Leonard Peltier’s Fight Isn’t Over

NEW YORK CITY – Inside the 15th Street Quaker Meeting House on Sunday, October 4, a score of bright-colored paintings depicting Native American heritage and activism were displayed at the center of the worship space. Those paintings, a selection of works by the 82-year-old Indigenous activist and elder Leonard Peltier, drew dozens and then hundreds of people to the venue for an afternoon with members of Peltier’s family, longtime advocates, and friends.

Among them was the Church of Stop Shopping’s Reverend Billy, an anti-consumerist preacher personality portrayed by actor and playwright William Talen. “This is an event of our lifetime for many of us here,” he said.

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Reverend Billy emceed the event, which aired live on the Pacifica Network, and Peltier attended the exhibition virtually from the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in North Dakota. Peltier’s son and grandson hauled the paintings on display by truck from there all the way to New York City.

Peltier spent 49 years and ten months in federal prison after being convicted for the 1975 killing of two FBI agents who died in a shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. He has always maintained his innocence, and following decades of advocacy and unsuccessful legal petitions, Joe Biden commuted Peltier’s two consecutive life sentences to home confinement. Now, the political prisoner’s family and closest supporters are weighing what options they have to secure a full commutation.

“Leonard is still struggling with his freedom, and the fight ain’t over,” Peltier’s son, Chauncey, said. “Dad’s next mission is to get complete clemency so he can come and go as he pleases.”

Every morning, every night, and anytime he wants to step foot outside his home, Peltier must check in with the federal officer assigned to his supervised release—whom he has called his “handler.” Peltier is not allowed to go beyond a 100-mile radius of his home.

In addition to showcasing his artwork, the purpose of the exhibition was also to sell some of Peltier’s paintings.

“It’s an honor to be able to travel with my grandfather’s art and try to help him make a living,” Peltier’s grandson, Cyrus, said in an interview. “He’s using the paintings to pay [for] his day-to-day life, and he’s getting $300 in Social Security right now, so anything could help out.”

According to Holly Cook Macarro, one of the leading advocates for Peltier and a member of the Red Lake Nation, the nature of the commutation, which Biden granted on his last day in office, “was extraordinary and was absolutely the result of the FBI’s opposition to freedom for Leonard.”

The then-president stopped short of a full commutation, opting instead for home confinement. “That was the compromise within the administration,” Cook Macarro told the Prospect.

Peltier was released the following month. For a brief period, it was unclear which supervising agency would be tasked with enforcing the conditions of his release.

“There wasn’t a lot of specificity within the grant of clemency in terms of how that would be administered,” said Cook Macarro. “In fact, there was confusion up until four days before he was released.”

The supervising agency ended up being the Bureau of Prisons, specifically its Residential Reentry Centers arm.

“We are working with Leonard and a whole team of folks to explore all options,” Cook Macarro told the Prospect.

She continued: “Subsequent presidents cannot diminish a previous president’s grant of clemency. They can, however, improve it.”

The hope for Peltier’s family and their allies is that some president—whether that be Donald Trump or whoever comes after him—improves the grant of clemency by making it a clean commutation to time served, rather than home confinement.

For his part, Cyrus is grateful to Biden for letting his grandfather come home, but he “would like to see if Trump would consider finishing something that Joe Biden couldn’t do completely … we need to finish the job.”

IN THE LATE MORNING on June 26, 1975, FBI agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams came under fire from a distance while looking for a man by the name of Jimmy Eagle, whom they sought to question in connection with an assault and theft the two were investigating.

The shootout, which lasted about ten minutes, ended with the deaths of both agents. Law enforcement officers who arrived on the scene to reach Coler and Williams also came under fire.

Meanwhile, at Jumping Bull Ranch on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Peltier and his fellow activists with the American Indian Movement (AIM) had permission from the property owners to set up camp there to protect community members from tribal leadership, which had turned to using armed goons to intimidate political opponents with the goal of consolidating power. The encampment was part of a broader struggle over Oglala Sioux self-determination and community resistance against political violence.

Tensions were running high, as a Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) police officer had killed a young Oglala man the day before the shootout. Just two years earlier, some 200 members of AIM and the Oglala Sioux occupied the village of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for 71 days. It forced the nation to bear witness to the legacy of treaty violations, and widespread corruption within the BIA.

At Jumping Bull Ranch in 1975, AIM activists found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were surrounded.

“There was no way for us to get out of there,” Peltier said in his virtual remarks. “We were dead.”

During the exhibition, Peltier recounted how he and his comrades managed to flee to safety. It started with a prayer to the Great Spirit. An airplane that had been flying overhead and giving real-time updates to law enforcement about the location of the AIM activists needed to refuel. Peltier looked to the sky and saw what he believed to be an eagle flying overhead; he and the other activists followed its shadow.

“I swear on the Great Spirit, that is the truth,” said Peltier.

THE STRUGGLE FOR INDIGENOUS RIGHTS in the U.S. may look a bit different today, but it continues to contend with many of the same forces of oppression as times past: treaty obligations broken, federal and tribal government corruption, systemic racism in public policy, and the sometimes untenable quality of life for Native Americans living both on the reservation and in urban environments (where they outnumber those living on reservations).

From the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890 to the mass mobilization against the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock in 2016, Indigenous communities have long endured, demonstrating their willingness to resist injustice while putting their voices and experiences forward.

“Standing Rock was such a galvanizing gathering of the heart and soul of Indian country in terms of the activism, [and] the voices that rose out of that,” Cook Macarro told the Prospect. “It absolutely advanced our cause for Leonard because it once again brought the voices of activism towards the front, and I think it also awakened a lot of Indian country—that voice and that willingness to fight.”

In closing, Peltier warned of the looming threats facing Native American communities across the country.

“My main goal is not to free Leonard Peltier; it is to help our people,” he said. “They’re trying everything they can to terminate us again … They’re coming after us, and we need to unite like we’ve never united before.”

Asked about such threats, Cook Macarro pointed to the issue of federal recognition, fee-to-trust land acquisitions, gaming issues, and extractive industries, saying that “we are entering a very dangerous time.”

“An administration that caters to extractive industries, mining, oil and gas exploration over the priorities and protection of tribal sacred places should be of concern, and I know that’s something that Leonard talks about as well,” said Cook Macarro. “Our struggle is still to preserve our language and culture, and be able to practice our religion in ways that are supported … that fight continues today.”