you are welcome to research and decide for yourself.
http://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info/http://safetyandjustice.org/info/nation/story/630Prisoner/Activist Profile: Leonard Peltier
December 30, 2002 - 11:52pm
Article by Scot Nakagawa
Leonard Peltier is a citizen of the Anishinabe and Lakota Nations currently imprisoned in the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas. He has been in prison for 24 (33 as of today)
years for a crime for which there is no substantive evidence.
Leonard Peltier was born 56 (64) years ago, one of 14 children on the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation in North Dakota. A the age of 8, Peltier was taken from his family and sent to a boarding school run by the U.S. government. There, students were forbidden to speak their native languages and suffered physical and psychological abuse.
Peltier returned to Turtle Mountain as a teenager to live with his father. At the time, the Turtle Mountain Chippewa were targeted for termination as a federally recognized tribe. The termination policy withdrew federal assistance, including food, from those who remained on the land. This sparked protests that resulted in an investigation into the conditions on the reservation by Bureau of Indian Affairs social workers. Peltier went house to house to tell people to hide their food from the social workers. At each home, he learned that there was no food to hide. This experience awakened him to the desperate situation for all people on his reservation. Later experiences would bring him to understand that Native Americans across the U.S. were suffering from similar poverty, racism, and policies of relocation.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Leonard Peltier traveled to many Native communities, working as a welder, carpenter, and community counselor for Native people. It was during this time that he became involved in AIM (the American Indian Movement), especially its spiritual and traditional programs. He eventually joined the Denver, Colorado chapter.
Leonard Peltier’s involvement in AIM led him to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in the mid 1970s. Peltier worked with the Oglala Lakota people of Pine Ridge on improving living conditions.
It was here that on February 27, 1973, members of AIM and their supporters began a 72 day occupation of Wounded Knee. Their goal was to protest injustices against their tribes, violations of many treaties, and abuses and repression against their people. Leonard was a participant in this protest that resulted in a military-style assault against the protestors by the U.S. government. This use of military force was later ruled unlawful.
The three years following this protest were referred to by many on Pine Ridge as the “Reign of Terror.” During this time, the FBI repeatedly arrested and harassed AIM leaders and supporters, and conducted bad faith legal proceedings believed to have been intended to intimidate and destabilize AIM. During the “Reign of Terror,” 64 Pine Ridge Native Americans were murdered. In addition, 300 were harassed, beaten, or otherwise abused. Virtually all of the victims were either affiliated with AIM or their allies, the traditional tribal members. The FBI had jurisdiction to investigate major crimes, yet these deaths were never adequately investigated or resolved.
In May of 1975, the FBI began a build up of its agents on the reservation. In June 1975, FBI SWAT teams were designated for special assignment at Pine Ridge. Yet, the politically motivated murder rate climbed.
In June of 1975, a number of AIM supporters were invited to camp on the grounds of the Jumping Bull Ranch by Jumping Bull elders. Many non-AIM people were present there as well. On June 26, 1975, two FBI agents entered the ranch, seeking to arrest a young Native man they believed they had seen in a red pick-up truck. A shoot out between the red pick-up and the FBI agents began. People screamed out that they were under attack, and many hurried to return fire. When the initial skirmish was over, the two FBI agents were dead. They had been wounded and then shot in their heads at close range.
The more than 30 AIM men, women and children present on the ranch on that day were surrounded by over 150 FBI agents, SWAT team members, BIA police, and local posse members. They barely escaped through a hail of bullets. When the gunfight ended, a young Native American man named Joe Stuntz lay dead, shot through the head by a sniper bullet. His killing was never investigated.
Leonard Peltier was one of several AIM leaders present during the shoot out. Murder charges were brought against him, as well as against two other AIM members, Bob Robideau and Dino Butler. Butler and Robideau stood trial separately from Peltier, who fled to Canada, convinced he would never receive a fair trial in the U.S. At the trial of Butler and Robideau a key prosecution witness admitted that he had changed his testimony so as to support the government’s position after being threatened by the FBI. The jury found both men not guilty, lacking evidence to link the defendants to the fatal shots. Moreover, the exchange of gunfire from a distance was deemed to have constituted self-defense.
Leonard Peltier was illegally extradicted from Canada and brought to trial in the U.S. There was no witness testimony that Leonard Peltier actually shot the two FBI agents, nor that he was near the crime scene before the murders occurred. Witnesses placing Peltier near the crime scene after the killing were coerced and intimidated by the FBI. There is no forensic evidence as to the exact type of rifle used to commit the murders. Several different weapons present during the shoot out could have caused the fatal injuries. There is no reasonable evidence that Leonard Peltier committed the murders.Instead, there is very strong evidence of FBI misconduct. Today, the United States Attorney admits that no one knows who fired the shots that killed the two FBI agents. The red pick-up truck escaped from the ranch and was never found or identified.
In spite of strong indications of FBI misconduct, and the lack of evidence in the case, Leonard Peltier remains in prison. During his term in prison, Peltier has continued working on behalf of humanitarian causes. He sponsors an annual Christmas drive for the children of Pine Ridge, helped create a Native American Scholarship fund, assisted programs for battered women and for substance abuse recovery, collaborated to improve medical care on the reservations, and assisted the development of a prison art program, amongst other contributions.
Many internationally recognized human rights leaders, including Nelson Mandela, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, the European Parliament, the Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, the Dalai Lama, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson have called for Leonard Peltier’s freedom.
In an October 2001 Columbus Day statement, Leonard Peltier concluded by writing, “Although prison life becomes more difficult with age, my spirit remains unbroken, and I still dream of rejoining my people in freedom and continuing our work for human rights and justice.”
This article originally appeared in the Winter 2002 issue of Justice Matters.
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