#leonard peltier

[blanket-burrito-protocol]

The 50th anniversary of AIMs (American Indian Movement's) occupation at Wounded Knee is coming up, so the Lakota People's Law Project is leading another push to free an AIM activist who was wrongly convicted of killing two federal agents in 1975- Leonard Peltier. He was convicted on false evidence and false testimony and sentenced to two life sentences. He is now 78.

LPL has a formatted email up on their website now which you can personalize and send to Biden to ask for clemency. (Please personalize emails like this so it doesn't get filtered as spam. Just move some words around, add some, take some, you don't have to write a whole email.) Please pass this around.

[decolonize-the-left]

Have you heard of the American Indian Movement? Did you know natives had a movement/group in the 70's-80's dedicated to native liberation?

No? It's a part of history they don't teach you in school, but come close and look so I can show you.

Watch this, it's not long I promise. This is Russel Means, a prominent native activists and one of the leaders of AIM. AIM sought to help natives with things like tribal sovereignty, housing, healthcare, and food security.

Here he is testifying to the US government.

The transcript ^

A little excerpt of the end:

"The American Indian people’s right to self-determination is recognized and will be implemented through the following policies:

The American Indian individual shall have the right to choose his or her citizenship and the American Indian nations have the right to choose their level of citizenship and autonomy up to absolute independence;

The American Indian will have their just property rights restored which include rights of easement, access, hunting, fishing, prayer, and water;

The BIA will be abolished with the American Indian tribal members deciding the extent and nature of their governments, if any;

Negotiations will be undertaken to exchange otherwise unclaimed and un-owned federal property for any and all government obligations to the American Indian nations, and to fully -- and to hold fully liable those responsible for any and all damages which have resulted from the resource development on or near our reservation lands including the -- including damages done by careless and inexcusable disposal of uranium mill tailings and other mineral and toxic wastes.

I want to thank you, gentlemen, for inviting me here. It's been a high honor, especially since I'm the only one invited here today to testify that doesn't receive money from the federal government. Also, I want to make -- I was introduced as a former founder and leader of American Indian movement to the tribal chairwoman that you have here, a former associates for the American Indian Movement back in the days when we were gross militants and so I just wanted to let you in on that, that the American Indian Movement is a very proud continuing part of American Indian Society.

Thank you."

"The American Indian Movement remains based in Minneapolis with several branches nationwide. The organization prides itself on fighting for the rights of Native peoples outlined in treaties and helping to preserve indigenous traditions and spiritual practices. The organization also has fought for the interests of aboriginal peoples in Canada, Latin America and worldwide. “At the heart of AIM is deep spirituality and a belief in the connectedness of all Indian people,” the group states on its website."

[garadinervi]

Leonard Peltier, I Am Everyone, in Prison Writings. My Life Is My Sun Dance, Edited by Harvey Arden, Introduction by Chief Arvol Looking Horse, Preface by Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, St. Martin's Press, New York, NY, 1999

I am everyone who ever died without a voice or a prayer or a hope or a chance… everyone who ever suffered for being an Indian, for being human, for being indigenous, for being free, for being Other, for being committed… I am every one of them. Every single one. Yes. Even you. I am everyone.

International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee American Indian Movement The Jericho Movement

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

By Leonard Peltier

I have fought for my freedom every single day of these past 48 years.

You, my people, my supporters, my family in a very real way, lift my spirit and enable me to hold fast to the beliefs they want me to denounce. You get me through these hours that last for days or years.

Keep fighting. Fight the parasitical influence of colonialism. Fight the lies, the greed, the corruption of the oppressor. Fight for the survival of our people.

[dk-thrive]

I don’t know how to save the world. I don’t have the answers or ‘The Answer.’ I hold no secret knowledge as to how to fix the mistakes of generations past and present. I only know that without compassion and respect for all of Earth’s inhabitants, none of us will survive — nor will we deserve to.

— Leonard Peltier, Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance (St. Martin's Griffin, April 12, 2016) (via Make Believe Boutique)

[tiliman2]

From @JoeCrowShoe

[luulapants]

Doing time creates a demented darkness of my own imagination. . . .

Doing time does this thing to you. But, of course, you don't do time.

You do without it. Or rather, time does you.

Time is a cannibal that devours the flesh of your years

day by day, bite by bite.

- Leonard Peltier, indigenous activist, political prisoner of the United States federal government, held in custody for 46 years and counting. It has been definitively proven that he could not have committed the crime he was charged with. It has been definitively proven that the FBI fabricated evidence to use in his trial.

