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Peltier, Leonard (1944–)

Leonard Peltier has been imprisoned since 1977 for the June 26, 1975, shoot-out between members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, in which two federal agents were killed. He is currently in Leavenworth (Kansas) Federal Penitentiary, where he is serving two consecutive life sentences. To people around the world, Peltier is a symbol of the history of injustice against indigenous people. Amnesty International considers him a political prisoner, targeted for his activism.

Peltier's Background

Peltier came from a large family of 13 siblings who lived in poverty on the Anishinabe (Chippewa) Turtle Mountain Reservation, just south of the Canadian border in North Dakota. At age eight, he was forced to attend a residential boarding school run by the U.S. government, where he was forbidden to speak his native language of the Anishinabe and Lakota nations. After he returned, the government closed the reservation at Turtle Mountain and withdrew all federal assistance, causing terrible hunger and poverty among its inhabitants. At this point Peltier witnessed protests against these policies, and he had his first run-ins with the law. He served two weeks in jail for siphoning diesel fuel from a truck to heat his grandmother's home. At this time he also dropped out of school.

In 1965, Peltier moved to Seattle, where he worked with other Native people. His political consciousness was further awakened as he traveled to different Native communities and became involved in various struggles. The American Indian Movement formed in 1968, and Peltier was involved in the Denver chapter.

In 1970, Peltier participated in an occupation of abandoned buildings near Seattle to test federal law giving Indians rights to lands abandoned by federal agencies. The activists were beaten and jailed. Later Peltier joined the 1972 Trail of Broken Treaties caravan to Washington, D.C., where AIM occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs offices. Upon returning to Milwaukee, Peltier was arrested for a fight with police and spent five months in jail awaiting trial. After bailing out from jail, Peltier went underground, fearing he would not get a fair trial. He resurfaced in 1975 at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, where he went in response to the request of Native elders.

Case Facts

In the early and mid-1970s, the Pine Ridge Reservation was fraught with problems. The Tribal Chairman, Dick Wilson, and his Guardians of the Oglala Nations (GOON) squad, armed by the FBI, ruled the reservation, often harassing those who opposed them. During this time period, 64 local Natives were murdered and 300 were harassed or beaten. The FBI's Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) targeted AIM as a dissident group, and more than a hundred FBI agents occupied Pine Ridge.

On June 26, 1975, the FBI entered the Jumping Bull Ranch, ostensibly looking for a young Native man who had stolen a pair of boots. Many AIM activists were camping on the property. A shoot-out ensued in which two FBI agents, Jack Coler and Ron Williams, and an Indian man, Joe Stuntz, died. Murder charges were brought against Peltier, Dino Butler, and Bob Robideau. Butler and Robideau were acquitted on the grounds of self-defense, after they submitted information about the regime of fear and terror that existed at the reservation at the time. Peltier, in contrast, fled to Canada, convinced he would not receive a fair trial. He was extradited on a falsified affidavit from a Native American woman, Myrtle Poor Bear, who later recanted her testimony that she saw him murder the agents. In fact, she had never met Peltier and was not present at the shoot-out.

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