"Resist," Says Tribal Elder Leonard Peltier Freed After 49 Years
- @ Cynthia Adina Kirkwood
- Apr 8
- 17 min read
"Today I am finally free! They may have imprisoned me, but they never took my spirit! Thank you to all my supporters throughout the world who fought for my freedom. I am finally going home. I look forward to seeing my friends, my family and my community. It's a good day today," Leonard Peltier said in an NDN Collective press release (February 18). (Photo by Anna Paige/InForum: The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead )
Sometimes it can be hard to believe that right will win in the end. When buried in U.S. presidential executive orders, which disrespect Americans, their friends and their foes, it can be difficult to catch our breath.
And then, something unexpected happens, and hope is restored again.
After nearly five decades behind prison bars, Leonard Peltier, 80, a member of the American Indian Movement (AIM), walked out of a federal detention center in Coleman, Florida, on February 18 after outgoing United States President Joe Biden commuted his two life sentences to home confinement, reported Al Jazeera (February 18).
The warrior became a global symbol of the rights of indigenous people.
He also was known as Gwarth-ee-lass (He Leads the People) and as Tate Wikikuwa (Wind Chases the Sun) before he became known as U.S. Prisoner No. 89637-132, he wrote in his memoir, Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance (1999).
He walked out of prison "a survivor", with his "heart intact," just as he had from Wahpeton Indian School, North Dakota, a boarding school, nearly seven decades ago, he told Native News Online (June 1, 2022), where "Kill the Indian in him, Save the man" was the prevailing Indian boarding school ethos around the country.
Leonard Peltier, of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewas, had long maintained his innocence in the murder of two Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents in a June 26, 1975, shooting during the American Indian Movement's 71-day siege at the site of the Wounded Knee massacre, where the U. S. Army had slaughtered hundreds of Lakota people in 1890.
His Homecoming
On the day of his coming home, lining the road "babies and elders alike braved bitter cold to catch a glimpse of him" as his vehicle crossed the line of the Turtle Mountain Reservation, reported InForum: The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead (February 19).
At the welcome home celebration the next day, it was standing room only at the Belcourt Sky Dance Casino & Resort. Into the room, he followed the purifying smoke of burning sage and a line of dancers and drummers, jingling with their regalia and raising their voices in joy. There were colorful homemade banners. There were babies. And there was hope.
Hope, more than anything, was what Gwarth-ee-lass (He Leads the People) brought home.
A star quilt, meant to honor, protect and celebrate him, was draped around his shoulders, reported KFYR-TV (February 19). (Photo by Anna Paige/The Forum)
His sister, Sheila Peltier, said that the casino planned to serve stew, the meal that Leonard was most excited about eating again, reported The Forum.
Her brother's first words to his people were:
"Hello, everybody. I love all of you.
"It's been 49 years straight in prison for something I didn't do," he said, close to tears. Many in the audience did shed tears. "I didn't think I was going to make it."
The day before his release, Sheila Peltier said that her brother's homecoming marked a moment of healing for his family, reported InForum: The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead (February 17).
It's impossible to get all those missed decades back, but having him closer to home will allow the family "to get to know our brother again".
Several of his sisters live in Fargo, reported The Forum. He has six children, according to the Navajo Times, and at least one grandson. He has relatives who were born after his incarceration, a niece whom he has never met and his youngest daughter, who was an outspoken advocate of his release.
At Home Interview
Peltier, in his new home arranged by his tribe on the Turtle Mountain Reservation, his tribal homeland in North Dakota, spoke with The Associated Press (February 28) in an exclusive interview:
"I'm going to spend the rest of my life fighting for our people because we ain't finished yet. We're still in danger."
The activist said he understands the threat of the rise of the far right to tribal nations and native American people. He also believes that, like previous administrations, President Donald Trump will come for minerals and oil on tribal lands.
"You don't have to get violent. You don't have to do nothing like that. Just get out there and stand up. We got to resist."
Human-rights groups, such as Amnesty International, and political figures, such as Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and the 14th Dalai Lama, campaigned for clemency for the activist.
