December 29th marks the 122nd anniversary of the Massacre at Wounded Knee. It is a story that remains fresh in the lives of many indigenous peoples across America. Each generation is taught to never forget.
In 1891, reviewing the history leading up to the massacre, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Thomas Morgan said,
"It is hard to overestimate the magnitude of the calamity which happened to the Sioux people by the sudden disappearance of the buffalo. The boundless range was to be abandoned for the circumscribed reservation, and abundance of plenty to be supplanted by limited and decreasing government subsistence and supplies. Under these circumstances it is not in human nature not to be discontented and restless, even turbulent and violent."
Commissioner Morgan was not empathetic about the plight of the indigenous people. He was just stating facts. One year prior to the massacre, in Oct 1889, he issued a policy paper stating his convictions regarding the native population.
"The Indians must conform to "the white man's ways," peaceably if they will, forcibly if they must. They must adjust themselves to their environment, and conform their mode of living substantially to our civilization. This civilization may not be the best possible, but it is the best the Indians can get. They cannot escape it, and must either conform to it or be crushed by it. The tribal relations should be broken up, socialism destroyed, and the family and the autonomy of the individual substituted."
The Wounded Knee Massacre is still commonly depicted as a "battle" that no one can be blamed for, but if blame is assigned it is always made clear that a Lakota fired the first shot.
This is the justification for all that followed. A century after the murders, Congress issued an apology, expressing "deep regret" for the events on that day in 1890 when upwards of 370 men, women, and children were gunned down as they fled for their lives. But the Wounded Knee Massacre was not an anomaly, nor was it an accident. Wounded Knee is the entire history of indigenous peoples relationship with Imperialism made manifest in a single event.
"I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream." Black Elk.
The ancestors of the victims commemorate the massacre in order to honor those who have fallen and to foster healing of their still devastated communities. The ancestors of the perpetrators ignore inflicting the wound and the wound festers.
From Wounded Knee, where just days after the massacre a young newspaper editor named Frank Baum (later to become famous for the children's story "The Wizard of Oz") opined, "The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries, we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth."
To Vietnam, where Lyndon Johnson's call to win hearts and minds of the civilian population was corrupted by GI's to, "When you have them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow."
To Iraq, where Madeline Albright was asked if the deaths of ½ million children during sanctions was worth it, she replied "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price we think the price is worth it."
To Gaza, where Dov Weisglass said, "The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger."
To Iran where a new sanctions regime is in place and the state department claims, "The sanctions are beginning to bite," and dozens of places in between, the wound festers.
In each case, the power with the superior military claims that the occupied and oppressed are dangerous and threaten the very existence of the state, even as the state starves the population, restricts their every move and denies them the most basic rights under the guise of "security". All attempts by the "enemy" to seek peace are ignored or derided as "lies" while the theft of land and/or resources continue unabated. Each time the oppressed demand their rights or dare to strike back against their oppressors, the oppressor claims that the people are motivated by hate and seek the annihilation of the state. Negotiations are viewed as a sign of weakness and are rarely pursued unless they can be used as a tool to further oppression. The oppressors continually talk about "pursuing peace" as they systematically destroy any and all opposition.
We kill by starvation, we kill by denying medicine, and we kill by isolation. When that doesn't silence dissent of the "malcontents" we do not hesitate to kill with bullets and bombs.
Remember Commissioner Morgan's words, "This civilization may not be the best possible, but it is the best they can get. They cannot escape it, and must either conform to it or be crushed by it."
One day we too will be crushed by this flawed concept of civilization.
The Dahiya doctrine is a military strategy in which the Israeli army deliberately targets civilian infrastructure as a means of inducing suffering on the civilian population, making it so difficult to survive that fighting back or resisting occupation are no longer practical, thereby establishing deterrence. The doctrine is named after a southern suburb in Beirut with large apartment blocks. Israeli bombs flattened the entire neighborhood during the 2006 Lebanon War. But this doctrine is not a modern strategy for controlling populations. Nor is putting the people of Gaza on a "diet" new- subjugating an entire population through a combination of poverty, malnutrition, a struggle over limited resources, and violence is the American way, adopted by our closest allies, (and "the only democracy in the Middle East," with the "most moral army in the world,") the Israelis.
Dec 27th marks the 4th anniversary of the beginning of Operation Cast Lead, (the name derives from a popular Hannukah children's song about a dreidel made from cast lead.) During this attack on Gaza, 1,417 people were killed (330 children), 4336 were wounded. 6,400 homes were destroyed. Hospitals, mosques, the power plant, and the sewage system were deliberately targeted.
Israel accuses Hamas of war crimes for shooting rockets without guidance systems indiscriminately into Israel. Israeli officials claim that "Hamas hides behind civilians" as a justification to bomb civilian population centers and infrastructure. Killing civilians in Gaza using precision munitions, is a war crime, no matter who is hiding behind them.
After the recent killing of 20 children in a Newtown, Connecticut grade school, President Obama, wiping tears from his eyes said,
"This is our first task -- caring for our children. It's our first job. If we don't get that right, we don't get anything right. That's how, as a society, we will be judged. And by that measure, can we truly say, as a nation, that we are meeting our obligations?"
The just completed eight-day Israeli operation against Gaza called the Pillar of Cloud (The name is derived from a Biblical passage) saw three generations of the al-Dalu family wiped out in a single bombing, including 4 children between the ages of 1 and 7 years old. The surviving son does not speak of surrender, relinquishing the families land, or disappearing. He demands justice. His tears are mixed with fury. Can he be blamed?
