for the traditional people who were being targeted for violence by the pro-assimilation tribal chairman and his vigilantes. It was here that the tragic shoot-out of June 26, 1975 occurred, leading to his wrongful conviction.

Leonard Peltier credits his ability to endure his circumstances to his spiritual practices and the love and support from his family and supporters.

This is a statement written by Leonard two years ago in 1999-

"This is the twenty-third year of my imprisonment for a crime I didn't commit. I'm now fifty-four years old. I've been in here since I was thirty-one. I've been told I have to live out two life-time sentences plus seven years before I get out of prison in the year 2041. By then I'll be ninety-seven. I don't think I'll make it.

My life is an extended agony. I feel like I've lived a hundred life-times in prison already. But I'm prepared to live thousands more on behalf of my people. If my imprisonment does nothing more than educate an unknowing and uncaring public about the terrible conditions Indian people continue to endure, then my suffering has had -- and continues to have -- a purpose. My people's struggle to survive inspires my own struggle to survive. Each of us must be a survivor.

I ACKNOWLEDGE my inadequacies as a spokesman, my many imperfections as a human being. And yet, as the Elders taught me, speaking out is my first duty, my first obligation to myself and to my people. To speak your mind and heart is the Indian Way. In the Indian Way, the political and the spiritual are one and the same. You can't believe one thing and do another. What you believe and what you do are the same thing. In the Indian Way, if you see your people suffering, helping them is an absolute necessity. It's not a social act of charity or welfare assistance; it's a spiritual act, a holy deed.

I HAVE NO APOLOGIES, ONLY SORROW. I can't apologize for what I haven't done. But I can grieve, and I do. Every day, every hour, I grieve for those who died at the Oglala fire fight in 1975 and for their families -- for the families of FBI agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams and, yes, for the family of Joe Killright Stuntz -- a 21-year old brave-hearted Indian whose death from a bullet at Oglala that same day, like the deaths of hundreds of other Indians at Pine Ridge at that terrible time, has never been investigated. My heart aches in remembering the suffering and fear under which so many of my people were forced to live at that time, the very suffering and fear that brought me and the others to Oglala that day -- to defend the defenseless.

And I'm filled with an aching sorrow, too, for the loss to my own family because, in a very real way, I also died that day. I died to my family, to my children, to my grandchildren, to myself. I've lived out my own death for nearly a quarter of a century now.

Those who put me here and keep me here knowing of my innocence can take grim satisfaction in their sure reward, which is being who and what they are. That's as terrible a reward as any I could imagine.

I know who and what I am. I am an Indian -- an Indian who dared to stand up to defend his people. I am an innocent man who never murdered anyone nor ever wanted to. And, yes, I am a Sun Dancer. That, too, is my identity. If I am to suffer as a symbol of my people, then I suffer proudly. I will never yield.

IF YOU, THE LOVED ONES of the agents who died at the Jumping Bull property that day, get some salve of satisfaction out of my being here, then at least I can give you that, even though innocent of their blood. I feel your loss as my own. Like you, I suffer that loss every day, every hour. And so does my family. We know that inconsolable grief. We Indians are born, live and die with inconsolable grief. We've shared our common grief for twenty-three years now, your families and mine, so how can we possible be enemies anymore? Maybe it's with you and with us that the healing can start. You, the agents' families, certainly weren't at fault that day in 1975, any more than my family was, and yet you and they have suffered as much as, even more than, anyone there. It seems it's always the innocent who pay the highest price for injustice. It's seemed that way all my life.

To the still grieving Coler and Williams' families, I send my prayers if you will have them. I hope you will. They are the prayers of an entire people, not just my own. We have many dead of our own to pray for, and we join our prayers of sorrow to yours. Let our common grief be our bond. I state to you absolutely that, if I could possibly have prevented what happened that day, your menfolk would not have died. I would have died myself before knowingly permitting what happened to happen. And I certainly never pulled the trigger that did it. May the Creator strike me dead this moment if I lie. I cannot see how my being here, torn from my own grandchildren, can possible mend your loss. I swear to you, I am guilty only of being an Indian. That's why I'm here."

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse,

Leonard Peltier

More information

To read more about Leonard Peltier you can visit his site with more information, click here to go there, and remember to book mark ours before you leave!

Article Pasted Together From Anonymous Sources

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