Incident at Oglala (1983), narrated by Robert Redford and directed by Michael Apted, chronicles the events surrounding the second Wounded Knee massacre.
Also, Viking Penguin Press published Peter Matthiessen's In the Spirit of Crazy Horse: The Story of Leonard Peltier and the FBI's War on the American Indian Movement in 1983. After the filing of two libel lawsuits by the former governor of South Dakota and an FBI agent, the New York house destroyed the copies of the book it had in its warehouse, thereby taking it out of print for seven years. After various courts dismissed libel lawsuits and their decisions were affirmed upon appeal, upholding the First Amendment's freedom of speech, Viking finally published it as a paperback.
"Peltier Can Barely Walk."
President Biden did not pardon Peltier, reported The Associated Press (February 28). He said that he was commuting Peltier's sentence because of the prisoner's age, his declining health and the long stretch of time he had served behind bars. Peltier is confined to his home and surrounding community.
"Peltier can barely walk," reported the Navajo Times (June 27, 2024). "He needs a wheelchair but uses a walker. He must make do talking and eating with the few remaining teeth he has. He suffers from diabetes, high blood pressure, the effects of a previous stroke and complications from jaw surgery. (A condition) was diagnosed as a potentially fatal abdominal aortic aneurysm, and he runs the risk of COVID-19 reinfection."
He wants to make a living selling his paintings, as he did in prison, reported The Associated Press. He also plans to write more books and train young activists. Seeing the younger generation fight the same fight gave meaning to his 49 incarcerated years.
"It makes me feel good, man, it does," he said, holding back tears. "I'm thinking, well, I didn't give my life for nothing."
Peltier ran for president of the United States in 2004, winning the nomination of the Peace and Freedom Party, according to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. In 2020, he ran for vice president on the Party for Socialism and Liberation, according to Ballotpedia.
Nick Tilsen, president of the NDN Collective, founded in 2018 to defend, develop and decolonize indigenous peoples, credits the American Indian Movement (AIM) and others for the majority of the rights which native Americans have today, including religious freedom, operating casinos and tribal colleges as well as entering into contracts with the federal government to oversee schools and other services, reported The Associated Press (June 10, 2024).
It was only on August 11, 1978, that the American Indian Religious Freedom Act became law.
Leonard Peltier during his trial
When Leonard Peltier was about 21 in 1965, he moved from Turtle Mountain Reservation, where he had been living with his father, to Seattle, Washington. He worked as a welder and a construction worker, according to Wikipedia from Gale Biographies: Popular People (2018).
Eventually, he became co-owner of an auto mechanics shop. The garage's upper level became a halfway house for native Americans who were re-entering society after serving prison sentences, fighting alcohol addiction or needed a safe place for some other reason.
However, the halfway house took a financial toll on the shop. Peltier and the other owners closed it.
In Seattle, he was involved in a variety of causes championing native American rights. He learned of the factional tensions at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota, between
tribal government leadership, considered corrupt, and traditionalist members of the Lakota tribe.
Dennis Banks (1937-2017) invited Leonard Peltier to join the American Indian Movement (AIM), which he co-founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 1972, Peltier became a member.
His Beginnings
Born on September 12, 1944, in Grand Forks, North Dakota, Leonard Peltier was the 11th of 13 children, according to Britannica encyclopedia. Four years later, his parents divorced and he and a sister were sent to live with their paternal grandparents on the Turtle Mountain Reservation.
Five years later, at age nine, he was taken from his grandmother and sent to Wahpeton Indian School, North Dakota, a boarding school, for four years. He, and so many other children, endured much more than not being forbidden to speak their language. He survived "the beginning of a nightmare that, at 77 years old, still keeps me awake some nights". His story poured out of him like an ancient bottle, finally uncorked. He told Native News Online (June 1, 2022):
When I lost my grandfather in 1952, life changed forever.
He was a good and kind man, and he was my mentor and knew how to live off the land. But then he got pneumonia and did not survive. I will never forget watching him die from the foot of his bed. Even now, that sad memory comes back to me as I lay in my bunk at night in a federal penitentiary.
