Leonard Peltier celebrated his 84th birthday on September 12, his first outside prison walls since 1976. Last January 19, just before he left office, US President Joe Biden commuted Peltier’s sentence to indefinite home arrest.
Peltier was the one of the longest-serving Indigenous prisoners in the United States. Many felt he was a political prisoner rather than someone jailed for allegedly killing two FBI agents in cold blood.
Peltier was a member of the American Indian Movement, and the group had gone to the Pine Ridge Reservation in the early 1970s because Tribal chairman Richard Wilson had created a private militia called Guardians of the Oglala Nation or GOON. They were alleged to attack political opponents of Wilson.
In February 1973, AIM and Lakota enacted an armed takeover of Wounded Knee. In June 1975, two FBI agents entered the reservation looking for Jimmy Eagle for questioning. They reported following a red and white vehicle. When it stopped a firefight broke out and two FBI agents were killed.
Peltier fled to Canada and was arrested in February 1976 by the RCMP and extradited to the US in December. This was based on FBI documents that Canada’s then-Solicitor General would later say contained false information.
An Indigenous woman claiming to be Peltier’s girlfriend said she saw the killing. Other people including Peltier said she didn’t even know Peltier and wasn’t present during the incident. Later, she would say the FBI coerced her into making the claims. She wasn’t the only witness to recant their testimony saying they too were coerced by the FBI. The FBI would change the vehicle description to orange and white to match Peltier’s.
Even James Reynolds, the US Attorney who supervised the prosecution against Peltier, wrote a letter to President Biden that read, “I have realized that the prosecution and continued incarceration of Mr. Peltier was and is unjust. We were not able to prove that Mr. Peltier personally committed any offense on the Pine Ridge Reservation.”
When Peltier turned 80, he released the following statement:
Greetings my Friends, Loved Ones, Relatives, Supporters!
When I was a child, I looked to my Elders to learn how to live within Mother Earth’s rhythms.
I yearn to sit by the fire with my loved ones and have our children look to me to learn the mysteries of Mother Earth. I want to laugh, share the pipe, and gaze into the eyes of a woman who does not carry handcuffs.
I have become an Elder. I suppose, in many ways, I am still the nine-year-old who founded The Resistance among my peers at Wahpeton Boarding School, the young man willing to sacrifice everything to protect my people, and the young man who worked hard and played hard when the chance arose.
At the same time, I feel every second of these past eighty years wreaking havoc on my body.
I have been losing my eyesight, but my inner vision is not that of an old man. I long to get out there and work. My mind is filled with ideas to combat the greed and corruption that spread like a poisonous mold through the halls of those who govern us.
Happy Birthday Leonard Peltier, finally home with family and friends.