Leonard Peltier has been a subject of great controversy for over half his life. After his indictment and conviction in 1977. Today he still sits in prison, known all over the world, regarded as a political prisoner and human activist. He has been in jail for almost 40 years and his health is detreating over a crime that most believe he is not guilty of. In 1975 Leonard Peltier, a leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM) was at Pine Ridge Reservation. The American Indian Movement was there due to more than sixty Indians had been killed, allegedly by a paramilitary group that had connections to the tribal government. Relations between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the AIM where tense. There for, an overwhelming feeling that not enough had been done by the …show more content…
authorities in regard to the murders and not protecting and serving the community. This led what happened on June 26, 1975. Special Agent Jack R. Coler and Ronald A. Williams of the FBI, saw a red pickup truck that they had been looking for. At 11:50 am they followed the vehicle, when gun fire broke out. A high power rifle was shooting at their vehicles and were out gunned, for they only had .38 revolvers. Not long after they raided in that they had been shot and needed immediate backup or would be killed. At 2:30 pm. Joe Stunz, an American Indian Movement member was shot and killed by a Bureau of Indian Affairs rife man, he was found with one of the agents green field FBI jacket that he took from the agent's vehicle. The FBI agents had been found dead at the scene with gunshots to the head. Even so, Mr. Peltier, who does not deny being at the gunfight denies killing either men. He then fled to Alberta, Canada. According to the FBI, more than forty Native Indians were involved in the fight, but only AIM members were brought to trial. The three men that were tried in the death of the men where Bob Robideau, Darrelle “Dino” Butler, and Mr. Peltier. Mr. Robideau and Mr. Butler were tried for the trial and found not guilty in terms of self-defense by a Federal jury in Iowa. They found that the shooting was justified due to the given the climate at Pine Ridge Reservation.
They could also not find any connection to them close-range shooting the two men. After that Peltier was on the FBI’s top ten most wanted list on December 22, 1975. He stayed in Canada for a couple of months and on February 6, 1976, Leonard Peltier was arrested and extradited to the united states after they showed an affidavit signed by Myrtle Poor Beer, claiming to be his girlfriend, which stated that she saw him shoot the FBI agents. He was tried in Fargo, North Dakota by U.S. District Judge Paul Benson. Many things during the trial were withheld, for example, eyewitness testimony, violence at Pine Ridge, evidence and new testimony. There were also many lies and story changes that discriminated and slandered Peltier. Some of the new and made up evidence against him was a FBI report of the Vehicle, from being a red pickup truck to a red and white van, ballistics, Peltier did not ever meet Ms. Poor Bear, three teenager's testimony of seeing him shim shoot the two men in addition Poor Bear was not at the ranch when it all took place. However, Peltier was convicted to two consecutive life sentences, his projected release date is October 11, 2040 and next scheduled hearing being July
2024. He has spent the last 36 years in prison and is now 71 years of age. According to former Prison security Leonard Peltier is unfairly treated and is in poor health. Also stating that he is often denied his medication and put into solitary confinement due to unknown reasons. He was last transferred to Coleman, Florida after being assaulted by inmates. In the time that has past Peltier and several groups have tried to free him from what seems like an unlawful imprisonment. They have come close, but unexpected curve balls are thrown out that make the case be dropped or stopped. Even with all the evidence now known there is nothing known that he actually shot and killed both men. Furthermore, all the people who had once said they saw him shoot the men later came out and admitted they had been pressed by the FBI to lie and say they saw him do the crimes. He has tried numerous times to try to be let out and get a rehearing with all the factual evidence. In an interview with a security guard, he says, Peltier has always stayed in good behavior, yet he is still put in, “the whole for no real reason”. In one instance he was put in and his attorney was not notified for over a week and was in there for a minor cell violation during one of the arias hottest summers. Within