[Pnews] Celebrate the birthday of Anishinabeg and Lakota Akihito political prisoner Leonard Peltier.

Prisoner News ppnews at freedomarchives.org
Wed Sep 12 11:50:59 EDT 2018


https://fighttoxicprisons.wordpress.com/2017/09/12/it-is-leonard-peltiers-birthday-statement-of-the-florida-indigenous-rights-and-environmental-equality-firee/ 



  Statement of Florida Indigenous Rights and Environmental Equality
  (FIREE) – The Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons

September 12, 2018
------------------------------------------------------------------------

/[Note: Amidst recovery from an unexpected triple bypass heart surgery 
and the largest hurricane threat seen in years, political prisoner 
Leonard Peltier turned 73 this week, on September 12, inside Coleman 
Federal Correctional Complex in Central Florida. FIREE released the 
following statement on his birthday and , September 15, the Campaign to 
Fight Toxic Prisons will hold a rally in downtown Gainesville, FL 
<https://www.facebook.com/events/1725353617774126> to honor him and call 
for his freedom after over four decades of torture and slavery inside 
the world’s largest prison system. Find out more about Peltier, 
including his address to send a birthday card, here. 
<https://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info/>] /


      STATEMENT OF THE FLORIDA INDIGENOUS RIGHTS AND ENVIRONMENTAL
      EQUALITY FOR LEONARD PELTIER’s BIRTHDAY

Greetings:

The Florida Indigenous Rights & Environmental Equality (FIREE), Campaign 
to Fight Toxic Prisons, and other organizations this September celebrate 
the birthday of Anishinabeg and Lakota Akihito political prisoner 
Leonard Peltier <https://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info/>.

Peltier remains a Prisoner of America’s longest war, its war on the 
Indigenous peoples of this great Turtle Island. Ostensibly Peltier was 
convicted on the killing of two Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 
agents who invaded the sovereign Oglala Lakota Nation with a warrant 
they did not have to arrest someone they knew was not there.  Members of 
the American Indian Movement (AIM) who were at the Jumping Bull “Tent 
City” location on June 25, 1975 defended the women and children of the 
camp from the unknown assailants who happened to be from the FBI. Cour 
D’Alene AIM member Joseph Killsright Stuntz gave his life in the defense 
of this encampment. A year later in Cedar Rapids, IA an all-white jury 
acquitted AIM organizers Darrell Butler and Robert Robideau of criminal 
charges because they acted in self-defense. The FBI altered evidence and 
ensured the prohibition of exculpatory evidence to ensure the conviction 
of Leonard Peltier during his subsequent Fargo, ND Trial.

In America, the concept of rule of law can be simply exposed as the 
United States Constitution Article VI Clause 2 clearly defines Treaties 
as the supreme law of the land. Yet so-called Law Enforcement in North 
Dakota abandoned their oath and upheld the colonialist imposition of the 
United States when they failed to block Enbridge’s Dakota Access 
Pipeline which clearly violated the 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie Treaties 
by crossing into sovereign Lakota lands

Today in America many are waking up to the reality that America is not, 
nor has ever been a nation of law and order. That Truth and Justice are 
not the American way. America has more human beings incarcerated than 
any other nation on Earth. Instead of restorative justice that respects 
human beings we employ a profitable system of warehousing human beings 
and enslaving those who are incarcerated while treating them inhumanely 
to increase the profit margin.

Today in America many are waking up to the reality that the struggle is 
between those who remember and recognize we are human beings against 
those who like a predator, see only material wealth and profit as their 
motivation. Indigenous peoples across the globe whether they are Hmong, 
Saami, Kuna, Lakota, Anishinabeg, Ainu, Bantu, Mvskokee etc. call 
themselves the people, the human beings. They remember who they are. The 
dominant society see’s themselves as “Americans” a false term that 
denies their connection to themselves as a human being, their ancestors 
who were not “Americans” and other human beings.

Today this disconnection is visible as individuals cling to monuments 
and celebrations of genocide. In every city in America there is a 
statue, celebration or memorial to Columbus, Navarro, De Soto, Custer, 
etc. There are no such statues in these towns to Teshunka Witko, Piz, 
Titania Tanka, Techumseh, Osecola, Micanopy, Bowlegs. Etc. In many towns 
across the south there are statues, celebrations and memorials to the 
defunct Confederate States of America, yet there is no statute to the 
brave African men and women in America who struggled for their freedom. 
There are no statues in Florida to Aaron Carter or Sylvester Carrier who 
courageously fought off the white supremacists who massacred Africans in 
the Florida town of Rosewood. 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosewood_massacre>

In today’s America a white nationalist named Trump was elected by 63 
million to the White House. Now white Nationalist organizations feel 
empowered to commit terrorist attacks in the open with the rise of hate 
crimes and the violence in Charlottesville, VA which they now want to 
bring to Gainesville 
<https://fighttoxicprisons.wordpress.com/2017/09/12/it-is-leonard-peltiers-birthday-statement-of-the-florida-indigenous-rights-and-environmental-equality-firee/>. 
While unquestionably revolting and vile this white nationalism is not 
new. Manifest Destiny, Termination, Slavery, Jim Crow, Alt-Right 
whatever name it has it’s the same old song Indigenous, Africans in 
America, and other colonized peoples in Turtle Island have heard since 
the syphilis-infected, half-a-planet lost Admiral of the Ocean washed up 
in the Arawak Nation in 1492. The terrorist killing of human being 
Heather Heyer 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/13/us/heather-heyer-charlottesville-victim.html?mcubz=1> 
was sad, and many of us mourned. But as she would note, how many have 
mourned the murder of Savanna Lafontaine-Grey Wolf 
<http://www.startribune.com/authorities-confirm-pregnant-fargo-woman-died-from-homicidal-violence/442152143/#1>an 
Anishinabeg lady who was killed for her baby a few weeks ago. How many 
mourned Sherry Wounded Foot or any of the scores of Missing and Murdered 
Indigenous Women. How many mourned or were outraged by the hate crime 
killings of Wallace Black Elk Jr, or Ronald Hard Heart or Allen Two 
Crows? Colonialism and white nationalism’s ugly face are interwoven, 
intertwined and run deep in this America.

FIREE and the Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons recognize and celebrate 
the birth and the life of the true warriors for humanity and justice. 
Warriors like Leonard Peltier, Buddy Lamonte, Frank Clearwater, Pedro 
Bissonette, Joe Stuntz, Geronimo Ji Jaga (Pratt), Mumia Abu Jamal, and 
so many others. May Leonard Peltier’s courage and heart stand as a 
shining testament to what we must all live up to and stand for in the 
resistance of colonialism and white supremacy standing for the people in 
the Spirit of Crazy Horse!

Write Leonard at:

Leonard Peltier
#89637-132
USP Coleman I
P.O. Box 1033
Coleman, FL 33521

For more info: https://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info/

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
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