[Pnews] 'I just want to free my dad,' Leonard Peltier

[Prisoner News]

sourcenm.com
<https://sourcenm.com/2023/09/14/i-just-want-to-free-my-dad-leonard-peltier/>
'I just want to free my dad,' Leonard Peltier
By: Jourdan Bennett-Begaye, ICT and Pauly Denetclaw, ICT - September 14,
2023
------------------------------
[image: peltier-daughter.jpg]

WHITE HOUSE — A young Indigenous girl walked through Lafayette Park in
front of the White House with an American Indian Movement flag. Her tiny
frame held the six-foot bamboo stake steady as the flag blew in the wind. A
stark reminder of how many generations the movement to free Leonard Peltier
from prison has gone on.

On Tuesday, NDN Collective, a national Indigenous-led organization, and
Amnesty International, held the Free Leonard Peltier 79th Birthday Action
<https://ndncollective.org/i-am-still-here-leonard-peltiers-letter-to-supporters/?fbclid=IwAR1ehTjowwPBWl62S5gDRMfTphuNS5vLhlh_-RBGAtz-9dLrBRJYHDhdmKU>
in
Washington, D.C., to demand clemency for the Native American rights
activist who has been incarcerated for nearly five decades.

Hundreds attended the peaceful rally where prayer songs echoed and at times
people danced, but still thirty-five demonstrators were arrested, according
to NDN Collective <https://www.instagram.com/p/CxGuEr8S5aP/>. At one point
the U.S. Park Police brought out a sonic weapon and U.S. Secret Service
created a barrier of agents on the sidewalk.

“Our goal with this event is to raise awareness and bring attention to the
plight of Leonard Peltier and his incarceration. Because we’re at a point
in time where the Biden administration has made it a priority for Native
American civil rights, and yet the longest living political prisoner in
American history, who is Indigenous, is still in there,” said NDN
Collective President and CEO Nick Tilsen, Oglala Lakota. “And so we’re
calling upon (President Joe) Biden and the Biden administration to release
Leonard. This is a priority for Indian Country.”

Leonard maintains he did not commit the 1975 murder of two FBI agents on
Oglala Lakota land.

Context in this case matters. It happened during the Reign of Terror where
dozens of Indigenous people were murdered, found dead or just disappeared
from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. This happened in the years after
the 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee
<https://ictnews.org/news/wounded-knee-legacy-lives-on-50-years-later> where
AIM leaders seized control of the area and declared it the Independent
Oglala Nation. The stand off between AIM and the federal government was at
times violent.

>From 1973 to 1976, the FBI targeted and harassed Indigenous activists in
the area. During these years there were more than 60 murders and Pine Ridge
had the highest murder rate per capita in the country.

The 1975 murders in question took place during a shootout between
Indigenous activists and the two FBI agents. The federal government didn’t
have enough evidence to charge
<https://ictnews.org/news/leonard-peltiers-46-years-in-prison-what-else-do-you-want>
Leonard
with murder. He was charged with aiding and abetting the murder of federal
officers and a seven-year sentence for an escape attempt.

“If he was tried today, no way he gets convicted,” Kevin Sharp, Leonard’s
attorney and former federal judge, told ICT. “That is not the law today.
The violations that law enforcement committed, that the US Attorney’s
Office committed at that time, the threats, the intimidation is a
constitutional violation.”

This is why many call Leonard, Turtle Mountain Ojibwe, a political prisoner
and are demanding President Biden grant him clemency.

“We’re not asking for a pardon,” Sharp said. “Pardon would require someone
to admit that he committed a crime, which he did not. But he is clearly a
prisoner of politics. This is about politics. So, it’s the politics that
keep him there. But I think it’s the politics that are going to free him.”

Leonard’s daughter, Kathy Peltier, attended the rally in Washington to
demand freedom for her father, “a dad figure” she never had growing up. She
advocates for his freedom to younger generations across the country and
overseas.

Kathy, Navajo and Turtle Mountain Ojibwe, last saw her dad three years ago.
It’s difficult for her to calculate how many times she’s seen him. She only
knows that her and her siblings could only see him for a short time so most
of the allotted visitor time for him could be spent with lawyers.

Leonard missed out on a lot of Kathy’s firsts, said her mom, Ann Begaye,
Navajo.

He missed her high school graduation at 18. Kathy is now 47.

“I was hoping my dad would be there. So when that day came and left, I was
like, ‘wow, he’s gonna miss many more unless we get him freed.’ So I just
want to free my dad,” Kathy said as her voice cracked. “I feel like it’s
too late for me, but get my dad freed for his grandkids. So they get to
know who he is, as a person, and not just locked up behind those bars.”

She also wished he could’ve been at ceremonies with her.

“When I first sat down, I wished my dad was right beside me to protect me
in that circle,” she said. “Just teachings of what I should know as a woman
and him telling me this is your auntie. Those are the moments I wish he was
able to do. A lot of my aunties have gone and are not too well. So I’m not
able to learn about what they could teach me as a young Turtle Mountain
woman. So I had to rely on my grandma’s side and my auntie to teach me the
Navajo side.”

Kathy said she would have wanted to know both sides of who she is.

Under the hot sun with plenty of humidity was famed Native American rights
leader and advocate Suzan Harjo, Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee, her
presence still larger than life and with her signature smile. She arrived
at Pennsylvania Avenue behind the White House after demonstrators displayed
a red and yellow banner, nearly as tall as (and perhaps taller than) the
White House gates, painted, “President Biden, Free Leonard Peltier Now!”

Her message to Biden: “To reach deep, deep deep inside your heart. My old
friend, Mr. Biden, and have all the compassion you can muster for my
brother, Leonard Peltier. I’m pleading for family. I’m pleading for a
relative. He’s not just a cause to me. He’s my family. Please, show
compassion to this one man, this one Native man who needs to be free now.
He wants to get out and look at the sky. He doesn’t want to go out in a
wooden box. He wants to go out where he can talk to people and breathe free
air, he said. Let him do that. He’s had two-thirds of his life behind bars.
It’s time. It’s time.”.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/ppnews_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20230914/3a6ce3cb/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: peltier-daughter.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 205157 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/ppnews_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20230914/3a6ce3cb/attachment.jpg>