Leonard Peltier - Prison writings: my life is my sun dance

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Doing time creates a

demented darkness of my

own imagination.

Doing time does this thing

to you. But, of course, you

dont do time.

You do without it. Or

rather, time does you.

Time is a cannibal that

devours the flesh of your

years

day by day, bite by bite.

Hua Kola

Let it be known that Leonard Peltier is a son of our great grandfathers, a spiritual warrior of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota Nations. He shares the spirit of our ancestors who fought for the rights of our people, such as Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. He is a man who has borne witness to the pain and suffering of our grandmothers, women, and children. As a Sun Dancer, he sacrificed his life to the People seeking justice for all our relatives. He offered himself to Wakan Tanka so that the People might have peace and happiness once again.

I, Chief Arvol Looking Horse, 19 th Generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe, ask that Leonard Peltier receive the blessings of the Great Spirit, for his words to become etched in the minds and hearts of all people. I ask for his prayers to be answered so that he might enjoy the freedom he sought for the People and that the wounds on his soul heal. And I ask those who continue to inflict such pain and suffering on him to see the error of their ways. Let us all work together to restore justice so that the Hoop of Our Nation mends and so our children see better days.

On behalf of all Oyate, I ask Tunkashila for Leonard Peltier to be set free, for him to enjoy his freedom once again. I call on each of you individually and personally, with every breath you take, to never cease in your efforts to free Leonard Peltier. Return him to us!

I, Horse Man, speak these words from my heart, from Paha Sapa, the heart of everything that ispraying for the return of our sacred lands, which have also suffered at the hands of our oppressors.

May peace be with you all.

Mitakuye OyasinAll My Relations.

Chief Arvol Looking Horse
19 th Generation Keeper of the
Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe

Grandfather,

Mysterious One,

We search for you along

this Great Red Road you have set us on.

Sky Father,

Tunkashila,

We thank you for this world.

We thank you for our own existence.

We ask only for your blessing

and for your instruction.

Grandfather,

Sacred One,

Put our feet on the holy path

that leads to you,

and give us the strength and the will

to lead ourselves and our children

past the darkness we have entered.

Teach us to heal ourselves,

to heal each other

and to heal the world.

Let us begin this very day,

this very hour,

the Great Healing to come.

by Ramsey Clark, counsel to Leonard Peltier and former Attorney General of the United States

I want to tell you why the freedom of Leonard Peltier is so important.

There are well over two hundred million indigenous people on the planet, maybe as many as three hundred million. They live on six continents and on countless numbers of islands. And everywhere they are the most endangered of the human species. Yet the survival of humanity depends upon their salvation.

Leonard Peltier is the symbol of that struggle. I am distressed, saddened, and outraged that so many Americans have forgotten, or perhaps never known, who he is and what he represents. If we forget him, we forget the struggle itself. Strangely, he is much better known outside of this country than herein Europe, in Canada, in South America, in Asia, and Africa. Enlightened people around the world see in him the struggle of all indigenous people for their lives, their dignity, for their sovereignty, their future. And they wonder: how is it that this man has been held so long when his innocence is known by those who hold him? Here in the United States, his voice, and the urgent message of indigenous peoples everywhere, has been muffled if not silenced. Those who put him behind barsand insist on keeping him there after nearly a quarter centurybelieve he has been consigned to the dustbin of history, along with the cause of native peoples everywhere. We must not allow that to continue.

I think I can explain beyond serious doubt that Leonard Peltier has committed no crime whatsoever. Even if he had been guilty of firing the gun that killed two FBI agentsand it is certain that he did notit would still have been in self-defense and in the defense not just of his people but of the right of all individuals and peoples to be free from domination and exploitation. Not a single credible witness said they saw Leonard take aim at anybody that tragic day at Oglala in June 1975 on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. There was absolutely no evidence that he killed anyoneexcept fabricated and utterly misleading circumstantial evidence. Among the many, many things withheld in his alarmingly unfair triala trial that disgraced, and continues to disgrace, the American judicial systemwas the staggering violence on the Pine Ridge Reservation that led directly to the events of that day. That violence, directed against traditional people on the reservation, had earlier caused the related and better-known tragedy revolving around the occupation and siege at nearby Wounded Knee in 1973. And that violence accelerated enormously in the two years between 1973 and 1975.

At the time of Wounded Knee in 1973, there were only a few FBI agents in the whole state of South Dakota, and frequently just one. But by 1975, there were sixty. They were deployed overwhelmingly against a small Indian population. During those two years more than sixty Indians on the Pine Ridge reservationsome say as many as three hundreddied violent and unexplained deaths, overwhelmingly from activity instigated by our own federal government. And there is little doubt about it.

With government complicity, a rogue paramilitary group that proudly called itself the GOONsGuardians of the Oglala Nationwere provided with weapons, training, and motivation to create a wave of violence, still remembered as the reign of terror, against traditional Indian people and their supporters, including the American Indian Movement (AIM). In March of 1975 alone seven Indians were killed, their deaths going virtually uninvestigated despite the presence of that army of FBI agents and other federal, state, and tribal lawmen. And thats why the traditional people, the Elders of the Lakota (Sioux) people, asked AIM, as they had two years before at Wounded Knee, to send some people to help protect them. And I say, thank God AIM did.

A small group of brave, dedicated AIM membersfewer than seventeen people, only six men, Leonard Peltier among themcame to protect the traditional Indians from violence secretly and illegally condoned and initiated by our government. Those AIM defenders, joined by local traditionals, set up a tent city, a spiritual camp they called it, on the remote Pine Ridge property of Harry and Celia Jumping Bulltwo Elders who feared desperately for their loved ones lives after constant threats from the GOONs.