Taking AIM and
Wounding Justice Through the Incarceration of Leonard Peltier
By Karla Fetrow
July 1, 2011
The
Elements of Special Prosecution
June 26th. marked the anniversary of one
of the greatest infamies committed in contemporary times by the U.S.
Government against its own First People. On that day, in 1975,
federal agents entered the Sioux Reservation, purportedly to
question a crime suspect. Their invasion dissolved into mayhem and
overt violence. Their primary motivation, however, was as it has
been since 1870; to coerce or persuade the property owners to sell
their land for industrial and natural resource development;
primarily in heavy minerals, including Black Hills gold. A gunfight
broke out and two of the F.B.I. agents were killed. Three of the
inhabitants were later arrested and charged with murder. Two of the
defendants were acquitted through a self-defense plea. One was
not. He was tried, found guilty, and given two consecutive life
sentences. His name was Leonard Peltier.
Attempts to free Leonard Peltier of the charges that occurred under
the same circumstances with the same anxiety to defend his own life,
have repeatedly failed. His initial arrest and confinement caused a
flurry of interest in Native American affairs. Free Leonard
Peltier posters decorated the homes of political activists,
protests lined the streets of major Universities, and a copy of
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee lay on the coffee table of every
informed household.
What does the book, which is a historical account of the 1870 s US
Governments battle with the Sioux Nation have to do with Leonard
Peltier? Quite a bit. In the late 1960 s, frustrated by decades of
discrimination and intrusive federal policies, Native American
community activists led by George Mitchell, Dennis Banks, and Clyde
Bellecourt met with 200 other tribal members to discuss these issues
and the means of taking over their own destiny. Together, they
created a new entity, a powerful voice speaking out against slum
housing, joblessness and racist treatment among the First People.
They became the foundation for the American Indian Movement (AIM).
The American Indian Movement opened the K-12 Heart of the Earth
Survival School in 1971, and in 1972, mounted the Trail of Broken
Treaties march on Washington, D.C., where they took over the Bureau
of Indian Affairs (BIA), in protest of its policies, and with
demands for their reform.
According to the Minnesota Historical Library, The revolutionary
fervor of AIMs leaders drew the attention of the FBI and the CIA,
who then set out to crush the movement. Their ruthless suppression
of AIM during the early 1970s sowed the seeds of the confrontation
that followed in February, 1973, when AIM leader Russell Means and
his followers took over the small Indian community of Wounded Knee,
South Dakota, in protest of its allegedly corrupt government. When
FBI agents were dispatched to remove the AIM occupiers, a standoff
ensued. Through the resulting siege that lasted for 71 days, two
people were killed, twelve wounded, and twelve hundred arrested.
Wounded Knee was a seminal event, drawing worldwide attention to the
plight of American Indians. AIM leaders were later tried in a
Minnesota court and, after a trial that lasted for eight months,
were acquitted of wrongdoing.
Wounded Knee is part of the eight district Pine Ridge Ogala Lakota
Reservation. Leonard Peltier traveled to the reservation in 1975 as
an AIM member to help try and bring a peaceful end to the violence.
He became caught up in the conflict when the two FBI agents entered
the reservation in search of a Pine Ridge resident named Jimmy
Eagle, who was wanted for questioning in a robbery and assault.
The invasion of federal officers, which lasted well into the late
nineteen seventies, continuing after the arrest of Peltier, is
referred to by the Lakota tribe as the reign of terror. Fifty-six
names are listed on a memorial page honoring the Pine Ridge members
who had lost their lives during this modern day battle with US
Government sponsored land grabbers. Fifty-six names that did not
make the headlines, whose deaths were not investigated to discover
the culpable, whose voices were not heard by the American public.
The fight Leonard Peltier joined in was the same as the seventy-one
day siege at Wounded Knee, the same as the one that silenced forever
fifty-six members of his community, the same as the one in which two
other men were arrested on charges of murder and later acquitted
through a self-defense plea.
According to the Leonard Peltier Defence Committee website, Key
witnesses were banned from testifying about FBI misconduct and
testimony about the conditions and atmosphere on the Pine Ridge
Reservation at the time of the shoot-out was severely restricted.
Important evidence, such as conflicting ballistics reports, was
ruled inadmissible. Still, the U.S. Prosecutor failed to produce a
single witness who could identify Peltier as the shooter. Instead,
the government tied a bullet casing found near the bodies of their
agents to the alleged murder weapon, arguing that this gun had been
the only one of its kind used during the shootout, and that it had
belonged to Peltier.