About a year after my grandpa died, my grandma had to go to the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to beg for help for her and me, my sister Betty Ann and cousin Pauline. As it turned out, that made things much worse for us. Now, we had to worry about the BIA agents coming to take us away. I grew up with the stories. I was old enough to know what happened when the government took you away. I knew some children never came home.
So we -- my grandma and my sisters and I -- watched for new cars from the top of the hill. Indian cars were old and made a lot of noise so we heard them coming. We were always prepared to run and hide in the woods.
I Will Never Forget That Government Car
But then one day, I forgot to run and hide and the girls were hiding in the house. This shiny car drove up the hill and stopped in front of our house. A man stepped out of a 1952 Chevy Fleetline. I will never forget that government car.
Grandma could not understand much of what he said, and no other adult was there. But she finally understood that he came to take us away. The government man told us he was taking us away to a boarding school because my grandma could not take care of us. I loved my grandma. I knew he was wrong.
She started to cry and pleaded with him not to take us. She cried out, but he told her she would be jailed if she tried to interfere. That was it. I said nothing. I was nine years old, but I was afraid if I said anything or tried to run, the government man would take my grandma and put her in jail.
So I watched as Grandma packed the few clothes we had and put them in a small bundle.
"Protect your sisters. Do not let anyone harm them," Grandma told me before the government man took us away.
I promised her I would. But I almost broke out crying. In a single day, my whole world changed. I know I was just a little kid, but I just felt so helpless.
No Rights Just Like Prison
Maybe that day was my introduction to this destiny I did not choose. Little did I know that those school years would condition me well. I was treated very badly by the people in that school, but it made me stronger. I found out in boarding school I had no rights. So I guess I am not surprised that at 77 and still locked up, it is the same for me now.
The government man drove us to a parking lot with a long line of buses at the Belcourt high school. Families were saying goodbye. Children and parents crying in each other's arms. Some of the traditional Natives were chanting in that way they do when someone has passed. It was an eerie sound for a small boy and a chill ran up my back. I almost lost it.
Betty and cousin Pauline were crying, and I could not do or say anything to get them to stop. I thought: "I have to stay strong and be ready to fight if anyone tries to hurt them." They held onto me so tight I couldn't move at times, though. I can only describe the scene at the bus loading as one of horror. I know I was terrified.
Everyone was crying as they kept yelling at us to get on the bus. The BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) officials and Indian Police were watching and guarding. They made sure no one escaped and no Indians came to help us. They were all powerless to come and take us home.
We traveled all day. Poor Betty and Pauline cried all the way. They asked for water and to use the restroom only once-- the bus driver told them to shut up and sit down. I told them I had to watch where we were going. Of we got away, we needed to know how to get home. Getting home -- all I could think about was getting home, but I soon understood that there were too many turns. I could not remember them all.
We finally got to a rest stop. Only a few at a time were allowed to get out. Everyone had to urinate so badly, poor Betty and Pauline barely made it.
It Was Hell
When we finally got to Wahpeton, they separated us and lined us up in military formation, smallest to tallest.
The girls were sent to the girls' dorm, a two-story building, and us boys to the other one. The dining hall was in the middle, the school was across the road. To rez kids, this looked scary as hell. It was hell!
His sisters, Sheila Peltier, left, and Betty Ann, the latter who was taken with him from their grandmother to attend Indian boarding school (Photo by Chris Flynn/The Forum in June 2024)
I could hear Betty and Pauline crying and screaming for me not to leave them. I came close to breaking down. But I knew I had to show them I was strong and brave. I did not cry. Mostly for their sake.
Other kids did break down. It was the beginning of a nightmare that at 77 years old, the fear of it all still keeps me awake some nights.
The matrons used our fear against us. They yelled, "Shut your mouths . . . stop your damned crying . . . it won't help."
Scalding Water, DDT, Vaseline, Beatings
Some of us were angry, but we were scared. We had to whisper our anger. They marched us down to the basement where the shower and laundry rooms and the barber shop was. First, they buzz-cut our hair off. Then they took us to the showers and stripped off all our clothes. This was disrespectful and humiliating. In shame, we marched into the showers. They had set them on HOT. Very HOT.
