1. Leonard Peltier was born on September 12,1944 and is a Native American activist and member of the American Indian Movement who was convicted of murdering two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in a June 26,1975, shooting on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, which he denies.
Leonard Peltier was sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment.
At the time of the shootout, Leonard Peltier was an active member of AIM, an Indigenous rights advocacy group that worked to combat the racism and police brutality experienced by Native Americans.
Leonard Peltier ran for president of the United States in 2004, winning the nomination of the Peace and Freedom Party, and receiving 27,607 votes, limited to the ballot in California.
For health reasons, Leonard Peltier withdrew from those tickets on August 1,2020.
Leonard Peltier was born on September 12,1944, at the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa near Belcourt, North Dakota.
Leonard Peltier is of Lakota, Dakota, and Anishinaabe descent, and was raised among the Turtle Mountain Chippewa and Fort Totten Sioux Nations of North Dakota.
Leonard Peltier's parents divorced when he was four years old, with Leonard and his sister Betty Ann living with their paternal grandparents Alex and Mary Dubois-Peltier in the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation.
In September 1953, Leonard Peltier was enrolled at the Wahpeton Indian School in Wahpeton, North Dakota, an Indian boarding school run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Leonard Peltier graduated from Wahpeton in May 1957 and then attended the Flandreau Indian School in Flandreau, South Dakota.
Leonard Peltier worked as a welder, a construction worker, and as the co-owner of an auto shop in Seattle in his twenties.
In Seattle, Leonard Peltier became involved in a variety of causes championing Native American civil rights.
Consequently, Leonard Peltier became an official member of the American Indian Movement in 1972, which was founded by urban Indians in Minneapolis in 1968, at a time of rising Indian activism for civil rights.
Leonard Peltier spent most of the occupation in a Milwaukee, Wisconsin jail charged with attempted murder related to a different protest.
In 1975, Leonard Peltier traveled as a member of AIM to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to help reduce violence among political opponents.
Leonard Peltier had an outstanding federal warrant for the attempted murder of a Milwaukee police officer, although Williams and Coler were not aware of this.
Leonard Peltier next radioed that they both had been shot.
Allegedly, Darrelle Butler took Williams' handgun, Leonard Peltier took Coler's, and Robert Robideau took Coler's.
Leonard Peltier provided numerous alibis to several people about his activities on the morning of the attacks.
The RV was stopped by an Oregon state trooper, but the driver, later discovered to be Leonard Peltier, fled on foot after a small shootout.
On December 22,1975, Leonard Peltier was named to the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.
On February 6,1976, Leonard Peltier was arrested along with Frank Blackhorse by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Hinton, Alberta, Canada at the Smallboy Camp, transported to Calgary, Alberta and taken to the Oakalla Prison Farm in Vancouver, British Columbia.
In December 1976, Leonard Peltier was extradited from Canada based on documents submitted by the FBI.
Leonard Peltier's trial was held in Fargo, North Dakota, where a jury convicted him of the murders of Coler and Williams.
Leonard Peltier did not shoot the agents, and the FBI knew this but withheld evidence.
Now, 38 of Judge Heaney's former clerks support parole for Leonard Peltier, including three who worked on his case.
The FBI confirmed this claim the day after the shootout, but red pickup trucks near the reservation had been stopped for weeks, and Leonard Peltier did not drive a red pickup truck.
Evidence was given that Leonard Peltier was driving a Chevrolet Suburban; a large sport utility vehicle built on a pickup truck chassis, with an enclosed rear section.
Leonard Peltier remained at large until he was captured by a search party three days later near Santa Maria, California, after a farmer alerted authorities that Leonard Peltier, armed with a Ruger Mini-14 rifle, had consumed some of his crops and stolen his shoes, wallet, and pickup truck key.
Leonard Peltier attempted to drive the truck away at high speed down the rough gravel road, resulting in a broken transmission, after which he again fled on foot.
Leonard Peltier's conviction sparked great controversy and drew criticism from a number of prominent figures across a wide range of disciplines.
In 1999, Leonard Peltier asserted on CNN that he did not commit the murders and does not know who did.
In 1999, Leonard Peltier filed a habeas corpus petition, but it was rejected by the 10th Circuit Court on November 4,2003.
Opponents of Leonard Peltier campaigned against his possible clemency; about 500 FBI agents and families protested outside the White House, and FBI director Louis Freeh sent a letter opposing Leonard Peltier's clemency to the White House.
We were not able to prove that Mr Leonard Peltier personally committed any offense on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
On February 6,2023, Leonard Peltier again made a plea for clemency.
On June 10,2024, Leonard Peltier had his first parole hearing since 2009.
From 2014 until 2025, Leonard Peltier was housed at Coleman I, the high-security penitentiary wing of the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex in Coleman, Florida.
Leonard Peltier's son said that the Turtle Mountain Band has a home arranged for him on the reservation in Belcourt, North Dakota.
On February 19,2025, Leonard Peltier spoke publicly at Belcourt's Sky Dance Casino and Resort during an event welcoming him home.
In January 2002 in the News from Indian Country, publisher Paul DeMain wrote an editorial that an "unnamed delegation" told him that Leonard Peltier had murdered the FBI agents.
