Thoughts on Leonard Peltier’s 44th year of imprisonment by people who know him by Frank Hopper

Forty-four years ago today as I write this, Leonard Peltier was taken into custody. He remains a political prisoner at age 75. He was not sentenced to life without parole, yet that’s what he’s serving.

Leonard was caught up in a firefight with FBI agents on June 26, 1975 at the Jumping Bull compound on the Pine Ridge Reservation of South Dakota. Tensions were high between the Native residents and the FBI ever since the 1973 takeover of Wounded Knee.

FBI agents Ronald A. Williams and Jack R. Coler drove up to the compound supposedly to serve an arrest warrant on a wanted fugitive. Without announcing themselves, they got out of their unmarked vehicles with guns drawn. The residents, many of whom were members of the American Indian Movement, began firing on them and a four-hour long shootout ensued.

When it was over Williams and Coler were dead and so was Cor d’Alene Warrior Joe Stuntz. Leonard fled to a stronghold across the imaginary border with Canada. He was eventually arrested on February 6, 1976 and returned to the U.S. There federal agents falsified evidence and coerced witnesses at Leonard’s murder trial.

He was convicted on two counts of murder for the deaths of Williams and Coler and given two consecutive life sentences.The two other defendants, Darrelle “Dino” Butler and Bob Robideau, were tried separately and acquited, mainly due to a lack of evidence. The death of Joe Stuntz by the FBI was never investigated.

But what is Leonard like?

I had almost forgotten about the importance of the date until a homeless man named Kelly came up to me near the Puyallup Tribal Cemetery today. He asked me for a light and spontaneously said he knew Leonard and was even his cellie at Leavenworth in 1994.

Kelly told me something about Leonard that I’ve heard from several other people who knew him: Leonard is a nice guy.

“And funny, too,” Kelly said.

I thought it was significant Kelly came up to me on the 44th anniversary of Leonard’s incarceration. If what he told me is true, that he was once Leonard’s cellie, what are the odds of me running into him on such a significant date?

I remembered I’d interviewed Sid Mills about a year and a half ago and he had spoken about Leonard. Sid is of Yakima descent and was a leader of the Native rights movement in the Pacific Northwest beginning in the late 1960s. After returning home wounded from a tour in Vietnam, Sid joined the Native resistance at Frank’s Landing on the Nisqually River and never went back to the army.

I dug out the transcript of my interview with him and found this:

“Leonard Peltier was my mechanic. He had a mechanic shop in Seattle. He was an auto mechanic. He used to come down here and work on my cars. I'd take my cars to his shop and he'd fix them. And he was a good friend of mine for many years before Wounded Knee and he was a supporter of the fishing rights.

“But that's the kind of guy that he was. He was a mechanic. He was the nicest guy ever. I never seen him get mad at anybody or beat anybody up. He was a big tough guy and stuff like that, but he wasn't that way toward people. He was just kind of a nice guy. I always knew him that way. I mean other people might have seen him different, but that's the way I seen him.”

Leonard fights, first with letterhead, then guns

Robert Free, another leader and veteran of the Native resistance movement from that period, came to Seattle after participating in the takeover of Alcatraz by the Indians of All Tribes. He recalled in the same interview how Leonard tried to start an educational program in Seattle.

“Leonard got a house up on 24th and Yesler from a doctor, a whole house for $25 a month. And he packed all the veterans from Wounded Knee that had been in those shootouts in that place. And he was trying to get an Indian/Chicano educational project going on,” he said.

Robert said Leonard had an office at Seattle’s El Centro de la Raza and tried raising money for the project from several sources but was unsuccessful.

“He got a letterhead. It said ‘Indian/Chicano Educational Project’ and went to all these organizations, non-profits, I remember, to impress all these people for funding and they all told him, ‘Nah,’” Robert said.

According to Robert, Leonard and the warriors in his house later went to Bonners Ferry, Idaho to fight the U.S. government beside the Kootanai Indians for land owed to them. But by the time they got there, legislation had been passed to return the land. The violent standoff they were anticipating never materialized.

“They already had guns. They already had a bunch of people psyched up for shit. So they went to Jumping Bull's residence,” Robert said.

The rest is history. But what is history?

“He was in the wrong place at the wrong time was what the deal was,” Sid said. “But who can guess history? You can't guess history. The history is what happened.”

After riding the wave of Native resistance from the fishing wars and the Native takeovers of Fort Lawton in Seattle and the BIA Building in Washington, DC to the occupation of Wounded Knee in South Dakota, Leonard finally got plopped down in the Jumping Bull Compound.

I may never know what actually went down that day. All I know is Leonard has paid 44 years of his life for it. Most people convicted of murder serve about 15 years. Going by that, even serving his two sentences consecutively, Leonard should have been released 14 years ago.

The FBI have mounted a prolonged and vigorous campaign to keep Leonard in prison. Every recent President has refused to grant him clemency, mainly due to FBI pressure, in essence turning his sentence into an unofficial form of life without parole. Many feel the FBI has a vested interest in keeping Leonard locked up to protect the coverup of their many illegal activities related to their persecution of AIM.

“He’ll never see the light of day,” Sid sadly remarked.

Leonard’s history is our history

History may look on Leonard as a radical Native extremist who shot two law enforcement officers. But after speaking with those who knew him, I’ll always see Leonard as a genuinely nice guy, with a good sense of humor, who stood up for his people and protected them.

Kelly told me today that when he was Leonard’s cellmate, he asked him why he didn’t snitch on the person who really did the shootings so he could get his sentence reduced. This is what Kelly told me Leonard said:

“He said, ‘Why should I do that? I’ve already given them one life for this. Why should I give them two?’”

Leonard is a warrior to the end. He accepts his destiny without protest. Even serving his time in silence is a form of resistance.

Every successful resistance movement needs a fire at its core, the willingness to take up arms and fight, if necessary, even if it means giving your life, and Leonard has certainly given his. If that resolve was not present in people like Leonard Peltier back in the 1960s and 1970s, many Native nations would have fallen off the cliff into the abyss of termination, relocation and assimilation.

Someone had to do something. Someone had to show Indigenous people they were important and they could fight back. That’s what Leonard Peltier did. He did something when few other Native people would and he took the fall for it without flinching.

The fire of that conviction burns in the heart of every current Native resistance fighter and water protector. For that fire alone, no matter what actually happened at the Jumping Bull compound, we owe Leonard Peltier an unending debt of gratitude.

Frank Hopper is a Tlingit freelance writer, born in Juneau, Alaska, and raised in Seattle. He now lives in Tacoma.