Incident and Oglala 30 years on
Leonard Peltier
by Joe Allen and Paul D'Amato
International Socialist Review,
November-December 2005
Leonard Peltier one of America's longest-serving
political prisoners, turned sixty-one-years-old on September 12,
2005. Peltier has spent nearly thirty years in federal prison,
the result of one of the most infamous political frame-ups in
modern U.S. history. He was convicted of killing two agents of
the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on the Lakota Sioux
Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1975. Believing he could
not receive a fair trial in the U.S., he fled to Canada. The Canadian
government extradited him in 1976, and he was tried, convicted,
and sentenced to two life terms in 1977.
Many of today's progressive-minded people
will find themselves unfamiliar with the details as well as the
significance of the Peltier case. This is a tragedy, given the
widespread opposition to the Patriot Act and the heightened fear
of political repression by opponents of the Bush administration.
The rush of events since 9/11, instead of bringing the Peltier
case back into focus, seems to have pushed it further into the
margins of political consciousness, where it has unfortunately
been for two decades. This is something that needs to be corrected.
Leonard Peltier, a citizen of the Lakota
and Anishinabe nations, was an active member of the American Indian
Movement (AIM) in the early 1970s in the upper Midwest, where
he was born, and on the West Coast, where he lived and worked
off-and-on for several years. AIM was a product of the militant
struggles of the 1960s against racism and the Vietnam War (many
of its members were Vietnam Veterans). Its most important leaders
during the seventies-Dennis Banks and Russell Means-were inspired
by the civil rights movement and, more importantly, the Black
Panthers. Formed in 1968 by Anishinabe Indian activists in Minneapolis,
AIM quickly sprouted chapters across the country, and moved from
civil rights to issues of Indian sovereignty and pride.
Two events put AIM on the map. In 1972,
on the eve of Richard Nixon's landslide reelection to the presidency,
AIM led a nationwide caravan, called the "Trail of Broken
Treaties," that culminated in the occupation of the Bureau
of Indian Affairs (BIA) headquarters in Washington, D.C. The BIA
had long been a source of hatred for its flagrant embezzlement
of funds that were supposed to go to impoverished Native Americans
and for its legalizing of the theft of reservation land.
The following year, at the request of
its residents, AIM led the armed occupation of Wounded Knee on
the Pine Ridge reservation, the site of the historic massacre
of Sioux men, women, and children in 1890. The event marked the
coming together of urban Indian radicals with reservation traditionals
who resented the corruption and abuse of the BIA-sponsored tribal
administration, as well as its denigration of native traditions.
During the ensuing seventy-one-day standoff, BIA police, FBI,
and U.S. military fired 500,000 rounds of ammunition at the entrenched
Indian encampment, killing two AIM members. While the siege provided
little in tangible concessions from the federal government, it
succeeded in publicizing AIM and generated a surge of popular
interest in Native American issues and history. It also resulted
in AIM becoming a greater target of ferocious government repression.
The FBI led the attack on AIM as part
of its Counter Intelligence Program (COINTEPRO), begun in the
mid-1960s under its director J. Edgar Hoover, and used with terrifying
effectiveness against the Black Panther Party.
COINTELPRO employed many dirty tricks against its targets including
wiretapping, assassination, and the use of agents provocateurs-all
in coordination with state and local police forces. The goal,
according to FBI documents, was to "neutralize" the
leadership. AIM members across the country faced constant harassment
and frame-ups that drained the organization's resources and, eventually,
broke its leadership. One of the AIM members caught up in this
dragnet was Leonard Peltier.
During Wounded Knee II, Pine Ridge Tribal
Chair Dickie Wilson formed the Guardians of the Oglala Nation
(literally and boastfully GOON), paid for with a $62,000 BIA stipend,
and launched a reign of terror on AIM and its supporters at Pine
Ridge. Not by coincidence, at this time the BIA was interested
in using Wilson to sign over a portion of the reservation known
to be rich in uranium and molybdenum to the U.S. Forest Service.
From 1973 to 1976, more than sixty AIM members and supporters,
many of them traditionals, were murdered without a finger lifted
by the state government or the FBI to investigate their deaths.
A new generation of rabidly racist and self-proclaimed "Indian
fighters" emerged in South Dakota led by William Janklow,
who declared: "The only way to deal with the Indian problem
in South Dakota is to put a gun to the AIM leaders' heads and
pull the trigger." He would eventually become South Dakota's
attorney general, governor, and, later, the state's only congressman.
(Last year, Janklow finally stepped down from his House seat after
he was convicted and sentenced to 100 days in jail for slamming
his speeding car into, and killing, a motorcyclist. In addition
to his history of racism, Janklow apparently has a long history
of reckless driving-thirteen traffic citations since 1990-and
the judge in the case could have given Janklow ten years. But
witnesses convinced him of Janklow's good character and solid
contributions to the community.)
In the desperate and highly charged atmosphere
of repression after Wounded Knee II, the traditional leaders on
Pine Ridge appealed to AIM for help to defend themselves. Leonard
Peltier was among the dozens of AIM members and supporters who
went to Pine Ridge. AIM also provided support such as cutting
firewood, collecting water, and preparing meals for the many elderly
residents who lived in the most remote parts of the reservation.
They provided protection from attacks by Wilson's GOONs, which
usually took place late at night, making late evening hours a
nightmare of gunfire and screams for help. AIM activists, including
Peltier, were armed for their own protection as well as that of
the residents.