the cell tempters can rise over one hundred degrees! Some of the world’s best known human activists and world organizations have said he was experiencing unfair, and cruel and unusual punishment. Today he is still being talked about and on his birthday September 12, 2015 he made a statement on how his spirit has been broken and he finds it hard to believe that he lives in, “the land of the free”. He also wrote “…last time I went before the Parole Commission (2009), I was denied because I looked young and healthy... and a reason given for denying me parole was that I might be too much of an influence on the young Natives..” This is the power that according to the United States government feels Leonard Peltier has on people. Nevertheless, there is a long list of supporters wanting to free Peltier, and this speaks great amounts of his grandeur within the media. Some like Nobel recipients include The Dalai Lama, Mearaid Maguire, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Rigoberta Menchu, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, and Betty Williams. Countless scholars like Robert Vnables. Additionally legal affiliations like Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General, The Late Gerald W. Heaney, Judge, Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and The National Lawyers Guild. Eleven Foreign Parliaments and Commissions, Literary Artists, Musicians and Celebrities, Civil Rights Leaders, Human Rights Advocates, Native American and Tribal Leaders even Sherman Alexi is among the list. He is still talked about in the media. There is countless reference to him. Many people wonder how he is still in prison for a crime that cannot be proven he committed. In my own opinion if this was a man of different ethnicity he would not still be in prison. However, this is our world and no matter how you put it freedom is not always to be free. In the spirit of crazy horse may he be free once again.
One day when Adolph was out by himself tending sheep, eating lunch as if it were a normal day in a pasture near the present-day of Castell, Texas. On New Year's Day in 1870, just a normal day ten-year-old Adolph Korn was kidnapped by an Apache raiding party in the middle of midday. When his twin brother Charlie reported back to his parents that he had been taken, of course, Adolph's parents were extremely upset. Over time, his father would go so far as to ride to San Antonio to report the kidnapping to military authorities. The word would go as far as the commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C. Some small
In 1887 the federal government launched boarding schools designed to remove young Indians from their homes and families in reservations and Richard Pratt –the leader of Carlisle Indian School –declared, “citizenize” them. Richard Pratt’s “Kill the Indian… and save the man” was a speech to a group of reformers in 1892 describing the vices of reservations and the virtues of schooling that would bring young Native Americans into the mainstream of American society.
Charles Alexander Eastman was born Ohiyesa, a Santee Sioux. He is believed to have been born near Redwood Falls, Minnesota, on February 19, 1858. His paternal grandmother, Uncheedah, was responsible for his upbringing after his mother’s death due to complications during childbirth. Uncheedah presented him with tradition Sioux teachings. Following the Great Sioux Uprising of 1862, Ohiyesa and other Santee Sioux were exiled to Manitoba. In Eastman’s Indian Boyhood, he fondly recalls these times of living freely and peacefully by saying, “What boy would not be an Indian for a while when he thinks of the freest life in the world?”
Author and Indian Activist, Vine Deloria makes compelling statements in chapters one and five of his Indiana Manifesto, “Custer Died for Your Sins.” Although published in 1969 this work lays important historic ground work for understanding the plight of the Indian in the United States. Written during the turbulent civil rights movement, Deloria makes interesting comparisons to the Black struggle for equal rights in the United States. He condemns the contemporary views toward Indians widely help by Whites and argues that Indians are wrongly seen through the historic lens of a pipe smoking, bow and arrow wielding savage. Deloria forcefully views the oppressors and conquerors of the Indian mainly as the United States federal government and Christian missionaries. The author’s overall thesis is that Whites view Indians the way they want to see them which is not based in reality. The resulting behavior of Whites towards Indians shows its affects in the false perception in law and culture.
