The shooting that led to Peltier's jail took place in the Pine Ridge Reserve Area, in an atmosphere of protest between activists and police. This reserve is 16 kilometers from the place known as Wounded Knee, where American soldiers killed hundreds of unarmed ties almost a century earlier. Two FBI agents and an activist died in the shooting. However, the death of the latter has never been investigated. Peltier admitted at the trial that he had participated in the shooting to defend himself, but he always denied that it was related to the death of the agents at the place of the crime.
She's been in bars for over 46 years. He is currently 77 years old, suffering from diabetes, hypertension, partial blindness from stroke and aortic aneurysm. It is the U.S. political prisoner who has been in prison for years, as well as worldwide.
James Reynolds, the US prosecutor who helped imprison Peltier, also wrote a letter to President Obama in 2017, urging him to release Peltier: “Because having condemned and imprisoned Peltier for a long time was and is a mistake.” Also, Reynolds asked the president to help resolve the conflicting relations between Native Americans and the US Government. Neither Obama nor Joe Biden have complied. The assassination of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement succeeded in bringing the debate on racial oppression to the forefront, but the Peltier case remains unresolved. Peltier himself stated publicly that "prisons are the largest Indian preserve in the United States of America."
In October last year, two dozen American congressmen sent a letter to Joe Biden asking for Peltier's pardon. These include Ruth Anna Buffalo, a member of the Mandan nation, Hidatsa and Arikara and a representative of the State of North Dakota. He himself said: "We are not asking for any kind of special treatment, what we are asking is that they be treated as human beings. None of us is free until Leonard is free.
It is easy to write that 16,000 days and nights in a row have passed in captivity. That's what Kevin McKiernan asked Peltier in a 2017 interview: "If you had known [your political militancy] that you would have been in jail for 40 years, would you do it again? ". And Peltier's answer is very clear. "We have the same right to life as the rest of the world's peoples. So, yes, I would do so again, for the benefit of my people and my people.