As the ceasefire went in to effect there was one consistent message from the people of Gaza. We are here. This is our home. We will never leave. They will have to kill every one of us.
Upon cessation of the bombing, our Congress immediately voted to replenish Israel's bombs and munitions in order for Israel to "protect itself". The wound festers.
In his speech the President went on to say,
"If there is even one step we can take to save another child, or another parent, or another town, from the grief that has visited Tucson, and Aurora, and Oak Creek, and Newtown, and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before that -- then surely we have an obligation to try."
Wounded Knee has not disappeared. The Lakota people remain. Gaza has not disappeared. The Palestinian people remain. In Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia people grieve for the loss of their children. The violence wrought upon them in our name continues. If we can take one step to save another child, we have an obligation to try.
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.â€
Buckminster Fuller
COINTELPRO, AIM & Peltier/ FBI Suppression of Indigenous Activists in the 1970s: A Primer
What is COINTELPRO?
Despite its carefully contrived image as the nation's premier crime fighting agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has always functioned primarily as America's political police. This role includes not only the collection of intelligence on the activities of political dissidents & groups, but often times counterintelligence operations to thwart those activities.
Although covert operations have been employed throughout FBI history, the formal COunter INTELligence PROgram, or COINTELPRO, of the period from 1956 to 1971 was the first to be both broadly targeted & centrally directed. The stated goals of COINTELPRO were to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize those persons or organizations that the FBI decided were enemies of the State.
COINTELPRO Techniques
At its most extreme dimension, political dissidents have been eliminated outright or sent to prison for the rest of their lives. Many more, however, were neutralized by intimidation, harassment, discrediting, & a whole assortment of authoritarian & illegal tactics.
Neutralization, as explained on record by the FBI, didn't necessarily pertain to the apprehension of parties in the commission of a crime, the preparation of evidence against them, & securing of a judicial conviction. Rather, the FBI simply made activists incapable of engaging in political activity by whatever means.
For those not assessed as being in themselves a security risk but engaged in what the Bureau viewed to be politically objectionable activity, those techniques consisted of disseminating derogatory information to the target's family, friends & associates, or visiting & questioning them. False information was planted in the press. The targets' efforts to speak in public were frustrated, & employers were contacted to try to get them fired. Anonymous letters were sent by the FBI to targets' spouses, accusing them of infidelity. Other letters contained death threats. These strategies are well-documented, for example, in the case of Martin Luther King, Jr. Records also show that activists in the 1960s were repeatedly arrested on any excuse until they could no longer make bail.
In addition, the FBI made use of informants, often quite violent & emotionally disturbed individuals, to present false testimony to the courts & frame COINTELPRO targets for crimes the FBI knew they did not commit. In some cases the charges were quite serious, including murder.
Another option was snitch jacketing where the FBI made the target look like a police informant or an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency. This served the dual purposes of isolating & alienating important leaders, as well as increasing the general level of fear & factionalism in the group.
Many counterintelligence techniques involved the use of paid informants. Informants became agents provocateurs by raising controversial issues at meetings to take advantage of ideological divisions; promoting enmity with other groups; or inciting the group to violent acts, even to the point of providing them with weapons. Over the years, FBI provocateurs repeatedly urged & initiated violent acts, including forceful disruptions of meetings & demonstrations, attacks on police, bombings, etc.
The full story of COINTELPRO may never be told. The Bureau's files were never seized by Congress or the courts or sent to the National Archives. Some were destroyed. In addition, many counter-intelligence operations were never committed to writing as such, or involved open investigations making ex-operatives legally prohibited from talking about them. Most operations remained secret until long after the damage had been done.
The FBI has continued to use proven COINTELPRO tactics into the 21st century. In fact, many such techniques are now overt, conducted under the guise of Homeland Security & even codified in key pieces of legislation such as the U.S. Patriot Act, the government's response to the September 11, 2002, attack on the World Trade Center twin towers in New York City.
What is AIM?
The American Indian Movement (AIM), an Indigenous rights group committed to uniting all Native Peoples in an effort to uplift their communities & promote cultural pride & sovereignty, was founded in 1968 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The FBI used all of the above COINTELPRO tactics against AIM, including the wholesale jailing of the Movement's leadership. Virtually every known AIM leader in the United States was incarcerated in either state or federal prisons since (or even before) the organization's formal emergence in 1968, some repeatedly. After the 1973 siege of Wounded Knee, for example, the FBI caused 542 separate charges to be filed against those it identified as key AIM leaders. This resulted in only 15 convictions, all on such petty or contrived offenses as interfering with a federal officer in the performance of his duty. Organization members often languished in jail for months as the cumulative bail required to free them outstripped resource capabilities of AIM & supporting groups.
In 1975, against the American Indian Movement in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, the FBI COINTELPRO conducted a full-fledged counterinsurgency war - complete with death squads, disappearances & assassinations - not dissimilar to those conducted in third world countries such as El Salvador & Guatemala.
Who is Leonard Peltier?
Leonard Peltier is a citizen of the Anishinabe & Dakota/Lakota Nations who has been unjustly imprisoned for nearly three decades.
When the government can select a person for criminal persecution because of their political activity, when they can fabricate evidence against that person & suppress evidence proving that fabrication, & prosecute a person & put them in prison for any amount of time, let alone for life, then you have a political prisoner. Accordingly, Amnesty International considers Peltier a political prisoner who should be immediately & unconditionally released.
What led to Peltier's conviction?