Later, Mr. Peltiers attorneys uncovered, in the FBIs own
documents, that more than one weapon of the type attributed to
Peltier had been present at the scene and the FBI had intentionally
concealed a ballistics report that showed the shell casing could not
have come from the alleged murder weapon. Other troubling
information emerged: the agents undoubtedly followed a red pickup
truck onto the land where the shoot-out took place, not the red and
white van driven by Peltier; and compelling evidence against several
other suspects existed and was concealed.
The Poet Behind the Bars
Leonard Peltier is behind bars, but his voice has not
been silenced. His book, Prison Writings; My Life is My Sun
Dance, has received International acclaim, attracting even the
attention of Britains Queen Elizabeth of Britain. Archbishop
Desmond Tutu called it: A deeply moving and very disturbing story
of a gross miscarriage of justice and an eloquent cri de coeur of
Native Americans for redress and to be regarded as human beings with
inalienable rights guaranteed under the United States Constitution.
We pray that it does not fall on deaf ears. America owes it to
herself.
His list of achievements has been extraordinary:
-
In 1992 he
established a scholarship at New York University for Native
American students seeking law degrees.
-
Instrumental
in the establishment and funding of a Washington (state) Native
American newspaper by and for Native young people.
-
Has been the
sponsoring father of two children in Childreach, one in El
Salvador, and the other in Guatemala.
-
Has worked to
have prisoners artwork displayed around the country and the
world in art galleries in hopes of starting art programs for
prisoners and increasing their self-confidence.
-
Has sponsored
several clothing and toy drives for reservations.
-
Distributes to
Head Start and halfway houses, as well as womens centers.
-
Every year he
has sponsored a Christmas gift drive for the children of Pine
Ridge, SD. Organized and emergency food drive for the people of
Pohlo, Mexico in response to the Acteal Massacre.
-
Serves on the
board of the Rosenberg Fund for Children.
-
Donates his
artwork to several human rights and social welfare organizations
in order to help them raise funds. This most recently includes
the ACLU, Trail of Hope (a Native American conference dealing
with drug and alcohol addiction), World Peace and Prayer Day,
the First Nation Student Association, and the Buffalo Trust
Fund.
By donating his
paintings to the Leonard Peltier Charitable Foundation, he was able
to supply computers and educational supplies such as books and
encyclopedias to libraries and families on Pine Ridge.
By donating his paintings to the LPCF, he was also able to raise
substantial supplies for the people of Pine Ridge after last years
devastating tornado hit and caused a multitude of damage on the
reservation.
He has been widely recognized for his efforts and has won several
human rights awards, including the North Star Frederick Douglas
Award, Humanist of the Year Award, and the International Human
Rights Prize.
Americas Third World Citizens
Understanding Peltiers passion requires understanding
the conditions of the Pine Ridge Reservation. The 11,000-square
mile (approximately 2,700,000 acres) Pine Ridge Reservation is the
second-largest Native American Reservation within the United
States. It is roughly the size of the State of Connecticut.
According to the Oglala Sioux tribal statistics, approximately
1,700,000 acres of this land are owned by the Tribe or by tribal
members.
The topography of the Pine Ridge Reservation includes the barren
Badlands, rolling grassland hills, dryland prairie, and areas dotted
with pine trees.
The Pine Ridge Reservation is home to approximately 40,000 persons,
35% of which are under the age of 18. The latest Federal Census
shows the median age to be 20.6 years. Approximately half the
residents of the Reservation are registered tribal members of the
Oglala Lakota Sioux Nation.
The median income of the Pine Ridge Reservation is $2,600 to $3,500
a year. The unemployment rate averages around 83-85% and can be
higher in the winter when travel is difficult or even impossible.
The average life expectancy for women is fifty-two years, for men,
its forty-eight. The rate of diabetes and tuberculosis are eight
hundred times the U.S. National average. The rate of cervical
cancer is five hundred times the U.S. National average.
It is reported that at least 60% of the homes on the Pine Ridge
Reservation are infested with Black Mold, Stachybotrys. This
infestation causes an often-fatal condition with infants, children,
elderly, those with damaged immune systems, and those with lung and
pulmonary conditions at the highest risk. Exposure to this mold can
cause hemorrhaging of the lungs and brain as well as cancer.
A Federal Commodity Food Program is active but supplies mostly
inappropriate foods (high in carbohydrate and/or sugar) for the
largely diabetic population of the Reservation. A small non-profit
Food Co-op is in operation on the Reservation but is available only
for those with funds to participate.
