More than 50 years after a shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation landed him in federal prison, Leonard Peltier remains defiant.
Despite being convicted and sentenced to life in prison, he maintains his innocence in the killings of two FBI agents in 1975 and sees his newfound freedom — the result of a commutation from former President Joe Biden — as the beginning of a new phase of his activism.
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“I’m going to spend the rest of my life fighting for our people, because we ain’t finished yet. We’re still in danger,” Peltier, now 80, said in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press at his new home on the Turtle Mountain Reservation, his tribal homeland in North Dakota, near the Canadian border.
There among the rolling, often snow-covered hills, he will serve out the rest of his sentence on house arrest.
Born into an era of violent hostility between the American government and Indigenous peoples, the former American Indian Movement member has now stepped into another politically volatile moment in the country. He said he understands well the threats the rise of the far right, as well as the federal government, pose to tribal nations and Indigenous peoples. He believes that, like previous administrations, President Donald Trump will come for minerals and oil on tribal lands.
“You don’t have to get violent, you don’t have to do nothing like that. Just get out there and stand up,” he told AP this week, in his first sit-down conversation with a journalist in over 30 years. “We got to resist.”
The FBI and Native American activists: A volatile mix
Peltier was part of a movement in the late 1960s and 1970s that fought for Native American rights and tribal self-determination, sometimes occupying federal and tribal property.
The movement grabbed headlines in 1973 when it took over the village of Wounded Knee on Pine Ridge, leading to a 71-day standoff with federal agents. They also protested at Alcatraz and the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters. For many members of the American Indian Movement, or AIM, their activism was part of legacy of resistance stretching back to the country’s founding.
The day of the shootout came amid heightened tensions on the Pine Ridge reservation, where residents felt the FBI’s heavy presence was a threat to the people's autonomy. Peltier and other AIM members got into a confrontation with agents Jack Coler and Ron Williams when the agents drove onto a rural property where the AIM members were staying. Both agents were shot and killed, along with Joseph Stuntz, another AIM member.
The FBI says Peltier shot the agents at close range. In a letter sent to Biden last year opposing his release, former FBI director Christopher Wray called Peltier a “remorseless killer.”
His guilt is clear to many, including North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong.
“More than 20 federal judges upheld his conviction, and he was denied parole as recently as last July,” Armstrong said in a statement to the AP. “There was no legal justification for his release. He should still be in prison.”
Peltier was not pardoned; Biden said he was commuting Peltier’s sentence because of his age, his declining health, and the long period he had already been in prison.
Peltier has acknowledged he was at the shootout, but he says he acted in self-defense and wasn’t the one whose bullets killed the agents. He believes the FBI and prosecutors were looking for someone to take the blame, after his two co-defendants were exonerated for self-defense.
“They wanted revenge, and they didn’t know who was responsible,” Peltier told the AP from the kitchen table of his new home. “And they said ‘Put the full weight of the American government on Leonard Peltier, we need a conviction.’ And when they say that you don’t have no rights,” he said.
Amnesty International and scores of political leaders around the world called Peltier a political prisoner of the U.S., questioning the fairness of his trial and conviction. James Reynolds, a former U.S. Attorney for Northern Iowa, whose office oversaw post-conviction proceedings, urged clemency in a letter to Biden in 2021. He wrote that prosecutors couldn’t prove Peltier fired the fatal shots and called his imprisonment “unjust”.
Peltier's grandson, Cyrus Peltier, remembers visiting him every weekend at Leavenworth, a federal prison in Kansas. He didn’t always understand why his grandfather wouldn’t just tell the parole board he was sorry for the crimes, and hopefully win his freedom.
“And he would say ‘Well, that’s just not what I’m fighting for, grandson,’ ” Cyrus Peltier, now 39, recalled from his home in North Dakota this week. ”‘I’m sorry for what happened to those agents, but I’m not going to sit here and admit to something I didn’t do. And if I have to die in here for that, I’m going to.’”
A life behind bars, but always hope for freedom
In prison, Peltier’s fame only grew, as he amassed the support of prominent political leaders around the globe and celebrities in the U.S. and became a symbol of the injustices against Native Americans.
He said it was all their letters of support and acts of protest for his release that kept him going.
Peltier said there were moments in the last few years where he began to lose hope that he would ever see freedom. His denial of parole in July was another crushing blow.
“They gave me the strength to stay alive and to know what I was in prison for,” he said.
Many Indigenous people, leaders, and organizers lobbied for decades for Peltier’s release.
However, some who believe Peltier was involved in the murder of AIM member Anna Mae Pictou Aquash in 1975 fought against his release. Two other AIM members were convicted of the crime.
“Their ability to say that he is free and he gets to go home negates the whole fact that Anna Mae never got to go home,” said Aquash’s daughter, Denise Pictou Maloney.
In his interview with the AP, Peltier denied having any knowledge of Aquash’s death.
‘I didn’t give my life for nothing'
In the end, Biden listened to the counsel of former Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna and the first Native American to lead the Interior Department. Peltier was released on Feb. 18, and returned to North Dakota.
A week later, he still often wakes up at night terrified that it is all a dream and that he is still in a cell.
Peltier remains confined to his home and nearby community. But he now has access to routine medical treatment for his many health issues, including an aortic aneurysm. He gets around with the help of a cane or a walker.
He is heartened by the many people who come to visit him and drop off gifts like beaded medallions, letters and artwork, which are piling up in his home.
Peltier wants to make a living selling his paintings, as he did in prison, and he plans to write more books. He also wants to train young activists about the threats they will face.
When he was in prison, lying in his bunk at night, he would often wonder if his protest efforts resulted in any change. Seeing young Native activists today continuing to fight for the same things gives meaning to the 49 years he was incarcerated.
“It makes me feel so good, man, it does,” he said, holding back tears. “I’m thinking, well, I didn’t give my life for nothing.”
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Associated Press writer Jack Dura in Bismarck, North Dakota, contributed to this report.