Leonard Peltier was born on September 12,1944 and is a Native American activist and a member of the American Indian Movement who, following a controversial trial, was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in a June 26,1975, shooting on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
49 Facts About Leonard Peltier
2.
Leonard Peltier was sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment and has been imprisoned since 1977.
3.
At the time of the shootout, Leonard Peltier was an active member of the AIM, an Indigenous rights advocacy group that worked to combat the racism and police brutality experienced by American Indians.
4.
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.
5.
Leonard Peltier ran for vice president of the United States in 2020 on the Party for Socialism and Liberation ticket with Gloria La Riva as the presidential candidate, as well on tickets for other Left parties and on the ballot of the Peace and Freedom Party.
6.
For health reasons, Leonard Peltier withdrew from those tickets on August 1,2020.
7.
Leonard Peltier is of Lakota, Dakota, and French descent, and is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa.
8.
Leonard Peltier was born on September 12,1944, at the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa near Belcourt, North Dakota, in a family of 13 children.
9.
In September 1953, at the age of nine, Leonard Peltier was enrolled at the Wahpeton Indian School in Wahpeton, North Dakota, an Indian boarding school run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
10.
Leonard Peltier remained 150 miles away from his home at Wahpeton Indian School through the ninth grade; the school forced assimilation to white American culture by requiring the children to use English and forbidding the inclusion of Native American culture.
11.
Leonard Peltier graduated from Wahpeton in May 1957, and attended the Flandreau Indian School in Flandreau, South Dakota.
12.
Leonard Peltier worked as a welder, a construction worker, and as the co-owner of an auto shop in Seattle in his twenties.
13.
In Seattle, Leonard Peltier became involved in a variety of causes championing Native American civil rights.
14.
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.
15.
Leonard Peltier spent most of the occupation in a Milwaukee, Wisconsin jail charged with attempted murder related to a different protest.
16.
In 1975, Leonard Peltier traveled as a member of AIM to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to help reduce violence among political opponents.
17.
Leonard Peltier next radioed that they both had been shot.
18.
Leonard Peltier provided numerous alibis to several people about his activities on the morning of the attacks.
19.
The RV was stopped by an Oregon State Trooper, but the driver, later discovered to be Leonard Peltier, fled on foot following a small shootout.
20.
On December 22,1975, Leonard Peltier was named to the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.
21.
In December 1976, Leonard Peltier was extradited from Canada based on documents submitted by the FBI.
22.
Leonard Peltier returned too late to be tried with Robideau and Butler, and he was tried separately.
23.
Leonard Peltier's trial was held in Fargo, North Dakota, where a jury convicted him of the murders of Coler and Williams.
24.
Leonard Peltier was convicted in 1977 largely on the evidence presented by three witness affidavits, all signed by Myrtle Poor Bear, that placed him at the scene of the shootout and contended that Leonard Peltier planned his crimes.
25.
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.
26.
Evidence was given that Leonard Peltier was driving a Chevrolet Suburban; a large sport utility vehicle-style vehicle built on a pickup truck chassis, with an enclosed rear section.
27.
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.
28.
Leonard Peltier attempted to drive the truck away at high speeds down the rough gravel road, resulting in a broken transmission, after which he again fled on foot.
29.
Leonard Peltier's conviction sparked great controversy and has drawn criticism from a number of prominent figures across a wide range of disciplines.
30.
In 1999, Leonard Peltier asserted on CNN that he did not commit the murders and that he has no knowledge who shot the FBI agents nor knowledge implicating others in the crime.
31.
In 1999, Leonard Peltier filed a habeas corpus petition, but it was rejected by the 10th Circuit Court on November 4,2003.
32.
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.
33.
On 6 February 2023, Leonard Peltier again made a plea for clemency.
34.
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.
35.
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.
36.
On May 25,2004, Leonard Peltier withdrew the suit after he and DeMain settled the case.
37.
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.
38.
Leonard Peltier refused to testify, on the same grounds, at Looking Cloud's trial in 2004.
39.
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.
40.
Darlene "Kamook" Nichols, former wife of the AIM leader Dennis Banks, testified that in late 1975, Leonard Peltier told of shooting the FBI agents.
41.
Leonard Peltier was talking to a small group of AIM activists who were fugitives from law enforcement.
42.
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.
43.
Leonard Peltier has claimed that Kamook Nichols committed perjury with her testimony.
44.
Leonard Peltier was eventually tried by the state of South Dakota in 2010.
45.
Leonard Peltier was the candidate for the Peace and Freedom Party in the 2004 election for President of the United States.
46.
Leonard Peltier was forced to resign from the ticket for health reasons in early August 2020, and was replaced with Sunil Freeman.
47.
On January 13,2009, Leonard Peltier was beaten by inmates at the United States Penitentiary, Canaan, where he had been transferred from USP Lewisburg.
48.
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.
49.
In 2016, a statue of Leonard Peltier, based on a self portrait he made in prison, was created by artist Rigo 23 and installed on the grounds of American University in Washington, DC.