The religious practices of the Native American population in the U.S. no longer was of concern to the government. Suppression, segregation and aggression was also no longer a policy which the American government wished to pursue, but assimilation still remained a concern. Unfortunately, the assimilation came in the form of once again taking away lands from Native Americans (termination) because reservations were seen as equal to the concentration camps of WWII. Rosier states in his journal article, "They Are Ancestral Homelands": Race, Place, and Politics in Cold War Native America, 1945-1961, that Zuni veterans of “We have served [overseas] in order to save our country, our people, our religion, our freedom of press and our freedom of speech from destruction…We, now in the land of freedom as Americans are faced with [termination policies] which will mean total destruction of all tribes.” The policy of termination clashed with the Native American peoples ' desires to preserve their own native identity, and with their own identity came their own religious practices. Between 1953–1964, more than 100 tribes were terminated and 13,263 Native Americans lost tribal affiliation; this was a loss that could not be regained. Scholars determined that the termination policies had calamitous effects on tribal autonomy and
Is Leonard Peltier innocent? In June 26, 1975 on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation two agents by the name of Jack R. Coler and Ronald A. Williams were shot in killed. Supposedly
After the Hungate attack in June of 1864, the Cheyenne and Arapaho people went into Denver for peace talks. Black Kettle was promised peace if him and his people relocated to the military post at Fort Lyon. Major Edward Wynkoop the commander of the fort gave the tribes food and were allowed to camp outside the fort. Word got back to his superiors and he wasn’t supposed to be suppling any Indian with food, so he was replaced with a new commander which he told them to go to sand creek and he would come out there when he knew what he was going to do with them. In 1864, Governor John Evans, very mad that he was denied state hood gave John Chivington one of the military commanders permission to raise a regiment of volunteers, known as 100 day soldiers to take care of the matter himself. Colorado troops repeatedly attacked peaceful villages. Lean Bear one of the peace chiefs was shot when he rode out to talk to the troop and let them know that they wanted peace and not to fight. Lean Bear was one of the chiefs that had gotten a peace medal from President
“Support for Indian Extermination” was a congressional speech given by James Michael Cavanaugh. This speech is considered a primary source document and has to do with race and humanitarian rights. Cavanaugh was a white man originally from Springfield, Massachusetts, but later moved to the mid-west in 1854. He gave this speech in 1868 during a hearing with regards to a conversation with Benjamin Butler, a republican representative of Massachusetts, while he was serving as a democrat congressman for the territory of Montana. The Montana territory was home to the Blackfoot, Sioux, and northern Cheyenne tribes. The speech took place a few years after the civil war had ended and in the middle of the Indian wars. The Indian wars took place for roughly 20 years. Theses wars emerged around the same time as the civil war and lasted till the late 1870’s and started due to the Americans moving west and settling on Indian ancestral ground. There had been numerous treaties between the American government and Indian nations stating that the Indian nations had complete ownership of their ancestral grounds. This war is a major contribution to the
Richard Buccheri: Richard Buccheri, general contractor, built a screen house behind a home where Bulger kept all his guns and ammunition and was the scene for vicious extortions. At the time, Buccheri did not know this is what the screen house was being used for, but was asked to come back to what he thought would be another building project. To his surprise, he arrived to an angry Whitey Bulger who took a gun to his mouth, threatening to kill him and his family, about a property matter that affects his friend. That is when Buccheri quickly agreed to an extortion of $200,000, so he could get himself out of there alive (Lavoie; “The ‘Whitey” Bulger Trial--June 12--Opening
Issue: Phillip Spector had gone to the House of Blues with Kathy Sullivan at about 1:45 a.m. on the 3rd of February. Prior to Spector’s arrival he had been on a previous dinner date with Rommie Davis and had been to two other bars with Beverly Hills and in West Hollywood. Due to his prior engagements that evening he had become very incoherent and intoxicated. When they arrived at the House of Blues, Spector and Sullivan tried to enter the Fountain room which in order to enter you need a membership. The security at the Fountain room, Lana Clarkson didn’t know who Phil Spector was and refused to let him in. He began to complain loudly that Clarkson didn’t know who exactly he was. Euphrates Lalondriz, another House of Blues employee approached Lana. He told her that Spector should be treated “like Dan Ackroyd- like gold.” Clarkson soon apologized and let both Spector and Sullivan in to the seating area within the Fountain room known as the Buddha Room. From then on, Spector ordered another alcoholic