It began in the early 1970s on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation (SD), when tensions between then tribal chairman Dick Wilson & the traditionalists began to escalate. Wilson was pro-assimilation, meaning he believed Native Peoples should discard their traditions to join mainstream American society. Traditionalists, on the other hand, felt it important to maintain their culture & land base. Wilson favored those who were pro-assimilation by giving them jobs & other assistance while neglecting the needs of the traditionalists who often lived in the worst poverty.
The growing conflict prompted traditionalists to join together with AIM to protect their way of life. In response, Wilson joined with the FBI to destroy the Movement the agency perceived as a threat to the American way of life. The result was disastrous.
In 1973, local traditionalists & AIM occupied the Pine Ridge hamlet of Wounded Knee to protest the many abuses they were suffering. (This was the same site where, less than 100 years earlier, the horrific Wounded Knee massacre was perpetrated against over 300 Lakotas, mostly women & children.) Instead of listening to the Natives' grievances, the government responded militarily, firing over 250,000 rounds of ammunition into the area & killing two occupants whose deaths were never investigated. The occupation lasted 71 days & ended only after the government promised investigations into the complaints. The investigations never materialized & conditions on the reservation worsened.
After Wounded Knee, Wilson outlawed AIM activities on the reservation. Traditionalists were not allowed to meet or attend traditional ceremonies. Wilson hired vigilantes who called themselves Guardians of the Oglala Nation (GOONs) to enforce his rules.
The three years following Wounded Knee are often referred to as the Pine Ridge Reign of Terror because anyone associated with AIM was targeted for violence. Their homes were burned & their cars were run off the road. They were struck by cars, shot in drive-by shootings, & beaten. Between 1973 & 1976, over 60 traditionalists were murdered. Pine Ridge had the highest murder rate in the United States. Scores of other people were assaulted. In almost every case, witness accounts indicated GOON responsibility, but nothing was done to stop the violence. On the contrary, the FBI supplied the GOONs with weaponry & intelligence on AIM & looked the other way as the GOONs committed crimes against members as well as supporters of AIM.
As the situation worsened, the traditionalists asked AIM to return to the reservation to offer protection. Leonard Peltier was among those who answered the call. He & a dozen others set up camp on the Jumping Bull ranch at Pine Ridge, the home of a number of traditional families.
On June 26, 1975, two FBI agents in unmarked cars pursued a red pickup truck onto the Jumping Bull ranch. They were ostensibly looking for Jimmy Eagle, who had gotten into a fistfight & stolen a pair of cowboy boots. Gunshots rang out. While mothers fled the area with their children, other residents started to return fire. A shootout erupted between the FBI agents & the residents.
Law enforcement immediately mobilized. Within a couple hours, over 150 FBI swat team members, Bureau of Indian Affairs police, & GOONs surrounded the ranch.
Peltier helped lead a small group of teenagers out of the area, barely escaping through the hail of bullets.
When the shootout ended, AIM member Joseph Killsright Stuntz (below) lay dead, shot in the head by a sniper. His death has never been investigated. The two FBI agents also lay dead - wounded in the gun battle, then shot at point blank range.
Years later, through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, it was documented that:
* the FBI had been closely monitoring AIM activities on & off the reservation & had even been preparing for paramilitary law enforcement operations on Pine Ridge one month before the shootout.
* the two agents had possessed a map that highlighted the Jumping Bull Ranch & labeled the family's storage cellars as bunkers.
According to FBI documents, over 40 Native people participated in the shootout, both AIM & non-AIM. Yet only 4 persons were indicted for the deaths of the agents: 3 AIM leaders - Dino Butler, Bob Robideau, & Leonard Peltier - & Jimmy Eagle.
Butler & Robideau were the first to be arrested & tried. The jury found that Butler & Robideau were justified in returning fire given the atmosphere of terror that existed on Pine Ridge during that time. Further, they were not tied to the point blank shootings. Butler & Robideau were found innocent on grounds of self-defense.
The FBI was outraged by the verdict. They dropped charges against Jimmy Eagle so that, according to their own memos, . the full prosecutive weight of the federal government could be directed against Leonard Peltier.
Peltier, meanwhile, had fled to Canada believing he would never receive a fair trial. On February 6, 1976, he was apprehended.
The FBI presented the Canadian court with affidavits from a woman named Myrtle Poor Bear who claimed she had been Peltier's girl friend & had witnessed him shoot the agents. Peltier was extradited to the U.S.
However, Poor Bear had never met Peltier, nor had she been present at the time of the shooting - a fact later confirmed by the U.S. Prosecutor. Despite Poor Bear's subsequent declaration that she had given false statements under duress, having been terrorized by FBI agents, Peltier's extradition was not reversed.
How was Peltier's trial unfair?
Leonard Peltier was returned to the U.S. where his case was mysteriously transferred from the judge who had presided over the trial of his co-defendants to a different judge - one who made rulings that severely handicapped the defense. Also, the FBI had carefully analyzed the Butler-Robideau case and, this time, they were determined to secure a conviction. The cards were stacked against Peltier & a fair trial was out of reach.
* Myrtle Poor Bear & other key witnesses were banned from testifying about FBI misconduct.
* Testimony about the Pine Ridge Reign of Terror was severely restricted.
* Important evidence, such as conflicting ballistics reports, was ruled inadmissible.
* The red pickup truck that had been followed onto the ranch was suddenly described as Peltier's red & white van. (Agents who described the vehicle as a red pickup truck during the Butler-Robideau trial could no longer recollect their previous testimony.)
* The jury was sequestered & surrounded by U.S. Marshals at all times, leading them to believe that AIM was a threat to their safety.
* Three young Native witnesses were forced to falsely testify against Peltier after being detained & terrorized by FBI agents.
