A letter to Leonard Peltier

By Winona LaDuke

winona@winonaladuke.com

You sent me a postcard in 1984. It’s a picture of myself, author Peter Matthiessen and a few more of us in Fargo, right after your Bismarck evidentiary hearing in October. We had scraped together money and purchased a billboard downtown Fargo that said “Free Peltier.” We were proud of ourselves that day. That’s in the photo’s background.

You wrote a sweet note to me, the return: #89637-132, from Marion Federal Penitentiary. I’d gone to see you there. We had a good visit, understood each other and what we were to do in our lives. That was the super maximum penitentiary that they put you into right after the trial, an entire prison full of mostly black and brown people. I got a splitting headache from being there.

That was a long time ago. It turns out I’m not much of a pen pal. But I thought I‘d write back…okay….forty years later.

Welcome home, brother. Welcome back home, Giiwedinong, here in the northland….Welcome to Akiing, the very land to which you belong. You came before the snow geese, so plentiful in number, you came with the blizzards, and you brought us joy and some feeling of peace. And I think it’s time to plant our gardens soon.

It’s April 6, 2025, forty-eight years after the U.S. government rested their case against you in the Fargo trial. Days later, they would send you to prison.

Like many of us in the American Indian Movement, we said a prayer for you and thought of you always at feasts and ceremonies. Nilak and Dino Butler, John Trudell, Norman Brown, Jean Roach and so many worked decades for you, sun danced for you, and the spirits told them that you would be free. That’s what they told me. The tragic circumstances which put you in prison framed our reality. I am glad to see you free today.

I, like you, am a member of the American Indian Movement. I joined in 1977. I was a young Ojibwe student at Harvard. I heard Jimmy Durham talk from the International Indian Treaty Council, the international wing of the American Indian Movement, and he changed my world. I signed up for the movement, I believed in justice and self-determination. I believed in Mother Earth. And I still do.

My first trip to Fargo was to the federal court house for your trial. Louise Erdrich and I were there, young women. That hearing didn’t go well for you, that’s for sure, although Bob Robideau and Dino Butler had already had their charges dismissed by the Cedar Rapids jury. North Dakota was not known for kindness to Native people. Still isn’t. We believed in you.

I worked for the National Indian Youth Council in Albuquerque the next year and then started working in South Dakota, on Pine Ridge, where uranium mining companies were hovering around like hyenas, ready to take more Indian land and water. It was a time of terror for Indian people. Navajo men were being tortured and mutilated in Farmington, their killers getting two years and a release. In Minneapolis, police were beating on the Indians and throwing them in the trunks of squad cars.

Indians were getting killed everywhere. In the aftermath of the takeover of Wounded Knee in 1973, the reign of terror had come to Pine Ridge. People were getting killed by the goon squads, and the FBI was all over Pine Ridge stirring it up. The late John Trudell used to always say that the federal government wanted to punish the Oglalas more, just for being alive.

Nationally, there was a big push at the FBI called COINTELPRO. Director J. Edgar Hoover targeted anyone who was effectively challenging power: feminist movements, anti-war movements, Black Power movements and the American Indian Movement. According to Wikipedia, “Many of the tactics used in COINTELPRO are alleged to have seen continued use, including discrediting targets through  psychological warfare; smearing individuals and groups using forged documents and by planting false reports in the media; harassment; wrongful imprisonment; illegal violence; and assassination." 

I came into the movement a bit after most of the guns and legal hell, but the aftermath of the many deaths on Pine Ridge and the FBI was felt everywhere. It’s always wise to learn from history.

COINTELPRO and similar programs kept disruptions and chaos underway while other larger agendas moved forward. They still do, or we do it to ourselves. Certainly, with Native people and our few remaining lands, the issues of natural resource exploitation, uranium mining, water allocations and pipelines are of deep interest to the United States and to corporations.

One day before the shootout at Oglala, Peter Matthiessen naturalist, one time CIA agent and author of “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse” would write, “… Oglala Sioux Tribal Chairman Dick Wilson agreed to cede to the Department of Interior a large tract of tribal land including Sheep Mountain, now part of Badlands National Monument.”