[radiofreederry]

Happy birthday, Leonard Peltier! (September 12, 1944)

A lifelong activist and political prisoner, Leonard Peltier of the Ojibwe was born on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in North Dakota. Peltier was educated at an Indian boarding school, which attempted to forcibly assimilate Peltier and the other students into American society by mandating English be spoken and forbidding the teaching or discussion of Native culture. After moving to Seattle, Peltier became active in the growing movement for Native civil rights, and joined the American Indian Movement at the invitation of Dennis Banks. Peltier traveled to Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975 to help quell political violence among factions of the Oglala Lakota. At the time, Peltier was a fugitive due to his flight from Wisconsin and an attempted murder charge for his role in a protest. While in Pine Ridge, Peltier was involved in a shootout with two FBI agents, who died as a result. Peltier was arrested and charged with first degree murder of a federal official, and despite his insistence that he did not kill the agents and numerous errors and inconsistencies in the prosecution's case, Peltier was convicted and has remained incarcerated ever since. His numerous appeals for clemency have been either rejected or ignored, even as his health has declined behind bars. Peltier has remained politically active while in prison, running for President on the ticket of the Peace and Freedom Party in 2004 and serving as the Vice Presidential candidate for the Party for Socialism and Liberation in 2020.

"American Indians share a magnificent history — rich in its astounding diversity, its integrity, its spirituality, its ongoing unique culture and dynamic tradition. It's also rich, I'm saddened to say, in tragedy, deceit, and genocide. Our sovereignty, our nationhood, our very identity — along with our sacred lands — have been stolen from us in one of the great thefts of human history. And I am referring not just to the thefts of previous centuries but to the great thefts that are still being perpetrated upon us today, at this very moment. Our human rights as indigenous peoples are being violated every day of our lives — and by the very same people who loudly and sanctimoniously proclaim to other nations the moral necessity of such rights."

[fuck-spock]

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please spread the word!!! the more who know the better

[voteharder]

FREE LEONARD PELTIER. FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS.

[antiwaradvocates]

Leonard Peltier’s name has become a story that reflects other stories. One narrative describes Peltier as America’s longest political prisoner, serving more than 46 years in a federal maximum security prison. In that telling, Peltier has become a humanitarian and a 78-year-old Turtle Mountain elder who has been incarcerated for far too long.

[dommelovelovely]

And by the way, fuck Biden for not granting Leanord Peltier a pardon. He grants hundreds, but not him? Outrageous.

Fuck every president since 1977, the year this political prisoner was jailed for a crime he did not commit.

Even if he had done what he is accused of, he has long since paid his due. Let him go home to die in peace with his family.

FREE LEONARD PELTIER

[decolonize-the-left]

"I have been kept away from my family and only seen them a few times over the past 47 years. It is more than hard, especially when the kids write to me and tell me they want to see me and I cannot afford the cost of travel. If I was free I would build me a home on my tribal land, help build the economy of our nations and give a home to our homeless children,” Peltier said in an interview conducted over email via one of his approved contacts.

Peltier, an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa tribe and of Lakota and Dakota descent, was convicted of murdering two FBI agents during a shootout on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota in June 1975. Peltier was a leader of the American Indian Movement (Aim), an Indigenous civil rights movement founded in Minneapolis that was infiltrated and repressed by the FBI.

The 1977 murder trial – and subsequent parole hearings – were rife with irregularities and due process violations including evidence that the FBI had coerced witnesses, withheld and falsified evidence. Amnesty International, UN experts, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and the Rev Jesse Jackson are among those to have condemned his prolonged detention as arbitrary and politically motivated and called for his release.

[garadinervi]

Leonard Peltier, Prison Writings. My Life Is My Sun Dance, Edited by Harvey Arden, Introduction by Chief Arvol Looking Horse, Preface by Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, St. Martin's Press, New York, NY, 1999

Doing time creates a demented darkness of my own imagination… Doing time does this thing to you. But, of course, you don’t do time. You do without it. Or rather, time does you. Time is a cannibal that devours the flesh of your years day by day, bite by bite.

International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee American Indian Movement The Jericho Movement

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

By Stephen Millies

On Sept. 12, Leonard Peltier turned 79 years old in a maximum security federal prison in Coleman, Florida. He has spent over 47 years being locked up for being a leader of AIM — the American Indian Movement.

That’s 20 years longer than the time the old apartheid regime in South Africa imprisoned Nelson Mandela. The late President Mandela sought Leonard Peltier’s freedom.

So have people around the world. Thirty-five people were arrested at the White House on Sept. 12, demanding the Indigenous political prisoner’s release.  

Leonard Peltier is being kept locked up in revenge for the historic 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, by AIM members and supporters in 1973. That’s where 300 children, women, and men from the Lakota Nation were slaughtered by the U.S. army in 1890.