Still, the U.S. Prosecutor failed to produce a single witness who could identify Peltier as the shooter. Instead, the government tied a bullet casing found near the bodies to the alleged murder weapon, arguing that this gun had been the only one of its kind used during the shootout & that it had belonged to Peltier.
The above FOIA suit uncovered FBI documents that showed that:
* more than one weapon of the type attributed to Peltier had been present at the scene.
* the FBI had intentionally concealed a ballistics report that showed the shell casing could not have come from the alleged murder weapon.
* the agents undoubtedly followed a red pickup truck onto the land, not the red & white van driven by Peltier.
* compelling evidence against several other suspects existed & was concealed.
Unaware of these facts, the jury convicted Peltier. He was sentenced to two consecutive life terms. Peltier is currently imprisoned at the U.S. penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas.
What has happened since the trial?
After many of the above abuses surfaced in the 1980s, the Peltier defense team demanded a new trial. During subsequent oral arguments, the U.S. Prosecutor admitted, . we can't prove who shot those agents.
The appellate court found that Peltier may have been acquitted had evidence not been improperly withheld by the FBI. However, a new trial was denied on the grounds of a legal technicality.
In 1993, Peltier requested Executive Clemency from then President Clinton.
An intensive campaign was launched - supported by Native & human rights organizations, members of Congress, community & church groups, labor organizations, luminaries, & celebrities. Even Judge Heaney, who authored the above court decision, expressed firm support for Peltier's release. The Peltier case became a national issue.
On November 7, 2000, during a live radio interview, Clinton stated that he would seriously consider Peltier's request for clemency & make a decision before leaving office on January 20, 2001. In response, the FBI launched a major disinformation campaign in both the media & among key government officials. On December 15, over 500 FBI agents marched in front of the White House to oppose clemency.
On January 20, the list of clemencies granted by Clinton was released to the media. Without explanation, Peltier's name had been excluded.
Mr. Peltier has served a significantly longer period of time than normally would be served before a grant of parole in similar cases. Various FBI agents, together with the U.S. Prosecutor, are present at parole hearings to personally oppose Mr. Peltier's release. The U.S. Parole Commission has made it clear that parole will not even be considered until the year 2008 - when Peltier will have served twice the normal time according to the Commission's own congressionally mandated guidelines. No adequate reason has been given for such arbitrary & discriminatory treatment. Instead, the Parole Commission has stated the denial of parole is based on Mr. Peltier's participation in the premeditated & cold blooded execution or the ambush of the two agents. Yet, there is no evidence that Mr. Peltier ever fired the fatal shots. This has been admitted to by the government attorneys themselves. At one parole hearing it was made clear that Mr. Peltier will not receive parole until he recognizes his crime or, in short, confesses to a crime he didn't commit.
Leonard Peltier has made remarkable contributions to humanitarian & charitable causes during his many years behind bars. He sponsors an annual Christmas drive for clothes & toys for the children of Pine Ridge, helps to establish Native American Scholarship funds, assists programs for battered women & substance abuse recovery, collaborates to improve medical care on the reservations, & assists other prisoners in developing prison art programs. Peltier also has adopted children in Guatemala & El Salvador. As a result, he has received recognition & acclaim from many human rights groups, including the Human Rights Commission of Spain & the Ontario (Canada) Federation of Labour.
Mr. Peltier suffers from diabetes, high blood pressure & a heart condition. According to an affiliate of Physicians for Human Rights, he risks blindness, kidney failure & stroke in the future, given his inadequate diet, living conditions, & health care.
Our concepts of justice & good government require that such tragic errors of the past be set right. We ask that you act now to secure Mr. Leonard Peltier's freedom.
C 2004 Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, PO Box 583, Lawrence, KS 66044-0583
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
Silence, they say, is the voice of complicity.
But silence is impossible.
Silence screams.
Silence is a message,
just as doing nothing is an act.
Let who you are ring out & resonate
in every word & every deed.
Yes, become who you are.
There's no sidestepping your own being
or your own responsibility.
What you do is who you are.
You are your own comeuppance.
You become your own message.
You are the message.
In the Spirit of Crazy Horse
- Leonard Peltier
AMY GOODMAN: On Saturday, after the Leonard Peltier concert at the Beacon Theatre, I had a chance to speak directly with Leonard Peltier, when he called into a news conference that was organized by Native elders, his lawyers and Pete Seeger. I conducted the interview in the front row of the press conference by telephone as he spoke to me from the U.S. Penitentiary at Coleman, Florida. Peltier was sentenced to prison in 1977. He's now 68 years old.
AMY GOODMAN: Leonard, this is Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! I was
LEONARD PELTIER: Oh, hi, Amy. How are you?
AMY GOODMAN: Hi. I'm good. I was wondering if you have a message for President Obama?
LEONARD PELTIER: Concerning what?
AMY GOODMAN: Your situation or the situation in the world or your own situation.
LEONARD PELTIER: Stop all the wars. Stop all the wars. Or what? What kind of message are you talking about?
AMY GOODMAN: You can share several messages.
LEONARD PELTIER: OK. Well, I just hope he can, you know, stop the wars that are going on in this world, and stop gettingkilling all those people getting killed, and, you know, give the Black Hills back to my people, and turn me loose.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you share with people at the news conference and with President Obama your case for why you should beyour sentence should be commuted, why you want clemency?