In most of the treaties between the U.S. Government and Indian
Nations, the U.S. government agreed to provide adequate medical care
for Indians in return for vast quantities of land. The Indian
Health Services (IHS) was set up to administer the health care for
Indians under these treaties and receives an appropriation each year
to fund Indian health care. Unfortunately, the appropriation is very
small compared to the need and there is little hope for increased
funding from Congress. The IHS is understaffed and ill-equipped and
cant possibly address the needs of Indian communities. Nowhere is
this more apparent than on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
Living conditions are crowded. As many as seventeen people live in
two and three bedroom homes, while homes built to contain six to
eight people will have up to thirty inhabitants. Many of the homes
lack adequate furniture, use their cooking stove for heat, and some
have only dirt floors. Thirty-nine percent of the homes are without
electricity. Sixty percent of the reservation families have no
land-line telephones. Computers and Internet connections are rare.
Efforts to improve their living conditions by investing in
businesses have been met with frustration. Currently there are no
movie theaters, only one grocery store, one motel and a few scatter
bed and breakfast arrangements. Several of the banks and lending
institutions nearest to the Reservation have been targeted for
investigation of fraudulent or predatory lending practices, with the
citizens of the Pine Ridge Reservation as their victims.
Many wells and much of the water and land on the Reservation is
contaminated with pesticides and other poisons from farming, mining,
open dumps, and commercial and governmental mining operations
outside the Reservation. A further source of contamination is
buried ordnance and hazardous materials from closed U.S. military
bombing ranges on the Reservation.
Scientific studies show that the High Plains/Oglala Aquifer which
begins underneath the Pine Ridge Reservation is predicted to run dry
in less than 30 years due to commercial interest use and dryland
farming in numerous states south of the Reservation. This critical
North American underground water resource is not renewable at
anything near the present consumption rate. The recent years of
drought have simply accelerated the problem.
Scientific studies show that much of the High Plains/Oglala Aquifer
has been contaminated with farming pesticides and commercial,
factory, mining, and industrial contaminants in the States of South
Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma,
and Texas.
Silent No Longer
The conditions of the Sioux reservation are not unique.
To varying degrees, these conditions exist on nearly all the U.S.
reservations. It is to this plight that Peltier and others like
himself would address our attention. Its not an appeal to
assimilate into a society that rejects their cultural heritage, but
an appeal to accept them complete with their culture. It is not an
appeal for hand-outs but for fair business practices. Its not an
appeal based on abandoning their old ways, but one of incorporating
modern technology and education for a new nation. For over a
hundred years, Pine Ridge has defended itself against
self-interested groups that sought to establish themselves from
within. Now they are encroached upon by these same interest groups
from without. They have been harmed. They have lost their means of
livelihood, their health, their clean water, and yet they keep
gathering. The community grows as their urban cousins leave the
cities to join them. They gather because they must. Their
desperation is a call to all who have been swept aside as
unimportant, unsubstantial, inconvenient. They will be heard.
Silence, they say, is the voice of complicity.
But silence is impossible.
Silence screams.
Silence is a message,
just as doing nothing is an act.
-Leonard Peltier-
Leonard Peltier was born September 12, 1944. In 1977, at the age of
thirty-three, he was sentenced to prison. In 2009, he was granted a
full hearing before the United States Parole Commission. His parole
request was denied. Peltiers next scheduled hearing is set for
July, 2024. Should he live that long, he will be eighty years old.
He has already spent more than half his life in prison for a crime
that began as a crime against the Native American people and that
amounts to selective prosecution, suppression and the concealment of
vital evidence. In the time he has spent behind bars, he has
contributed more to the good of his country than most of our
Senators, Representatives, Congressmen, diplomats, business owners
and billionaires. He is a humanitarian, yet the humanitarian
compassion of the US public has not freed him. He is an author, a
poet, a craftsman, a spokesperson for human rights. History will
not remember him as a murderer, but as a man who sought equality.
The wounded hearts, suffering under the tyranny of corruption, will
embrace him.
Whatever debts he owed society, Peltier has more than adequately
paid them. Society owes him a debt in return. It owes him the safe
guarding of the rights of Americas First People to thrive. It owes
him recognition of his worth, which cannot be measured in terms of
war against the Government of the U.S., or in personal wealth, but
in his deeds. It owes him his freedom.
If you would like to read the messages of Leonard Peltier, click
here.
http://subversify.com/2011/07/01/taking-aim-and-wounding-justice-through-the-incarceration-of-leonard-peltier/
Resources:
http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/93aim.html
http://www.leonardpeltier.net/theman.htm
http://www.nativevillage.org/Messages%20from%20the%20People/the%20arrogance%20of%20ignorance.htm
http://www.leonardpeltier.net/
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