Occupation of Wounded Knee

During the holidays, the atmosphere of goodwill and mercy traditionally extends all the way to the nation’s highest leaders, with presidents typically pardoning more prisoners than any other time of the year. On Friday, actors, musicians and activists are uniting to renew calls for clemency for one of America’s most well-known and longest-incarcerated prisoners, Leonard Peltier.

The Native American activist and former member of the American Indian Movement was convicted of killing two FBI agents during a shootout on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. The shootout occurred two years after the American Indian Movement occupied the village of Wounded Knee for 71 days. The occupation of Wounded Knee is considered the beginning of what Oglala people refer to as the “Reign of Terror.” During that time, some 64 local Native Americans were murdered. Most of them had ties to AIM. Their deaths went uninvestigated by the FBI.

Leonard Peltier has long maintained his innocence. Amnesty International considers him a political prisoner who was not granted a fair trial. Notable figures, such as Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama, also say he was wrongly imprisoned. On Friday, singers Harry Belafonte, Pete Seeger and others will host a “Bring Leonard Peltier Home in 2012 Concert” at the Beacon Theater in New York City to raise awareness of Peltier’s 37-year ordeal and plea for executive clemency from President Obama.

President Clinton never did pardon Peltier. Instead, he granted a pardon to fugitive billionaire Marc Rich, who had been living in Switzerland since a 1983 indictment on charges of wire fraud, racketeering, tax evasion and trading with Iran in violation of a U.S. embargo. Rich’s ex-wife, Denise Rich, was a major donor to the campaigns of both President Clinton and his wife, then-New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Peltier said in response, quote, “We can see who is granted clemency and why. The big donors to the president’s campaign were able to buy justice, something we just couldn’t afford. Meanwhile, many political prisoners continue to languish unjustly, proof that this nation’s talk about reconciliation is nothing but empty rhetoric,”

Leonard Peltier currently remains incarcerated at the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex in Florida. His next scheduled parole hearing is in July 2024. Barring appeals or parole, Peltier’s projected release date is October 11th, 2040, when he will be over 95 years old. It remains yet to be seen if President Obama will do what Clinton did not: use his second term to pardon Leonard Peltier. Last month, ProPublica reported that Obama has granted clemency at a lower rate than any president in modern history.

Peter Coyote talking:

I’ll put that in a nutshell. I do want to say, he was not convicted for killing the agents. He was convicted of aiding and abetting, and even the government has admitted they have no idea whether he killed the agents or not.

So, I met Leonard long before he went to jail. I was involved in some Native issues before Wounded Knee. And a young friend of mine who was in charge of the spiritual elders came through, and they needed to buy some weapons for Wounded Knee, to defend. And I used to be a marksman; I know a lot about guns. I went to do that.

So, traveling with them was this guy known as Alex, this big guy. We ran around for a couple of weeks, getting together some guns and ammunition and stuff like that. And several years later, I read an article in Akwesasne Notes about Leonard Peltier. I had no idea it was the same person. But I routinely send commissary money to people in jail that I know or that I’m impressed by, so they can buy some candy and cigarettes and stuff. I get this long letter back, “Hey, I knew this guy Coyote. He used to have a blue-eyed coyote dog and had this truck, and we did this and that. You knew me as Alex.” So, I got goosebumps, and I thought, “I’ve got to get on board.”

So here’s the case in a nutshell. 1973, the highest per capita murder rate in the United States was the Sioux Indian reservation. Over 70 democracy activists were murdered by the chief of tribal police, Dick Wilson, who called his police force the “GOON Squad.” Guardians of Oglala Nation. But they were, you know, being sadistic puns.

So the traditional women requested the American Indian Movement warriors to come in, and a cadre of men and women came in and set up a camp on the Jumping Bull Ranch. It was in this climate of murder and intimidation that an unmarked car drove onto the reservation one day. Two guys get out, and they get long guns out of the back. In retrospect, it turns out they were FBI agents, and they claimed they were following a kid who had stolen some cowboy boots onto the reservation—hardly a federal crime. They had 50 tribal police just off the Jumping Bull Ranch. And what most people suspect is that it was a diversion, because the tribal police chief, Dick Wilson, was in Washington illegally signing away the uranium mining rights of the tribe.

So, a gunfight got started. No one knows how it got started. The tribal police fled. The FBI men were surrounded, they were wounded, and they were then executed. When they searched the bodies and they found out that they were FBI men, they were terrified, and the leadership knew what was coming, and they fled. And, in fact, the reservation was taken over by government forces. They fired 100,000 rounds of ammunition. They stripped Native elders naked. They broke down houses. They arrested three people for the crime, and they were acquitted by an all-white jury in South Dakota. And the government went crazy. So they got together, and they stitched up all the loopholes in the case. And they did it by fabricating chains of evidence, by suborning witnesses, by filing false affidavits. And they went, and they got Leonard. And when Leonard’s trial was appealed.

He was not part of the three at all. They went after him. The Canadian government is still suing the United States for filing false affidavits, which were responsible for his extradition. So they brought him down. They tried him. They made it look like an iron, bullet-proof case against him, and they imprisoned him.