LEONARD PELTIER: Well, I never got a fair trial, for one. You know, my case has been throttled from the moment they had grand jury hearings. They had somebody on the grand jury hearing, at the hearing testifying against me I've never met in my life. And from the extradition from Canada, they violated international laws. And then at the trial, they had admitted racistsat the trial, they had admitted racists on the jury. They wouldn't allow me to put up a defense, and manufactured evidence, manufactured witnesses, tortured witnesses. You know, the list isjust goes on. So I think I'm a very good candidate forafter 37 years, for clemency or house arrest, at least.
AMY GOODMAN: What would house arrest mean? And can you describe your conditions in the prison in Florida where you are right now?
LEONARD PELTIER: Well, I'm in a United States penitentiary witha supermax penitentiary. And it's like all the rest of the penitentiaries. And house arrest would be that I'd be home onI'd be home on house arrest. I'd probably have to wear an anklet, a bracelet on my ankle, but that would be a lot better than this. At least I could get some medical treatment then. You know, I got real bad prostate right now, and it's just getting worse and worse. It ain't getting any better. It isn't healing itself, so, you know, it just continues to grow worse.
AMY GOODMAN: You were convicted of aiding and abetting the killing of these two FBI agents. What is your response to that?
LEONARD PELTIER: Well, originally I was convicted of first-degree murder, but after their case fell apart, they confirmed the conviction on the most critical evidence against me, the murder weapon. Then we filed a Freedom of Information Act and found two documents where they had done scientific tests from their firearms laboratory, and it came out negative. So this was a pieceanother piece of manufactured evidence, besides Myrtle Poor Bear, the witnesses and stuff like that. But, so then there case fell apart.
And then, in '92in 1985, when the federal 8th Circuit Court of Appeals judge, Judge Heaney, asked the prosecutors just what was Mr. Peltier convicted of, because we cannot find no evidence of first-degree murder in the record, the prosecutor, Lynn Crooks, stated that the government doesn't know who killed the agents, nor does he know what participation Leonard Peltier may have had in it. So, in 1992, I filed an appeal, again asking, "What am Iwhat was I in prison for if the government doesn't know what I'm in here for?" So they changed it to aiding and abetting, which is illegal, because I was never indicted for it, I was never prosecuted for it, and it takes a whole different defense in your trial. So I don't know what the hell I'm in here for.
AMY GOODMAN: How is your health? And can you describe the conditions at Coleman?
LEONARD PELTIER: Well, it's a United States penitentiary, you know, and they're getting worse and worse every year. They're notthey're not like they were 20, 30 years ago.
And I have awell, I have a bad prostate. I mean, you know, the doctor said that one side isone side looks healthy, and the other side is not healthy, of my prostate, when they gave me that scope test over a year ago. But so far it hasn't shown any cancer. I mean, you know, that's prettythis is one of the biggest killers of men. So, all they give me is a pill for it.
AMY GOODMAN: And diabetes?
LEONARD PELTIER: Well, I gotwell, yeah, I got all the other stuff, toodiabetes, high blood pressure, had a mild heart attack, had a mild stroke at one time. I mean, I'm falling apart.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you have any hope that you will be freed?
LEONARD PELTIER: Well, you know, according to the laws, they have the 30-year mandatory release law. After 30 years, I was supposed to be released. Of course, that went by. Come February, I'll have 37. But also, when I was sentenced to prison, a life sentence was seven years. I did not get life without parole; I got a life sentence. So I've done actually about five, six life sentences now. And, you know, that's reallyyou know, they're in violation of their own laws again, just on that. So, and I don't know. I'm fighting. I'm fighting for it. I'm going to try to get out.
AMY GOODMAN: What is your
LEONARD PELTIER: Can't predict that. So farso far, it ain't looking very good, I'll tell you that much.
AMY GOODMAN: What is your response to the FBI that campaigns against your release?
LEONARD PELTIER: Oh, they're fullthey're full of crap. You know, they're the ones that should be investigated for all the murders they committed on Pine Ridge. They supported that, those killings. They financed it. They gave intelligence and armor-piercing ammunition and sophisticated weaponry. This was all donethis was all stated by Duane Brewer, who was one of the leaders of the GOON squads on the reservation. So, I mean, they're the ones who should be investigated, which, by the way, someI might add now, some of the Indians and one state senatorstate senators in South Dakota are now calling for an investigation on that. They are going to put it together. And the son of Tim Johnson, who is an attorney in one of thein the attorney general's office in South DakotaTim Johnson is a congressman over there. His son is going to lead that investigation.
AMY GOODMAN: And what's the significance of that?
LEONARD PELTIER: Well, to put the murderers in jail. I mean, that's the way I look at it. I mean
AMY GOODMAN: For people who don't know about your case, especially young people, how would you like to be described? How would you, Leonard Peltier, like to be known to them?
LEONARD PELTIER: Well, just somebody that stood up for his people's rights and who tried to stop the Termination Act and all the other crimes committed against my people. That's the only reason I'm here. They ain't got methey ain't proved nothing about me. They ain't proved I did anything, let alone kill somebody.
AMY GOODMAN: What would you do if you were free?
LEONARD PELTIER: Well, I'd probably go home on house arrest. I mean, that's the only thing I can expect, because I don't think Obama is going to givehe's going to do what Bill Clinton did, and he ain't going to give no clemencies until his last year. He's just not going toit's not going to happen. I really don't believe it. So, I'm trying towe're trying toGeorge Bush signed the Second Chance Act, which is house arrest, and so we're trying to push that, so I can get over there, at least to maybe get someif I do get the house arrest, I can at least get some medical treatment, you know, because they're not givingthey're not giving it to me. They're justyou know, they're not going to give it to me. That's all there is to it. And, well, if I did, I'd go home to North Dakota. I got about 10 seconds left. That buzzer just give me aboutwell, about a minute, I think, I got left. But anyway
AMY GOODMAN: What gives youwhat gives you hope, Leonard?
