Cut off all your hair
Sacrifice the loved ones
Who always stood by me
Stranded in the wasteland
Set my spirit free
My name is Leonard Peltier
I am a Lakota and Anishnabe
And I am living in the United States Penitentiary
Which is the fastest growing
Indian Reservation in the country
From a song edited and written by Robbie Robertson
from a taped interview with Leonard Peltier < br />and entitled Sacrifice...
Leonard Peltier was born on the Anishinabe (Chippewa) Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota in 1945. Like most from that time and place, poverty reigned. One of thirteen children, life was a process of assimilation, not only in his family but in his reservation, a process taken on by the U.S. government. Thanks to that same government, when Peltier was only eight, he was sent to a boarding school for Native Americans in order to rid them of the culture of the Native people and teach them the "proper" ways of the white; succinctly stated, acculturation.
When Peltier was a teen, he moved back on the reservation with his father and began to protest the new termination policy of the United States Government. Turtle Mountain was one of three chosen by the U.S. to serve as a testing ground for this policy, which would force Native families off the reservations and into the cities. This policy also withdrew federal assistance, including food, from those who refused to leave the reservation. It was here that Peltier began his avocation as an activist and organizer to help his people fight the repression now forced upon them.
Later, traveling with his father to other reservations while working as a migrant farmer, Peltier recognized the same conditions he faced at home, were endemic issues that faced all Native American tribes regardless of location. In 1965, he moved to Seattle and became involved with the founding of halfway houses for Native American ex-prisoners. While there he became active in protests involving Native American land preservation within the city of Seattle. Obviously, by this time Peltier's devotion to "the cause" was paramount.
Leaving Seattle in the late '60's, Peltier began visiting other reservations and became involved with the American Indian Movement (AIM). Temporarily settling in Denver, he worked as a community counselor helping Natives with alcohol and drug abuse as well as unemployment and housing. The traditional and spiritual side of "the movement" began to influence Peltier more and more and eventually led him to Washington, D.C., where he was a leader in the occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building, protesting the "Trail of Broken Treaties" in 1972.
In his, then unknown, final days of freedom, Peltier encamped with the Oglala Lakota People of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota and worked diligently to overcome obstacles facing the community while "organizing security" for the people protesting the pro-assimilation tribal chairman and his "vigilantes." This was the scene of the 1975 shootout that has landed Peltier in prison for the murder of two FBI agents. Peltier and two others were charged, only Peltier was found guilty. Peltier states that "even the prosecuter admitted not knowing who killed their agents, but someone has to pay for the crime." Guilty or not, Peltier has been paying ever since. Sentenced to two consectutive life terms, Peltier's current home is the Federal Prison in Leavenworth, Kansas.
Peltier's pre-sentencing statement to the court in
Fargo, North Dakota on June 1, 1977:
You are about to perform an act which will close one more chapter in the history of the failure of the United States courts and the failure of the people of the United States to do justice in the case of a Native American.
Sources:
http://www.freepeltier.org/story.htm
http://members.tripod.com/~RFester/tribute.html
http://www.dickshovel.com/peltierstmt.html
http://www.kstrom.net/isk/stories/peltier.html