No Change Here, Either

If you had to pick a poster-boy for American Injustice it would have to be Leonard Peltier.

He's spent the last 33 years in prison for murders that even the government now admits they don't know who committed.

In a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle, actor and author Peter Coyote reviews the details of the case:

In 1973 the highest per capita murder rate in the country was the Sioux reservation at Pine Ridge.

The head of Oglalla Sioux police force, a virtual dictator named Dick Wilson and his GOON Squad (Guardians of the Oglalla Nation) were systematically picking off everyone working for electoral reform on the reservation and traditional elders---more than 60 in that year alone.

The situation got so bad, that the tribe's elder women called the American Indian Movement (AIM) for help, and they arrived and set up an encampment, with women and children, schools and kitchens.

In this tense and murderous climate, on June 26, 1975, two FBI agents in unmarked cars followed a pick-up truck onto the Jumping Bull ranch supposedly to serve a warrant on a young boy who had stolen some cowboy boots.

It also happened to be the same day that GOON Squad chief Dick Wilson was in Washington, illegally signing away the tribe's uranium rights to multinational mining corporations.

The families immediately became alarmed and feared an attack.

Shots were heard and a shoot-out erupted.

Tribal police had been readied as back-up outside the ranch, but when they heard the return fire, they abandoned the FBI men who were wounded, then eventually executed at close range.

Everyone who was there insists that Leonard was minding the children and not even involved in the gun-fight. When they searched the bodies and found the Federal ID the Native leaders dispersed far and wide, correctly anticipating that the reservation would be over-run by Federal forces.

It was, and they shot it to pieces, instituting a week long reign of terror where elders were harassed and beaten, houses burned and shot up, and the native population terrorized.

Leonard was finally captured in Canada and brought to trial where he and his cohorts were freed by an all-white jury.

The FBI was enraged and assembled a new case by fabricating evidence, suborning witnesses, breaking the chains of evidence, having witnesses perjure themselves---all errors cited by the Appeals Judge who later petitioned on Leonard's behalf, but despite numerous errors, Leonard was sentenced to life in prison...

Millions of people around the world have petitioned for Leonard Peltier's release.

Amnesty International, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, National Congress of American Indians, the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, refer to Leonard as a political prisoner who should be immediately released.

But Uncle Sam is as irrationally stubborn on this as a two-year old having a tantrum.

If you think we should stand for something a little bit better than that, visit www.freeleonard.org

Maybe you can do something to help.

sj