At his appeal, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, a fellow named Judge Heaney wrote this list of 10 egregious errors in the trial, but said, “My hands are tied. I have to find him guilty.” But he personally wrote to President Clinton asking for clemency for Leonard and said the FBI was culpable in this case

The judge, Judge Heaney, did that. So, my argument is, since I was not there, I didn’t witness it—I was told by people who were there that Leonard was minding the children. The man who actually executed the agents has admitted it. He spoke to author Peter Matthiessen. He was masked. He said, “We were at war. I don’t see why I should turn myself in. But I executed these people. This is what happened.” So, my argument is, since I wasn’t there, since I can’t personally certify that Leonard Peltier didn’t do this, I’m arguing that no American deserves a trial like this, that when the government—when the federal prosecutor, whose name was Crook, stood up several years ago and said the government has no idea who committed the murders, Leonard Peltier should have been released.

In 1996, the Democratic Party asked me to be a delegate. And I said, “Well, I’ll do that if you’ll give me an introduction to a deputy level or above in the Justice Department.” So I went to the convention, and they like celebrities because they get the cameras. And so they introduced me to a deputy level, and I briefed him on the case. And he said, “I’ll have to get back to you.” And he called me two days later, and he said, “Mr. Coyote, I’m embarrassed to tell you this. When you spoke to me, I thought you were a wild-eyed radical. I’m embarrassed to tell you that everything you said is true, and all I’m at liberty to say to you is that there are some very powerful people who don’t want Leonard Peltier out of jail.” And I said, “Would their initials be W.W.?” meaning William Webster, head of the FBI? And he said, “Well, you said that.”

So, I think he has been held vindictively as the scapegoat for the deaths of two agents—that’s terrible, it’s unfortunate. What were they doing on the reservation, driving into an armed camp? They were obviously preparing to spring a trap. These are high-stakes games. Leonard’s aunt was run over and left dead on the side of the road. That’s how he came there. Leonard was an urban Indian from Seattle. He’s the guy that would fix everybody’s car for nothing and make sure that people had something to eat. He’s hardly a firebrand. And he’s become the Nelson Mandela of the Native movement through his courage and growth and incarceration. And I’m one of the people who has known him since before he went to jail. So, I marvel at this change and deepening.

I don’t want to make dissension among the left, people I respect, but I was involved in the clemency petition to Clinton, helped brief the people. We sent a producer in, who convinced the president’s lawyer, who said, “You’ve convinced me. Now you have to write the speech for Clinton.”

We laid out all the evidence. I was not in the room. Someone else went in, a big money guy. And so, I called the Leonard Peltier Defense Council, which is being run by a woman, very active and able organizer, whose husband had been murdered, and I said, “Listen, this is an appeal to an audience of one. Do not go for public opinion. Let’s go in under the radar. Let’s not notify the FBI.” I can’t really blame her for not trusting me, for, their—everything they’ve gained has come from social action. And here’s this Jew with an animal name saying, “Trust me, I’ll make it alright.”

So, I went to Congress. And they were out in the streets with their signs, and literally every congressional office I went into, as I was going in, the FBI was leaving with pictures of the dead agents that they had been showing on the congressmen. I could do nothing. And what I was told—and this is apocryphal—but I was told that it was Tom Daschle who went to Clinton, who was in a very tough race for his re-election, “If you free Leonard Peltier, you’ll have a Republican senator in South Dakota.” So that’s the scuttlebutt that we got.

Lynn Crooks, an assistant U.S. attorney who helped put Leonard Peltier in prison.

this is a man who’s spent 37 years for a crime that not even the government can assert that he committed. It’s telling that we had originally planned this benefit—Jackson Browne, myself, Harry Belafonte, Pete Seeger, a host of others—at the Beacon Theater Friday night at 7:30, and there was going to be a benefit to try to raise money to get Leonard’s lawyers re-energized, because they burn out. They’ve worked for 37 years—appeals, families shattered. I mean, it’s terrible. And Leonard stopped the benefit. He said, “After Sandy, I do not want to ask people in New York and New Jersey to give anything. Just bring my case to their attention. Let’s give it a public look again, as we go after clemency.” So that’s what we’re doing. We’re just once again into the breach, refreshing the public’s knowledge of this man, who is like Geronimo Pratt. You know, Geronimo Pratt only did 28 years, Until his case was overturned.

I’ve been doing this a long time. And Leonard hasn’t given up hope. I haven’t given up hope. But I go home every night. Leonard is in jail. He’s got diabetes. His health is bad. They didn’t let him out for the death of his mother. They didn’t let him out for the death of his father. They didn’t let him out for the deaths of aunts and uncles. He survived two attempts on his life in prison. His jaw was wired shut for over a year, while he waited just, you know, basic medical treatment. And I’m embarrassed to be the citizen of a country that would treat any one man this way on the basis of such a jury-rigged trial.

My last letter from Leonard was several months ago, and he just said very plaintively, “Brother, please don’t let me die in prison.”

I am everyone
who ever died
without a voice
or a prayer
or a hope
or a chance…
everyone who ever suffered
for being an Indian,
for being human,
for being indigenous,
for being free,
for being Other,
for being committed….

I am every one of them.
Every single one.
Yes.
Even you.

I am everyone.

– source democracynow.org, democracynow.org