On May 1,2003, Leonard Peltier sued DeMain for libel for similar statements about the case published on March 10,2003, in News from Indian Country.
On May 25,2004, Leonard Peltier withdrew the suit after he and DeMain settled the case.
DeMain issued a statement saying he did not think Leonard Peltier was given a fair trial for the two murder convictions, nor did he think Leonard Peltier was connected to Aquash's death.
Leonard Peltier refused to testify, on the same grounds, at Looking Cloud's trial in 2004.
In Looking Cloud's trial, the prosecution argued that AIM's suspicion of Aquash stemmed from her having heard Leonard Peltier admit to the murders of the FBI agents.
Darlene "Kamook" Nichols, former wife of the AIM leader Dennis Banks, testified that in late 1975, Leonard Peltier told of shooting the FBI agents.
Leonard Peltier was talking to a small group of AIM activists who were fugitives from law enforcement.
Leonard Peltier said it was compensation for travel expenses to collect evidence and moving expenses to be farther from her ex-husband Dennis Banks, whom she feared because she had implicated him as a witness.
Leonard Peltier has claimed that Kamook Nichols committed perjury with her testimony.
Leonard Peltier was eventually tried by the state of South Dakota in 2010.
Leonard Peltier was the candidate for the Peace and Freedom Party in the 2004 election for President of the United States.
Leonard Peltier was forced to resign from the ticket for health reasons in early August 2020, and was replaced with Sunil Freeman.
On January 13,2009, Leonard Peltier was beaten by inmates at the United States Penitentiary, Canaan, where he had been transferred from USP Lewisburg.
Leonard Peltier was sent back to Lewisburg, where he remained until the fall of 2011, when he was transferred to a federal penitentiary in Florida.
Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark notes in his preface that Leonard Peltier's struggle is representative of human rights and Indigenous rights as a whole, and he is known the whole world over yet seemingly hidden from Americans.
Leonard Peltier makes a case for Peltier's innocence at Pine Ridge, and mentions the repeating of history that has occurred since Wounded Knee in 1973.
Leonard Peltier starts his memoir by explaining the uncomfortable and unsafe conditions in which he writes his passages.
Leonard Peltier expresses gratitude, welcoming his reader, unsure if his book will ever reach anyone.
Leonard Peltier spends much of this part reclaiming his identity, commonly restating his names, both Leonard Peltier and Gwarth-ee-lass, to allow his reader to view him as a person beyond any other label or event that has been used to strip him of his identity.
Leonard Peltier gives a detailed account of Sun Dance, a spiritual ceremony in which one sacrifices his flesh and life to the Great Spirit.
In part 2 of My Life is My Sun Dance, Leonard Peltier discusses what it means to be Indigenous in North America but more specifically the United States.
Leonard Peltier describes how Indigenous peoples' lands have been stolen from them and how they were pushed onto reservations.
Leonard Peltier describes the events of the Wounded Knee Massacre, South Dakota on December 29,1890, which was a crucial part in what he describes as the genocide of Indigenous people.
Leonard Peltier describes how the genocide is being carried on into modern day by citing statistics such as the fact that some of the highest levels of poverty, unemployment, infant mortality, and teen suicide rates in the country are on the reservations in South Dakota.
Leonard Peltier writes about the importance of names in this section of his memoir.
Leonard Peltier explains the different names he has, such as Tate Wikuw, which translates to "Wind Chases the Sun" in the Dakota language, which was his great-grandfather's name, and Gwarth-ee-lass which translates to "He Leads the People".
Leonard Peltier writes about his entry into and work for Indigenous movements.
Leonard Peltier discusses how the US government was primarily interested in taking Indigenous land through means of brutalization, murder, and wrongful incarceration for colonial and extractive reasons.
Leonard Peltier worked with AIM to help find work for Indigenous people and worked in an alcohol rehab program, as well as spiritual work.
In 1975, Leonard Peltier arrived at the Oglala nation to help protect the Indigenous people living there who were being murdered.
Leonard Peltier reflects on how the government hid information and lied to place blame on him and AIM members as aggressors in the exchange.
Leonard Peltier was staying in a "tent city" with other AIM members on Harry and Cecilia Jumping Bull's property.
Leonard Peltier hoped for safety among the Indigenous communities there and possibly being granted political asylum, as he did not trust the American government to give him a fair trial, or even to let him live.
The FBI elaborately orchestrated Leonard Peltier's sentencing through fabricated evidence and "willful illegality" as they desperately needed a public "scapegoat" to pay for the deaths of two of their agents.
Leonard Peltier describes the "unconstitutional" treatment he has experienced since his imprisonment, including surviving an assassination plot and prison escape during his transfer to Lompoc prison in 1979.
Leonard Peltier discusses the necessity of respect, compassion, and collaboration among all people.
Leonard Peltier encourages the reader to celebrate humanity's differences and to find strength in togetherness and common humanity.
Leonard Peltier finds hope in children and anticipates a "Great Healing" toward a better future.
Leonard Peltier writes about the importance of individual action and underlines the need for Indigenous sovereignty.