After nearly a half a century in several American prisons, celebrated Native American activist Leonard Peltier will be released from United States Penitentiary Coleman, located in central Florida, on February 18. Former US president Joe Biden commuted Peltier’s life sentence mere minutes before he left office January 20.
Peltier was convicted of the murders of two FBI agents, Ronald A. Carter and Jack R. Coler, after a shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota on June 26, 1975. At the time Peltier was a member of the American Indian Movement. Partially modelled on the Black Panthers, AIM organized protests and armed occupations to defend Indigenous rights and demands.
After the killings on the Jumping Bull family ranch, Peltier fled to Canada and was later arrested near Hinton, Alberta. Two months later he was extradited back to the Unted States to stand trial. Amidst much controversy he was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences.
Over the years scores of people across the world protested his conviction, citing coerced testimony and false evidence. People such as Nelson Mandela, Rigoberta Menchu, the Dalai Lama, actor Robert Redford, folk singer Pete Seeger, Jackson Brown and organizations like Amnesty International have all called for Peltier’s release.
His son Chauncey Peltier said after the news, “It means my dad finally gets to go home. One of the biggest rights violation cases in history and one of the longest-held political prisoners in the United States. And he gets to go home finally. Man, I can’t explain how I feel.”
But Peltier will not be free. After he is released, he will serve the rest of his sentence under house arrest, possibly at his sister’s home in Fargo, North Dakota, or on the Turtle Mountain reservation.
Not everyone in Indian Country is in the mood to celebrate Peltier’s release from prison. The daughters of the late Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, who was a Mi’kmaq activist from Nova Scotia and a member of AIM, were surprised by the news. Denise Pictou Maloney, in an APTN interview, said they found the news “devastating.”
In 1976, Aquash’s body was found on the Pine Ridge Reservation with a bullet hole in the back of her head. Certain AIM leaders thought she might have been an FBI informant. Her daughters maintain that Peltier was complicit in her murder as someone who had interrogated Aquash while shoving a gun in her mouth and who might have ordered her slain. They also believe he could have testified in court about the case and revealed the ones responsible for their mother’s murder.
Pictou Maloney said Peltier “knew about what happened to my mom and at least was complicit and obstructed justice by not saying anything for 28 years.”
In 2024, the Assembly of First Nations rescinded a 1987 resolution demanding Peltier’s extradition back to Canada, and a 1999 resolution demanding the activist be freed.
Peltier, who is 80 years old, is in poor health suffering from diabetes, hypertension, and is partially blind and wheelchair bound.