Some of the kids screamed as the water scalded them. None of us knew how to adjust the temperature. The older kids showed us Some kids never wanted to go to the showers again -- they had to be forced.
When we left the showers they put DDT (an insecticide used in agriculture) all over us. The poison even got in our eyes and mouths. They said it was to kill lice and other insects that carried disease.
Then the matrons sat on benches with a large jar of Vaseline. They lined us up very close together, naked and spread it on the top and back of our ankles, arms, and elbows. They then took a towel, wrapped it around their finger and rubbed the Vaseline off. If any dead skin came off, we were hit with a fat ruler. That sucker hurt. Then we were sent back to wash again. We rubbed our skin raw so as not to get beaten.
A young Native student came and brought me over to the girls' dorm that first night. Betty and Pauline were still clinging to each other, crying. I almost broke down again. I somehow managed to stay strong and console them. I told them that they would beat me if they didn't stop and that worked.
Later, we were assigned to wash the smaller kids. If dead skin was found after we washed them, we got the beating. They made it clear they considered us filthy from the inside out. They made it clear we were hated. With every look, with every cruel look, they continued a war our ancestors had fought since their ancestors landed here back in 1492.
The sound of the ruler hitting the boys and their screams is something that still affects me whenever I see someone striking a child on TV or in a picture.
When I was older, I was forced to scrub the little kids. A small boy named White Cloud had tender skin and cried, so I did not scrub him as hard as they told me to do it. They found dead skin and they beat me. I had to scrub him again, with a stiff brush like we used to scrub the floor, only smaller. I was angry and I scrubbed until he started to bleed.
How does a person live with those memories?
We Spoke Our Language in Secret
As time passed and I lay in my bed, I heard crying and whimpering every night. So much crying and so much fear. The bigger kids would try to quiet the little ones, telling them the matrons would come in and beat them if they didn't stop.
Some older boys told us they were trying to scare us into being submissive, but for some of us, our pain turned to hate and it made us rebellious.
We spoke our language. We sang our songs. And we prayed in our languages, all in secret. We called ourselves the Resisters, after the famous French Resistance.
I think I've hidden my hate and my anger throughout my entire life. It was impossible to manage as a kid. But I learned how to deal with their demons. I had to, as I was determined not to ever become one of them. I never felt bigger by hurting others. I am my grandmother's legacy, not Wahpeton's.
Lost Children
There was a prison cell in the basement. In my last year at Wahpeton, they used it for storage. They had me take a broken chair down there one time, and I saw it. I thought of what kids must have gone through in that prison cell in the past. I heard some children committed suicide and had been buried somewhere on the grounds. We did not want to know where this sacred ground was, so we never tried to find it. I admit I was scared.
What could be worse -- the yelling and beatings, or being buried there?
Some heard phantom crying in the night. Lost children, hurt so badly they took their own lives. Some of us would not allow ourselves to believe they were spirits crying.
At one point we heard (President Dwight) Eisenhower ordered no more maltreatment of Native children. It took a couple of years for the law to be enforced and it did not come in time for us -- if it ever came at all. The staff was used to having free rein to beat the hell out of children who could not fight back.
I Rise When I Help You Rise
I used to sit around with Dennis Banks and other men and talk about our days at Wahpeton. We could not find a single pleasant memory. Our memories from those vulnerable, formative years are harsh and violent. But we learned one thing from those awful places your people sent us to: We are survivors.
And we survived with our hearts intact.
You don't treat people badly like that. I rise only when I help you rise. Despite all those beatings, I still believe it. It's a law, like physics, and it's true. You get nowhere being mean and disrespecting the feelings of others, especially the most vulnerable. I have seen both kinds of people and more than my share of evil ones, and I know I'm right.
I rise only when I help you rise.
At the celebratory event, Gwarth-ee-lass (He Leads the People) was presented with an eagle staff, which indicates his warrior stature. (Photo by Anna Paige/The Forum)
After graduating, he was sent to Flandreau (South Dakota) Indian School, from which he dropped out in the ninth grade. He earned his high school equivalency degree (GED) on his own.
