Peltier, Leonard

PELTIER, LEONARD (b. 1944). During the 1980s Leonard Peltier, an Ojibwa-Sioux political activist associated with the American Indian Movement (AIM), became the most prominent political prisoner in the United States. Efforts on his behalf forged a wide coalition of radical, liberal, civil rights, and ethnic groups in much the way the defense of Tom Mooney had earlier in the century.

Peltier was born and raised on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation near Belcourt, North Dakota. In his early twenties, after moving to Seattle in 1965, he became politically active. Inspired by the Native American occupation of Alcatraz Island, he was among a group of fourteen Native Americans who occupied Fort Lawton outside Seattle in an effort to assert Indian claims to abandoned federal property. Shortly after the occupation ended, Peltier went to the AIM office in Denver, where he met Vernon Bellecourt and dedicated himself to the fight for Indian rights and cultural renewal, making the fight against alcoholism one of his priorities. In 1972 he participated in the Trail of Broken Treaties, a march starting on the West Coast and ending in Washington, D.C., with a trashing of the offices of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Peltier then went to the Pine Ridge Reservation, where AIM had established a major organizing effort.

On 26 June 1975, two agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation were killed at Pine Ridge in a shootout still clouded in controversy. The Bureau has always maintained the Native Americans began the armed conflict, and the Native Americans have always maintained they were acting in self-defense. Four men were charged with the slayings. One was released on the basis of weak evidence, and two others were formally acquitted on the basis that they had shot in self-defense. The fourth, Leonard Peltier, fled to Canada and was not tried until his return a year later. He was convicted of aiding and abetting in the death of two federal agents. He managed to escape from prison in 1979, but he was apprehended three days later. Seven years were added to his two pre-existing life sentences.

AIM contended that the original trial had been a frame-up with some of the key evidence manufactured. Later, Peltier defense committees would maintain that evidence favorable to Peltier had been withheld. While Peltier was experiencing a bitter time in prison, including three years of solitary confinement at the federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, his supporters mounted a clemency campaign. This effort coincided with the decline of the New Left, but Peltier’s supporters persevered.

After more than a decade of work, the Peltier defense committee targeted 1993, the United Nations Year of Indigenous People, as the time for maximum effort. The goal was to generate at least a million signatures on letters, petitions, and resolutions urging clemency. Important human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and the National Association of Christians and Jews lent their support. Desmond Tutu of South Africa and the archbishop of Canterbury also urged clemency. The Human Rights Commission in Spain went so far as to honor Peltier for “defending the historical and cultural rights of his people against the genocide of his race.” A long segment on Peltier’s plight appeared on 60 Minutes, a CBS television program that is consistently one of the ten most watched weekly programs. Hollywood actor/filmmaker Robert Redford produced and narrated Incident at Oglala, a documentary highly favorable to Peltier.

The massive 1993 effort brought Peltier considerable public visibility, but his release was not forthcoming. Subsequent international and national efforts sought a presidential pardon. Although supported by notables such as Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama, they also have not been successful. Incarcerated in the U.S. Penitentiary in Coleman, Florida, Leonard Peltier will likely spend the rest of his life in prison.

Arden, Harvey. Have You Thought About Leonard Peltier Lately? Houston, TX: HYT Books, 2004.

Messerschmidt, Jim. The Trial of Leonard Peltier. Boston: South End Press, 1983; revised with new afterword, 1989.

Peltier, Leonard. “War against the American Nation.” In It Did Happen Here: Recollections of Political Repression in America, edited by Bud Shultz and Ruth Shultz. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.

International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee Website. https://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info