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The following comes from Wotanging Ikche -- Native American News Volume 06, Issue 002, 10 January 1998 --------- "RE: Leonard Peltier/Political Prisoner" ---------
Date: Thu, 1 Jan 1998 13:01:03 -0600 (CST) "Any movement that fails to support its political internees is a sham movement!" - Ojore N. Lutalo The following information comes from "CAN'T JAIL THE SPIRIT", Third Edition, October, 1992; Editorial El Coqui, Publishers - 1671 N. Claremont, Chicago, IL 60647, 312-342-8027. Cost $12.00. VERY WELL worth the money! LEONARD PELTIER - Native American Political Prisoner Leonard Peltier is a 49-year-old Anishinabe/Lakota born on the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota. Peltier traces the roots of his political activism to the racism and brutal poverty which he witnessed growing up there. In 1958, during a period when the United States was attempting to "terminate" reservations (i.e. unilaterally abrogate the international agreements allocating these lands to Indian people) and relocate Indians to urban ghettos, Peltier joined his relatives in the Pacific Northwest. In 1970, an opportunity presented itself for him to express his aspirations to actively help his people. A group of Indians occupied Ft. Lawton, an abandoned military base in Seattle, Wash. The base was legally Indian land, and Peltier joined the occupiers who were demanding its return. It was here that Peltier first met American Indian Movement (AIM) organizers. After the occupation ended, Peltier became increasingly active in AIM politics. In 1972, he helped to organize the Trail of Broken Treaties in the Milwaukee, Wis. area. The Trail, a march from reservations across the U.S. to Washington, D.C., intended to focus public attention on the oppression of Indian people, ended, due to dishonesty and incompetence on the part of federal officials, with the occupation and destruction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters. Peltier actively participated in the occupation, acting as security coordinator. It was following the Trail of Broken Treaties that the FBI targeted the "AIM Leadership" for neutralization, either by embroiling them in endless, fabricated court cases or by outright assassination. Upon his return to Milwaukee, Peltier was brutally assaulted by two off-duty policemen and then charged with attempted murder for trying to defend himself. He spent five months in jail on the charges and went underground soon after making bond. He was later acquitted of the charges and the FBI was implicated in instigating the attack. During 1973 and 1974, the Northwest AIM Group of which Peltier was a member became increasingly relied upon to provide security for AIM activities. In the spring of 1975, the group established an encampment on the land of the Jumping Bull Family near Oglala, S.D., on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Since 1972, Pine Ridge had been the scene of a massive paramilitary "peacekeeping" operation by then FBI Director William Webster; it was, like the British "peacekeeping" operation in Northern Ireland, actually counterinsurgency warfare. Carried out under FBI direction by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) police and a private army known as the GOONs, this large-scale terrorist operation was directly responsible for the deaths of more than sixty AIM members and supporters and for hundreds of assaults. The Jumping Bull camp was established at the request of Oglala organizers and traditional elders to protect their community from further GOON depredations. The FBI found the presence of the camp and AIM interference with GOON activities intolerable, but noted that military force would be required to assault the camp. What they lacked was a justification. This was created on June 26, 1975, when FBI Special Agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams entered the Jumping Bull property to, as one AIM member put it, serve a warrant they didn't have on someone who wasn't there for a crime over which they had no jurisdiction. This rash act precipitated a firefight which eventually involved more than 200 federal troops and left Coler, Williams, and AIM member Joe Stuntz Killsright dead. Despite a massive manhunt characterized by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights as "an over- reaction which takes on the aspects of a vendetta ... a full-scale military invasion," the FBI was unable to find the participants in the firefight. Eventually, they charged three Northwest AIM members, Leonard Peltier, Bob Robideau, and Dino Butler in the deaths of the agents. Butler and Robideau were tried in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in July 1976. To the dismay of the FBI and federal prosecutors, the jury, horrified by evidence of FBI complicity in a large-scale campaign of terrorism, found the defendants not guilty on the grounds that they had acted in self- defense. The government vowed to ensure that this did not happen in the case of Leonard Peltier. He was fraudulently extradited from Canada in 1976 and run through a sham trial in the spring of 1977 in Fargo, N.D. Judge Paul Benson cooperated with the FBI in refusing to allow the jury to hear testimony of FBI misconduct and interfering with the cross- examination of prosecution witnesses who were clearly lying. Peltier was found guilty of two counts of first degree murder on the basis of fabricated evidence and coerced testimony. He was sentenced to two consecutive life terms. His conviction has been upheld through two rounds of appeals despite the FOIA documents proving that the FBI lied concerning the most important evidence presented by the prosecution and an admission by DA Lynn Crooks that he "couldn't prove who shot those agents." Peltier was sent directly to USP Marion, disproving recent media allegations that it is used only for prisoners who have committed crimes in prison. Peltier continued to function as an activist within the "super-max" prison. He, his family, and his supporters participated in the struggle for prisoners' rights and were in the forefront during the hunger strike, work stoppage, marches, and rallies of the early 1980s. In April 1984, Leonard, Standing Deer, and Albert Garza began a spiritual fast to call attention to the systematic denial of religious rights at Marion. Leonard was transferred to Springfield Medical Center and eventually to Leavenworth, where he remains today. Peltier's uncompromising resistance fueled the growth of an international movement which has focused attention not only on his case but upon broader issues of indigenous land rights and POWs/political prisoners in the U.S. Millions of individuals have written letters and signed petitions demanding a new trial, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu, fifty members of the U. S. Congress, and fifty-one members of the Canadian Parliament. Mikhail Gorbachev evoked a wave of protest from the U.S. press when he responded to Reagan's "human rights agenda" by suggesting the U.S. clean up its human rights violations, citing Indians in general and Leonard Peltier in particular. Currently, Peltier supporters are calling for a Congressional investigation into the FBI's criminal activity which led to his imprisonment. In light of recent revelations of FBI misconduct, public support for such an investigation is growing. As Leonard has recently said, "We still have a long way to go, but my heart is strong, knowing that one day I will be free, as will all political prisoners, as will all people."
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