What has now gone down in history as
"the incident at Oglala" occurred on June 26, 1975,
when two unmarked cars chased a red truck onto the Jumping Bull
compound near the village of Oglala. Without identifying themselves,
the FBI agents in pursuit of the red pick-up began shooting at
it. The FBI later claimed that the agents were in pursuit of an
Indian named Jimmy Eagle, for allegedly stealing cowboy boots.
When the agents then began firing on the ranch, Peltier and others,
who were defending the compound against GOON violence, fired back,
not knowing who the men were or what they wanted. Within minutes,
more than 150 FBI SWAT team members, Bureau of Indian Affairs
police, and GOONs had surrounded the ranch. The quick response
has led many to believe that the "incident" was a deliberate
provocation by the FBI.
Peltier and others escaped the encirclement.
When the FBI occupied the ranch they found AIM member Joe Killsright
Stuntz and two FBI agents, Jack Koler and Ron Williams, shot dead
at close range. No one has ever been convicted for killing Stuntz.
The largest manhunt in FBI history ensued,
eventually resulting in the arrest of three AIM members, Dino
Butler, Robert Robideau, and Leonard Peltier, for the murders
of Koler and Williams. None of the defendants ever denied being
at the Jumping Bull ranch that day or firing in self-defense,
but all denied killing the FBI agents. Butler and Robideau were
the first arrested and charged, and the first sent to trial while
Peltier fought extradition in Canada. Robideau and Butler were
tried in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at the request of the U.S. Department
of Justice, who believed that the white working class and lower
middle class residents of this small provincial city would easily
convict them. On July 16, 1976, to the shock of the government
attorneys, the jury found Butler and Robideau not guilty of murder,
accepting the argument for self-defense put forward by their famed
radical attorney, William Kunstler.
In their humiliation, the FBI was determined
to convict Peltier, who was captured by the Mounties on February
6, 1976. To obtain Peltier's extradition, the U.S. government
presented to the federal Canadian court affidavits signed by Myrtle
Poor Bear, who claimed to be Peltier's lover and to have witnessed
Peltier shoot the FBI agents. Though it was later revealed that
Poor Bear's testimony was coerced out of her by the FBI, the Canadian
court turned Peltier over to the United States.
In March 1977, Peltier went to trial
before an all-white jury in North Dakota and a hostile Judge Paul
Benson, who refused to allow use of the self-defense argument
and ruled repeatedly in favor of the government. The judge and
prosecution suppressed all evidence favorable to Peltier.
Even though the lead prosecutor, the
aptly named Assistant U.S. Attorney Lynn Crooks, failed to produce
a single witness who could identify Peltier as the gunman who
killed the agents, the jury found Peltier guilty and he was sentenced
to two consecutive life terms. In the nearly thirty years since
Peltier's false conviction, the case against him has continued
to unravel. For example, a successful Freedom of Information Act
lawsuit in the early 1980s turned up a concealed ballistics report
showing that the gun Peltier allegedly used during the incident
could not be matched with the bullet casing found near the agents.
In 1985, when the Eighth Circuit Court held oral arguments on
a motion filed by Peltier for a new trial, Lynn Crooks admitted,
"we can't prove who shot those agents." Though the court
found that the jury in Peltier's trial might have acquitted him
had the FBI not withheld this evidence, they refused to grant
him a new trial.
In 2000, when President Clinton announced
that he was considering clemency for Peltier, he began making
plans for his release. His friends even began planning to build
him a new house. But after the FBI mobilized a campaign that included
a march of 500 agents in front of the White House, Clinton backed
down. Peltier's appeals have been denied more than ten times,
and he remains in prison. But his spirit is not broken. Not long
after Clinton's betrayal, he wrote:
Since that dark Saturday, I have managed
to get up and dust myself off, and begin to lift my spirits once
more. I am just as determined now to fight for my freedom as I
was on February 6, 1976 when I was first arrested. I will not
give up. This is the second time in the span of my incarceration
that I made it to the top of the hill and saw that freedom was
in view, only to be kicked right back down to the bottom again.
Peltier's experience in prison has been
one of constant harassment and hardship. A Leonard Peltier Defense
Committee statement aptly noted that,
Over the last year, Leonard has suffered
the passing of several relatives and been denied many basic human
rights. He has been placed in solitary confinement for no reason,
denied phone privileges, religious rights, and visitation privileges,
and was even unable to write letters to family and friends. Peltier's
health has deteriorated in the last year and he has repeatedly
been denied adequate medicine. Without reason, Leonard has been
moved to several prisons with no concern for his health.
On June 30, Peltier was moved, without
notice to his family or his attorneys, to the federal prison at
Terre Haute, Indiana, from the federal prison at Leavenworth,
Kansas. And on August 15-despite ailing health-he was moved to
the federal prison at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.
In 2008, Leonard Peltier comes up for parole, but the FBI and
other forces will resist his release tooth and nail. If we are
going to get any measure of justice for Leonard Peltier, we will
have to be out in front of the White House when the time comes.
To find out more about Leonard Peltier's
case, go to www.freepeltier.org/. The best books to read on Leonard
Peltier's case are Peter Matthiessen's In the Spirit of Crazy
Horse, and The Trial of Leonard Peltier by Jim Messerschmidt.
Peltier's own book, Prison Writings: My Life is My Sun Dance,
is also excellent.
Joe Allen is a member of Teamsters Local
705 in Chicago. Paul D'Amato is associate editor of the ISR.
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