Leonard Peltier

He was four when his parents divorced, and had just turned nine when the government enrolled him at the Wahpeton Indian School, 290 miles from the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota where his grandparents were raising him. Wahpeton was a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school, built to convert Native children into English-speaking white ones and to leave nothing of home inside them. Peltier, one of 13, finished ninth grade at another Indian school and quit. He went to Seattle in 1965, welded, worked construction, and co-owned an auto shop whose upper floor became a halfway house for Native men out of prison. The shop closed. In 1972, Dennis Banks brought him into the American Indian Movement.

After the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee, Pine Ridge came apart — a tribal chairman with a private militia, scores of violent deaths in three years, AIM organizers camped at the Jumping Bull ranch. On June 26, 1975, FBI agents Jack Coler, 28, and Ronald Williams, 27, drove in after a theft suspect. A firefight killed them both and killed Joe Stuntz, an AIM member. Nobody was ever charged in Stuntz's death. Peltier fled to Canada, was extradited in December 1976, and in April 1977 a Fargo jury convicted him of two counts of first-degree murder. Two consecutive life sentences.

Doubts attached almost immediately. The extradition leaned on an affidavit from Myrtle Poor Bear, who swore she was his girlfriend and had watched the killings, then said she never met him and that agents coerced her. A 1975 ballistics teletype withheld from the defence, released later under the Freedom of Information Act, said a casing from the scene did not match Peltier's rifle. Two co-defendants tried separately were acquitted on self-defence. Pressed at a 1985 appeal, a government lawyer said "we can't prove who shot those agents", a line prosecutors call torn from context. The courts conceded some of this and affirmed anyway. Amnesty International, Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela sought his release. The FBI and its agents' association fought each of them. Parole was denied repeatedly.

On January 19, 2025, his last full day in office, Joe Biden commuted the sentence to indefinite home confinement. It was not a pardon. The two convictions stand, and so does the sentence, served now on the Turtle Mountain Reservation instead of in a cell. On February 18 Peltier left the Coleman penitentiary in Florida at 80, with failing eyesight and a walker, after 49 years in custody. He paints — 126 canvases made inside were published in 2022 — and he still says he did not kill the agents. The FBI still says he did. Whether the man convicted is the man who fired remains formally unresolved and bitterly argued. The verdict is not settled.

Leonard Peltier's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

• Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance book
  Memoir. He admits being in the firefight and denies killing the agents 1999
• Leonard Peltier — Art Behind Bars: Dreams of Freedom book
  126 paintings made in prison, published by CITYarts 2022
• Paintings from prison artwork
  Portraits and Plains subjects, sold to fund his defence 2022
• Peace and Freedom Party presidential candidacy other
  On the ballot in California only, where he took 27,607 votes 2004

• September 12, 1944 aged 0 Born on the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota One of 13 children, raised largely by his paternal grandparents.
• September 1953 aged 8 Enrolled at the Wahpeton Indian School, 290 miles from home A Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school that required English and forbade Native culture.
• 1972 aged ~28 Joins the American Indian Movement at the invitation of Dennis Banks
• June 26, 1975 aged 30 Firefight at the Jumping Bull ranch kills FBI agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams Joe Stuntz, a young AIM member, was shot dead the same day. Nobody was ever charged in his death.
• February 6, 1976 aged 31 Arrested in Alberta by the RCMP after months as a fugitive Extradited to the United States that December on documents Canada later reviewed.
• April 1977 aged 32 Convicted in Fargo of two counts of first-degree murder Two consecutive life sentences. Two co-defendants tried separately had been acquitted.
• July 20, 1979 aged 34 Escapes from the federal prison at Lompoc and is caught three days later Seven more years were added for the escape and for possession of a firearm.
• January 19, 2025 aged 80 Biden commutes the sentence to indefinite home confinement Not a pardon. The convictions and the sentence stand.
• February 18, 2025 aged 80 Leaves the Coleman penitentiary for Turtle Mountain He was 80, and had been in custody for 49 years.

• Dennis Banks 1937–2017
  Co-founder of the American Indian Movement and a leader of the 1973 Wounded Knee occupation recruited by
• Russell Means 1939–2012
  American Indian Movement leader whose occupations drove Native activism into national view. movement ally
• Joe Biden b. 1942
  46th president who enacted major infrastructure and climate legislation after decades in the Senate and vice presidency. sentence commuted by
• J. Edgar Hoover 1895–1972
  Longtime FBI director who built a powerful national police institution while conducting extensive political surveillance and abuses. built the FBI that pursued AIM
• Vine Deloria Jr. 1933–2005
  Writer and legal scholar whose work transformed public understanding of Native sovereignty, treaty rights, and Indigenous religion. same cause, different tactics