LEONARD PELTIER: Huh?
AMY GOODMAN: What gives you hope?
LEONARD PELTIER: People like you and all the other supporters out there and people that are behind me, my people. That's the only hope I got.
AMY GOODMAN: And the meaning of Harry Belafonte and Pete Seeger and about a thousand other people who came out last night to this event in your honor?
LEONARD PELTIER: I got to say this. I got to say this really quick. I've got 10 seconds. Thank you all very, very much. And I'm sorry I can'tmy time is up. I've got to get off this phone.
PELTIER SUPPORTERS: We love you, Leonard. Love you, Leonard. Stay strong.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Leonard Peltier. I was speaking with him at a news conference on Saturday on the telephone. He washe is in prison at the U.S. Penitentiary at Coleman in Florida. He's been in prison for 37 years, is now asking President Obama for clemency. On Friday, a major concert was held here in New York calling for his release. Peltier is one of America's most well-known and longest-incarcerated prisoners. Go to our website at democracynow.org to see him reading his own poetry and to see Peter Coyote describing his case
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AMY GOODMAN: Our guest for the rest of the hour, Peter Coyote, politically engaged actor and writer, ordained Zen Buddhist priest, longtime friend of imprisoned Native American leader Leonard Peltier. He is the well-known voice of so many of Ken Burns' documentary series, most recently Dust Bowl, and before that, Prohibition, coming up, The Roosevelts, now here to talk about Leonard Peltier, because a major concert is being held in Peltier's honor Friday night to bring attention to the Native American leader's case, in prison now in Florida, but overall in prison for more than 37 years. If he served out his termhe was convicted for killing two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975. If he served out his term, he would be out when he was 95 years old.
Peter Coyote, why did you get involved with this case? Can you tell us the story of Leonard Peltier?
PETER COYOTE: Sure. I'll put that in a nutshell. I do want to say, he was not convicted for killing the agents. He was convicted of aiding and abetting, and even the government has admitted they have no idea whether he killed the agents or not.
So, I met Leonard long before he went to jail. I was involved in some Native issues before Wounded Knee. And a young friend of mine who was in charge of the spiritual elders came through, and they needed to buy some weapons for Wounded Knee, to defend. And I used to be a marksman; I know a lot about guns. I went to do that.
AMY GOODMAN: And they were allowed to have guns on the reservation.
PETER COYOTE: Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, traveling with them was this guy known as Alex, this big guy. We ran around for a couple of weeks, getting together some guns and ammunition and stuff like that. And several years later, I read an article in Akwesasne Notes about Leonard Peltier. I had no idea it was the same person. But I routinely send commissary money to people in jail that I know or that I'm impressed by, so they can buy some candy and cigarettes and stuff. I get this long letter back, "Hey, I knew this guy Coyote. He used to have a blue-eyed coyote dog and had this truck, and we did this and that. You knew me as Alex." So, I got goosebumps, and I thought, "I've got to get on board."
So here's the case in a nutshell. 1973, the highest per capita murder rate in the United States was the Sioux Indian reservation. Over 70 democracy activists were murdered by the chief of tribal police, Dick Wilson, who called his police force the "GOON Squad." The traditional women
AMY GOODMAN: That's GOON, Goons
PETER COYOTE: Yeah, Guardians of Oglala Nation. But they were, you know, being sadistic puns.
So the traditional women requested the American Indian Movement warriors to come in, and a cadre of men and women came in and set up a camp on the Jumping Bull Ranch. It was in this climate of murder and intimidation that an unmarked car drove onto the reservation one day. Two guys get out, and they get long guns out of the back. In retrospect, it turns out they were FBI agents, and they claimed they were following a kid who had stolen some cowboy boots onto the reservationhardly a federal crime. They had 50 tribal police just off the Jumping Bull Ranch. And what most people suspect is that it was a diversion, because the tribal police chief, Dick Wilson, was in Washington illegally signing away the uranium mining rights of the tribe.
So, a gunfight got started. No one knows how it got started. The tribal police fled. The FBI men were surrounded, they were wounded, and they were then executed. When they searched the bodies and they found out that they were FBI men, they were terrified, and the leadership knew what was coming, and they fled. And, in fact, the reservation was taken over by government forces. They fired 100,000 rounds of ammunition. They stripped Native elders naked. They broke down houses. They arrested three people for the crime, and they were acquitted by an all-white jury in South Dakota. And the government went crazy. So they got together, and they stitched up all the loopholes in the case. And they did it by fabricating chains of evidence, by suborning witnesses, by filing false affidavits. And they went, and they got Leonard. And when Leonard's trial was appealed, there was
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: So he was not part of the first three originally accused.
PETER COYOTE: Not at all. He was not part of the three at all. They went after him. The Canadian government is still suing the United States for filing false affidavits, which were responsible for his extradition. So they brought him down. They tried him. They made it look like an iron, bullet-proof case against him, and they imprisoned him.
At his appeal, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, a fellow named Judge Heaney wrote this list of 10 egregious errors in the trial, but said, "My hands are tied. I have to find him guilty." But he personally wrote to President Clinton asking for clemency for Leonard and said the FBI was culpable in this case, said
AMY GOODMAN: The judge in the case.