One night, Geraldine’s rapist is released, Joe’s father demonstrates the convoluted mess that is Indian law. Beginning his speech, Joe’s father mentions how Johnson v McIntosh (1823) is the most pivotal and detrimental case to American Indians. He states that the case stripped Indians of all of their land, allowed the Federal Government to practice manifest destiny, granted the government absolute title to the land, and only gave Indians right of occupancy, which could be easily retracted (Erdrich, The Round House, 229). Joe’s father continued to list court cases that were oppressing Indians, until he reached Oliphant v Suquamish, a court case that stated Indians do not have the right to try and punish non-Indians on their land (Erdrich, The Round House, 229). These court cases, and a plethora more, harshly depict the federal government’s views on Indians. Time after time the federal and local governments ruled Indians as inferior and took their rights away from them. As the Europeans began expanding west into Indian territory, the government began deciding in the favor of settlers. Rarely in history did the government rule in favor of Indians, epitomizing the ideological view that Indians are inferior to
It is rare for a victim of a hate crime to get the justice they deserve. During the 1950s, the establishment of Jim Crow Laws in the South were extremely fixated on racial disenfranchising African-Americans. Mississippi was no exception, in that they glorified the Old South more than any of their fellow southern states. Young and independent Emmett Louis Till went to Mississippi to visit some relatives over the summer. 14-year-old Emmett Till was kidnapped, tormented, and murdered, after he reportedly flirted with a white woman who went by the name of Carolyn Bryant. The death of Emmett Till at the hands of his racially motivated killers, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, was brought to light in their confessions. Even with the undisputable incriminating
The media attention to American Indian suicides has seemingly increased over the last few years. Despite the fact that it took a while for national news organizations to cover the protests at Standing Rock Reservation, the growing public interest in the political opposition against the DAPL has brought the Sioux Tribe both support and discrimination. Although LaFromboise is no stranger to standing up for what she believes, her research has recently received the attention of politicians and other government officials in Washington D.C. after the APA made a formal statement last month addressing the controversy surrounding the protests at Standing Rock Reservation and the Dakota Access Pipeline. The members of the APA felt so strongly about the memorandum issued by the newly elect President of the United States, Donald Trump, the organization felt compelled to express their concerns in a public forum.
According to the Arapahos and Cheyenne’s the story of the Sand Creek Massacre has misrepresented and ignored the role of these Natives in the years before the massacre. Their political goals and strategies have not been considered in understanding what happened during the massacre. Therefore it is argued that it is important to acknowledge their role in this horrible event as well, in order to have a clear view on what happened. It must be noted that the treaty between the natives and settlers was made in 1851. The camp that the Arapaho and Cheyenne obtained at the Sand Creek was the result of more than 10 year strategies. It furthermore included taking responsibility in relation to the peace with Americans (Loretta 2015, 364-390). The relation between the settlers and Cheyenne and Arapaho was quite exceptional, there were a lot of tribes who tried to fight the settlers, however these 2 groups main goal was peace (Tobin 2003, 110). In order to maintain the peace they had to sacrifice a lot, however they had to maintain the peace in order to be able to stay alive. The settlers were not really interested in this peaceful coexistence, which was made clear during the massacre. This effort of the natives to maintain peace and be politically involved is often not taken into account when analysing the events of 1864 (Loretta 2015, 364-390). Most investigations focussed on the aspect of death of
Eldridge Cleaver was a well-known African American writer and political activist. He received considerable recognition for his book Soul on Ice. He was a member of the Black Panthers and was a notable leader in the organization. Eldridge Cleaver was an editor of the Black Panther’s newspaper, which gave him significant influence in the party. He confessed to raping several white women because of his hate for white America. His writings give a unique insight to the consequences of black oppression in American Society. Eldridge Cleaver is an extreme example of the negative feelings that black Americans had at the time. He decided to resort to violence to get his revenge on the white man. Eldridge Cleaver gives a necessary account of his journey