Leonard Peltier fought for his people's rights starting at age 13, when the federal government told the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa that their sovereignty would be disbanded, according to InForum: The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead (February 19).
The Convictions
In 1977, the AIM member was convicted to two consecutive terms of life sentences. His supporters argued that his trial was deeply flawed and unfair. His attorneys claimed that federal agents made false statements and affidavits, coerced witness statements and deliberately withheld crucial ballistics reports, according to The Guardian (January 4, 2017). Even the lead prosecutor in the case, in a highly unusual move, requested then-President Barack Obama grant Peltier clemency.
Yet, some maintained that Peltier was guilty, including former FBI Director Christopher Wray who called him a "remorseless killer" in a letter sent to Joe Biden last year opposing his release.
What Happened at Wounded Knee?
Former Attorney General of the United States Ramsey Clark, who was counsel to Leonard Peltier, wrote the preface to Peltier's Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance (1999), in which he upheld his client's innocence and condemned the U.S. government's complicity in "the reign of terror" against native Americans on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
What happened at Wounded Knee? Clark wrote, in part:
"At the time of Wounded Knee in 1973, there were only a few FBI agents in the whole state of South Dakota, and frequently just one. But by 1975, there were sixty. They were deployed overwhelmingly against a small Indian population. During those two years more than sixty Indians on the Pine Ridge Reservation -- some say as many as three hundred -- died violent and unexplained deaths, overwhelmingly from activity instigated by our own federal government. And there is little doubt about it.
"With government complicity, a rogue paramilitary group that proudly called itself the GOONS -- Guardians of the Oglala Nation -- were provided with weapons, training and motivation to create a wave of violence, still remembered as "the reign of terror", against traditional Indian peoples and their supporters, including the American Indian Movement (AIM). In March of 1975 alone seven Indians were killed, their deaths going virtually uninvestigated despite the presence of that army of FBI agents and other federal, state, and tribal lawmen. And that's why the traditional people, the Elders of the Lakota (Sioux) people asked AIM, as they had two years before at Wounded Knee, to send some people to protect them. And I say, thank God AIM did.
"A small group of brave, dedicated AIM members -- fewer than seventeen people, only six men, Leonard Peltier among them -- came to protect the traditional Indians from violence secretly and illegally condoned and initiated by our government. Those AIM defenders, joined by local traditionals, set up a tent city, a "spiritual camp" they called it, on the remote Pine Ridge property of Harry and Celia Jumping Bull -- two Elders who feared desperately for their loved ones' lives after constant threats from the GOONs.
"This was a time, we must remember, of government paranoia against all dissident groups that remained as the Vietnam War era was drawing to a close. These things were all interrelated. We should never forget Martin Luther King, Jr.'s heartbreaking words in 1967, when he came out against the war in Vietnam and announced, "The greatest purveyor of violence on earth is my own government."
"There's no question but that our government was generating violence against traditional Indians of Pine Ridge at that time as a means of control and domination, some believe acting on behalf of energy interests planning to purloin the reservation's vast untapped mineral wealth, especially uranium.
"We now know, from documents recently released in the 1990s under the Freedom of Information Act, that the FBI had people in place at least twenty minutes before the two cars that precipitated "the incident at Oglala" drove down into the Jumping Bull compound. The government had been preparing for a major act.
"During the trial of Leonard Peltier in Fargo, North Dakota, in 1977, much essential background evidence in the case was excluded. The greatest exclusion was all of this government-instigated violence, which had caused the whole tragedy and led to the deaths of their own agents.
"Why were these men of AIM there? Why was Leonard Peltier there? He was there to protect people, his own people, who were being killed! If that's a crime, where are we?
"But the government's own crimes didn't end there. They suborned our whole system of justice when they intimidated a witness, a poor and unknowing Indian woman, into testifying that she was Leonard Peltier's girlfriend and that she had actually seen Leonard actually kill the agents -- then used that testimony to extradite Leonard from Canada, where he had fled fearing precisely the kind of kangaroo justice he was about to receive in U.S. courts."
Five decades later, Tate Wikikuwa's (Wind Chases the Sun) second hell -- prison -- has come to an end.
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