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Biden commutes Leonard Peltier, sending him home to North Dakota to carry out life sentence

Wanted FBI Poster of Leonard Peltier
Wikimedia Commons
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FBI
Wanted FBI Poster of Leonard Peltier

On his final day in office, President Joe Biden commuted Leonard Peltier, an 80-year-old Turtle Mountain Chippewa man convicted of killing two FBI agents. Many Indigenous communities around the state and nation are celebrating the decision.

Peltier will return to the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa reservation in Belcourt, North Dakota, next month to carry out his life sentence on home confinement after being imprisoned for nearly 50 years.

The news that came on Sunday was welcomed by a few tribal nations in Oklahoma, including the Cherokee and Seminole Nations, and national Indigenous organizations across Turtle Island.

However, a small number of Indigenous activists are linking Peltier with violence and are not thrilled with Biden’s commutation decision.

A 2024 Hulu documentary series called Vow of Silence: The Assassination of Annie Mae shed more light on the American Indian Movement (AIM) and the violent undercurrents and outbreaks that ultimately led to the organization’s decline. At the heart of the documentary is the story of Annie Mae Aquash, an AIM member and Mi'kmaq woman who was murdered in 1975.

Denise Pictou Maloney is Aquash’s daughter. She recently said on a Canadian news platform, APTN, that Peltier’s release was “devastating news” because he was complicit in her mother’s death.

“For women, this is indicative of the lack of priority of the safety of Indigenous in this country,” Maloney said in an interview with APTN.

Following the height of AIM in the 1970s, Peltier was convicted of murdering two FBI agents, Jack Coler and Ronald Williams, on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Yet, Peltier has consistently denied those allegations.

Two other AIM members who were co-defendants in the murder cases, Robert Robideau and Dino Butler, were acquitted on grounds of self-defense. But Peltier was tried in a different court with a different judge and couldn’t present the theory of self-defense, according to Robert Gifford, a defense attorney in tribal law in Oklahoma who pushed for Peltier’s clemency.

“You're not going to get a fair trial anywhere if the federal government doesn't want you to have one,” Gifford said in an interview with KOSU. “And that was Leonard 100 percent.”

Gifford argues the FBI needed someone to pin the deaths of Coler and Williams on, and that man was Peltier. The U.S. attorney who tried Pelter’s case, James Reynolds, said it was “unusually troublesome.

“With time and the benefit of hindsight, I have realized that the prosecution and continued incarceration of Mr. Peltier was and is unjust,” Reynolds said. “We were not able to prove that Mr. Peltier personally committed any offense on the Pine Ridge Reservation.”

Since his conviction in 1977, prominent leaders, including Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela and rock band Rage Against the Machine, have advocated on his behalf. Within the past decade, there has been a notable resurgence in pushing for Peltier’s clemency.

“Leonard Peltier became a symbol of hope and the rallying point for many Native people from all tribes to come together and to argue for fairness, justice and just human decency,” Gifford said. “ He also speaks to others who’ve been placed in that disadvantaged situation, whether it’s due to the color of their skin, the religion they follow, the socioeconomic status of being a poor person in this country who doesn’t get the same treatment as somebody who has money, influence and power.”

Peltier, who has multiple medical conditions, will be transported to his reservation in North Dakota on Feb. 18, where he will live in home confinement pursuant to Biden’s warrant of commutation.

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Sarah Liese (Twilla) reports on Indigenous Affairs for KOSU.
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