PETER COYOTE: The judge, Judge Heaney, did that. So, my argument is, since I was not there, I didn't witness itI was told by people who were there that Leonard was minding the children. The man who actually executed the agents has admitted it. He spoke to author Peter Matthiessen. He was masked. He said, "We were at war. I don't see why I should turn myself in. But I executed these people. This is what happened." So, my argument is, since I wasn't there, since I can't personally certify that Leonard Peltier didn't do this, I'm arguing that no American deserves a trial like this, that when the governmentwhen the federal prosecutor, whose name was Crook, stood up several years ago and said the government has no idea who committed the murders, Leonard Peltier should have been released.
In 1996, the Democratic Party asked me to be a delegate. And I said, "Well, I'll do that if you'll give me an introduction to a deputy level or above in the Justice Department." So I went to the convention, and they like celebrities because they get the cameras. And so they introduced me to a deputy level, and I briefed him on the case. And he said, "I'll have to get back to you." And he called me two days later, and he said, "Mr. Coyote, I'm embarrassed to tell you this. When you spoke to me, I thought you were a wild-eyed radical. I'm embarrassed to tell you that everything you said is true, and all I'm at liberty to say to you is that there are some very powerful people who don't want Leonard Peltier out of jail." And I said, "Would their initials be W.W.?" meaning William Webster, head of the FBI? And he said, "Well, you said that."
So, I think he has been held vindictively as the scapegoat for the deaths of two agentsthat's terrible, it's unfortunate. What were they doing on the reservation, driving into an armed camp? They were obviously preparing to spring a trap. These are high-stakes games. Leonard's aunt was run over and left dead on the side of the road. That's how he came there. Leonard was an urban Indian from Seattle. He's the guy that would fix everybody's car for nothing and make sure that people had something to eat. He's hardly a firebrand. And he's become the Nelson Mandela of the Native movement through his courage and growth and incarceration. And I'm one of the people who has known him since before he went to jail. So, I marvel at this change and deepening.
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: And you said that in prior attempts to try to get clemency for him, that actually the movement has not really understood the enormous influence that the FBI has in Washington in terms of every time that the movement sparks up and there's huge protest and outcry, the FBI goes around to congressional offices and to the White House advocating to keep him in jail.
PETER COYOTE: I can tell you this personally. I don't want toI don't want to make dissension among the left, people I respect, but I was involved in the clemency petition to Clinton, helped brief the people. We sent a producer in, who convinced the president's lawyer, who said, "You've convinced me. Now you have to write the speech for Clinton."
AMY GOODMAN: The president's lawyer was?
PETER COYOTE: SilverBrucesorry, Uncle Dribble is losing his frontal lobes. Anyway, but he got it. We laid out all the evidence. I was not in the room. Someone else went in, a big money guy. And so, I called the Leonard Peltier Defense Council, which is being run by a woman, very active and able organizer, whose husband had been murdered, and I said, "Listen, this is an appeal to an audience of one. Do not go for public opinion. Let's go in under the radar. Let's not notify the FBI." I can't really blame her for not trusting me, for, you know, theireverything they've gained has come from social action. And here's this Jew with an animal name saying, "Trust me, I'll make it alright."
So, I went to Congress. And they were out in the streets with their signs, and literally every congressional office I went into, as I was going in, the FBI was leaving with pictures of the dead agents that they had been showing on the congressmen. I could do nothing. And what I was toldand this is apocryphalbut I was told that it was Tom Daschle who went to Clinton, who was in a very tough race for his re-election, and he said
AMY GOODMAN: In South Dakota.
PETER COYOTE: Yeah. "If you free Leonard Peltier, you'll have a Republican senator in South Dakota." So that's the scuttlebutt that we got.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to Lynn Crooks, an assistant U.S. attorney who helped put Leonard Peltier in prison. He was
PETER COYOTE: Who was the one that said, "We don't know if he did it or not."
AMY GOODMAN: He was interviewed by Tony Jones of Australian Broadcasting.
LYNN CROOKS: The trial was a long, hard trial, about five weeks. When we got all through with it, we wound up with no eyewitnesses. There were no direct testimony to "I saw Leonard Peltier finish off the agents." We had basically tried it on a kind of a combined hybrid theory. Our main theory, obviously, was that Leonard Peltier had gone down and personally executed both agents. I mean, there's no question that that was our main theory. But we hadn't proved that, and we knew we hadn't prove it. And so, we argued it to the jury quite simply as, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is what we think he did, but we know we didn't prove that, but, you know, we think we've convinced you that he did."
TONY JONES: You told the appeal judges in 1986, "We can't prove who shot those agents."
TONY JONES: No, what I'm talking about is a contradiction between two statements.
LYNN CROOKS: If you're talkingif you're talking about, did we have an eyewitness, did we prove by irrefutable evidence that he was the person that squeezed the trigger, we had never claimed that we had proved it in that sense.
TONY JONES: But that's what you told the jury. And if I can quote from your closing argument, "We proved that he went down to the bodies and executed these two young men at point-blank range."
LYNN CROOKS: Were they allowed to put the FBI on trial as they did in Cedar Rapids? No. But they were not allowed to essentially put the FBI on trial to imply that the FBI had hired Christopher Columbus to come over and harass the Indians.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Lynn Crooks, assistant U.S. attorney, who helped put Leonard Peltier in prison. Peter Coyote, if could you respond to what he said and then talk about what you're doing this week?