That’s how it works — distract people and then do something nefarious. June 26, 1975 was a horrible day for everyone.

It was always clear that the FBI wanted to keep you down. After the Cedar Rapids verdict of July 16, 1976 acquitting Bob Robideau and Dino Butler of basically what you were charged with, Dino would say, “We knew they wanted to get Leonard.” At your Fargo trial, Judge Paul Benson denied a lot of evidence which would have helped your defense.

“Judge Benson ruled right from the start that evidence would be almost entirely limited to the events of June 26, 1975,” Peter Matthiessen would write. “Suspect affidavits used in Canada…historical background of Pine Ridge violence, the persecution of AIM, the FBI, the verdict at Cedar Rapids altogether with all evidence as testimony in that court would not be admissible as evidence…”

That’s how you sort of set up a jury to decide one way. Jurors were bused to the courthouse in buses that had tape on the windows, creating an atmosphere of fear. That might get you a certain kind of verdict, not necessarily justice.

The first time I ever went to Bismarck was for one of your hearings. That was in 1984. My last time was for another set of court hearings this time on Standing Rock and I can’t really say that the justice system is a lot better for Native people or water protectors. Judge Gion in the Standing Rock Water Protector case let very little evidence into the court either and Energy Transfer ran a PR campaign, trying to stir up fear.

…Couldn’t really get a fair trial like that.

There was a big push to stifle your story. National Book Award winner. Peter Matteisson and Viking Press were sued to stop publication of the book “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse.” That’s to say that ex-Governor Bill Janklow of South Dakota sued in South Dakota and FBI Agent David Price sued in Minnesota. Janklow, charged that the book was defamatory because it portrayed him as a rapist and racist. Mr. Price charged that the book defamed him over events at Wounded Knee, South Dakota and the subsequent killing of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. They lost their cases, and the book was eventually published.

It’s been a long haul, my friend, and I’m glad to see you are out.

I caught a couple of charges these past years as a water protector and saw firsthand what a jury trial could do. Neither you nor I want to go back to jail. So many people wanted you to be home — members of Congress, Nelson Mandela, many religious leaders, attorneys, judges. I understand that Deb Haaland, the former secretary of the interior helped push it over the finish line for that Biden commutation of your sentence.

I always remember that no one was charged with killing Joe Stuntz.

While you were locked up, we tried to do our best. There are many people working to protect our languages and our ceremonies. There are many people growing more food than ever, creating Native banks and tribal colleges are thriving. Native people are protecting our nations and are now elected in the white man’s system. Many of us are working on renewable energy and even hemp. I think you will be proud of many of this generation. It will be time in a month and a half to put in your gardens. In case you’ve forgotten, potatoes and beans go in first, then the corn, flowers and all those vegetables.

The FBI recently announced it is going to come back to the reservation to help us out. I’ve a bit of PTSD from the last time we had a big FBI presence on our lands, but maybe this will be different. Not so sure with the Trump administration.

Ken Tilson was a courageous lawyer for the American Indian Movement. When his grandson Nick Tilson escorted you back to Turtle Mountain, I sort of wanted to cry. I am sure his grandpa was proud. Our movement has continued, and I’m grateful you returned. I believe in good over evil and am grateful every day. Many of us didn’t think we would make it this far, but we are still here. Like a prayer murmured after so many feasts and ceremonies, you are still here, brother.

You’ve outlived most of us and kept your humanity in an inhumane system. Miigwech, Niijii. Your words are strong: “I stand before you today, not just as a person who has walked through the gates of prison, but as someone who has been called to continue the fight, we’ve all been in together for justice, freedom, and equality.”

John Trudell, Nilak Butler Joe Stuntz, all of them, are smiling down from the star world. Actor Val Kilmer just passed away and I am sure he would have liked to shake your hand as well, since he did such a good job on “Thunderheart.”

The geese are still coming home. Some of our people are bringing back the buffalo and those sun dances are going strong. The gardens will call us all soon, like they did our ancestors. It’s been forty years since we saw each other in person. It is nice to feel the warm sun on our faces. I heard your eyesight isn’t so good these days. My hearing is not so good either. But I remember all those before and it’s nice to see you free, brother. I’ll write more often.