Leonard Peltier is a 52 year old Chippewa/Lakota activist who grew up on the Turtle Mountain reservation in North Dakota. He has seven children and five grandchildren.
He was a close associate of Dennis Banks (one of the founders of AIM) and showed signs of potential leadership. The FBI wanted desperately to destroy the Movement and force Native people into assimilating into the white culture and allow the government control of their mineral (oil, uranium, gold) rich land. Peltier so concerned the FBI that a memo was sent out in which Peltier's occupation was described as: Manager of AIM. Not only was Peltier NOT the manager of AIM (he was a mechanic), no such position even existed.

During the civil unrest of the 1960s and 1970s, the FBI created a program called Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO). This program was designed to destroy any organization considered by the U.S. Government, FBI, or CIA to be politically or socially dissident. Those targeted included groups focused on anti-war demonstrations, Black civil rights, Native civil rights, and equal rights for women.

The years 1973-1975 were considered the "reign of terror" on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. The Tribal Chairman, Dick Wilson, was voted into office with less than 20% of the vote. Wilson assembled a squad of thugs who "kept peace on the reservation" and also were the cause of hundreds of homocides and assaults. His squad, known as GOONS, (Guardians of the Oglala Nation) was armed by the FBI.

AIM was called onto Pine Ridge by terrified elders of the Nation asking for protection. On the day of the shootout, two agents followed a red pick up truck onto the property of Harry and Cecelia Jumping Bull, an elderly couple who were celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary. The FBI claims the agents had a warrant for the arrest of Jimmy Eagle who had supposedly stolen a pair of used cowboy boots. The warrant never materialized. The pick up truck stopped and three men got out. They faced the agents who had also exited their cars. No one knows for sure who fired first, but a firefight erupted.

The odds soon becoming 150 plus FBI agents, US Marshals, and military renegades versus approximately 30 Native men, women, and children, the firefight lasted hours during which two agents and one Indian man were killed. At the same time 1/8 of Pine Ridge Reservation was signed over by Dick Wilson to the United States Government for uranium mining.

After the shootout four men were arrested for the deaths of the agents. There was no investigation into the death of the Indian man. One man was released due to lack of evidence. Two others were tried in Cedar Rapids , Iowa. They were found innocent on grounds of self-defense. Following this loss, the FBI did all it could to secure the conviction of its last defendant, Leonard Peltier. Fearing no possibility of a fair trial and perhaps immediate execution and at the request and advise of his elders, he fled to Canada where he was arrested and extradited by affidavits manufactured by the FBI that the government now concedes were false. He was tried by a new judge in a hostile state, Fargo, North Dakota. Judge Benson (a known racist and owner of Indian land) ruled that no evidence from the first trial would be permitted in Leonard's trial. The jury was told that at any moment snipers would try to kill them, windows were painted black, armed Marshals stood around the courtroom. Peltier was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive life terms.

Four years after his incarceration, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit released documents which prove Leonard Peltier's innocence and caused the appelate court to chastise the FBI for manufacturing evidence, coercing witnesses, and withholding evidence favorable to Peltier.

Calls for a new trial for Leonard and an investigation into the illegalities of the case are supported by members of the US Congress, Amnesty International, 78 world religious leaders (including the Archbishop of Canterbury and Desmond Tutu), the National Conference of Christians and Jews, the National Congress of American Indians, and millions of ordinary citizens throughout the world.

You can add your support by contacting the Leonard Peltier Defence Committee

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