PETER COYOTE: Sure. Well, as I mentionedthis Australian reporter did a better job than I did of having the testimony to the jury and then the testimony to the judge. So, this is a man who's spent 37 years for a crime that not even the government can assert that he committed. It's telling that we had originally planned this benefitJackson Browne, myself, Harry Belafonte, Pete Seeger, a host of othersat the Beacon Theatre Friday night at 7:30, and there was going to be a benefit to try to raise money to get Leonard's lawyers re-energized, because they burn out. They've worked for 37 yearsappeals, families shattered. I mean, it's terrible. And Leonard stopped the benefit. He said, "After Sandy, I do not want to ask people in New York and New Jersey to give anything. Just bring my case to their attention. Let's give it a public look again, as we go after clemency." So that's what we're doing. We're just once again into the breach, refreshing the public's knowledge of this man, who is like Geronimo Pratt. You know, Geronimo Pratt only did 28 years, and Leonard has
AMY GOODMAN: Until his case was overturned.
PETER COYOTE: Yes, right, exactly. So, you know, I've been doing this a long time. And Leonard hasn't given up hope. I haven't given up hope. But I go home every night. Leonard is in jail. He's got diabetes. His health is bad. They didn't let him out for the death of his mother. They didn't let him out for the death of his father. They didn't let him out for the deaths of aunts and uncles. He survived two attempts on his life in prison. His jaw was wired shut for over a year, while he waited just, you know, basic medical treatment. And I'm embarrassed to be the citizen of a country that would treat any one man this way on the basis of such a jury-rigged trial.
AMY GOODMAN: Peter Coyote, we want to end with the words of Leonard Peltier himself, with another of his poems.
LEONARD PELTIER: "I Am Everyone."
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.
AMY GOODMAN: Leonard Peltier, reading his own poetry, recorded by Claus Biegert, the German journalist. Peter Coyote, you have 10 seconds. You have spoken to Leonard in jail.
PETER COYOTE: My last letter from Leonard was several months ago, and he just said very plaintively, "Brother, please don't let me die in prison."
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
In the Spirit of Crazy Horse is a book by author Peter Matthiesen chronicling the tumultuous history between the Sioux and the United States government, with emphasis on contemporary events on the Sioux reservations of South Dakota. He focused on the events of the 1970s on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. This included the Wounded Knee Incident, a 71-day, armed stand-off between federal and state agents, and members of the American Indian Movement (AIM), an activist group, and their Oglala Lakota supporters at Wounded Knee. Two Native Americans were killed and a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent seriously wounded. Matthiessen features the AIM activist Leonard Peltier, through his involvement in the 1975 "Pine Ridge Shootout," in which two FBI agents were killed; his later trial and conviction; and the controversies surrounding the case.
Bill Janklow, the former Republican state attorney general and governor of South Dakota, and David Price, an agent with the FBI, filed libel suits against Viking Press for contents of the book. Janklow also filed a suit against the author Matthiessen. In an unusual action, he filed a suit against three South Dakota booksellers for selling copies of the book. Viking Press filed a countersuit against Janklow, which in part alleged he had interfered with the company's constitutional rights to publish and distribute the book. The lawsuits prevented the book from being published in paperback for eight years. The rulings supported the author's and publisher's rights of free speech under the First Amendment to the Constitution, and the booksellers' rights to sell books.
The book was critically well received. Most scholars praised Matthiessen's veracity and accuracy,and the author's support of Peltier, AIM, and the Oglala Sioux were acknowledged and appreciated by those parties.
The book was finally published in paperback in 1992 after the libel suits were dismissed by the various courts and their respective decisions affirmed upon appeal. The lawsuits and their attendant rulings have become important and oft-cited cases in the area of Media law and freedom of speech. Due to the intense publicity generated by the lawsuits, the paperback version of the book became a bestseller.
Lawsuits
After publication of the book, two plaintiffs filed libel suits against Viking Press. Bill Janklow, the former Republican governor of South Dakota, filed a $24 million lawsuit in South Dakota. He also sued three booksellers in South Dakota who had sold hardcover copies of the book. This case was watched because of its repressive aspects related to bookselling.
Janklow filed a separate lawsuit against Newsweek magazine (Janklow v. Newsweek, 788 F2d 1300) for an article that contained the disputed passage.[1] In his complaint, referring to the statement by Banks about rape, Janklow "cited a 1975 letter from Philip Buchen, head of the Office of Counsel to the President of the United States, to the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, saying that three Federal investigations found the allegations against him 'simply unfounded.' The Senate committee was considering Mr. Janklow's nomination as a director of the Legal Services Corporation..."[1]
Viking Press filed a countersuit against Janklow in the Southern District of New York; in part it alleged that Janklow had interfered with the company's constitutional rights to publish and distribute the book.[1] A South Dakota circuit court ruled that the book was not defamatory and terminated Janklow's lawsuit in 1984; upon Janklow's appeal of the ruling, the South Dakota State Supreme Court reinstated the case in 1985.
David Price, an FBI agent who was at the Wounded Knee incident, filed two identical lawsuits against Viking: one in South Dakota state court (Price v. Viking Press, Inc., Civ. No. 84-448) and an identical suit (Price v. Viking Press, Inc., 625 F. Supp. 641) in federal court, seeking $25 million in United States District Court for the District of South Dakota. The case was transferred to a federal court in Minnesota.
The lawyers representing both Matthiesen and Viking Press in the federal suit in Minnesota were noted First Amendment lawyer Martin Garbus of Frankfurt, Garbus, Klein & Selz, New York City with Barbara F.L. Penn, St. Paul, Minnesota.
In the Minnesota case, Federal District Court Judge Diana E. Murphy dismissed the Price suit. Her 33-page ruling noted: "Viking recognized that responsible publishing companies owe some duty to the public to undertake difficult but important works." Janklow's case in South Dakota was similarly dismissed. In both cases both the author and publisher were deemed to have been protected by the free speech clause of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
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