Leonard — In the Spirit of Crazy Horse
A look behind the curtain of the latest denial of parole to Leonard Peltier
Leonard Peltier, the Turtle Mountain Chippewa man convicted of killing two FBI agents in a 1975 shoot-out between American Indian Movement (AIM) members and FBI agents at Pine Ridge reservation, was denied parole on July 2, 2024, in yet another parole hearing — this time before a rickety, truncated board. 1
Eight US presidents have had the opportunity to grant clemency (pardon, commutation, or remission) to Leonard Peltier:
Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Joe Biden.
None of them did so.
Those same presidents granted clemency to 3897 other people. Carter also granted clemency to more than 200,000 Vietnam War draft dodgers.
Joe Biden still has some months left to issue pardons.
Lots of children grew up with cowboy and Indian stories. That was the message from Hollywood, America’s narrative-spinner.
Even the Navajo children who lived next door in Shiprock played that game. I heard their father ask them one day, “Which one are you?”
Any child’s deep sympathy might be with the Indians, whose movie way of life looked often like perpetual camping. But when the covered wagons drew up in an embattled circle and the movie music signaled the final fight as the bugle and the regimental flags of the cavalry come flying over the crest of the hill, the children saw sure sign that the whites would win and the Indians be forced deeper into the sunset.
But Indians still exist and the Indian wars have not ended.
Today, cowboys have been supplanted by giant energy corporations, fighting not for range-land but for the minerals beneath. The corporations are painted “green” to masquerade as range grass.
Hollywood didn’t explain it, but the overall coordination of the “Indian wars” is a project of those whose vision of the world is dominated by a quest for ever greater accumulation of material wealth.
In this context, we can understand that the 1975 shoot-out between American Indian Movement members — including Leonard Peltier — and FBI agents at Pine Ridge reservation was not a crime but a battle in an ongoing war.
Leonard Peltier s not an ordinary prisoner. He is a warrior.
Indeed, the only "ordinary" event in the whole story of the shoot-out is the death of AIM member Joe Stuntz. He was shot by a sniper and his killer has never even been sought by the law.
The course of Leonard’s life since the 1977 conviction for the alleged killing of two FBI agents at Pine Ridge has inspired a great deal of writing. A library search turns up 889 books and articles, including at least 66 dealing with his efforts at parole. Heinonline database shows 115 results from a search for “Leonard Peltier AND parole”.
It won’t hurt to add to that body of writing.
I wrote to Leonard right after he was imprisoned, mailing him copies of case decisions I thought might help him. Almost 50 years later, the weight of the US government remains a mighty burden on his back and he is still ensnarled in law.
In 1983, six years after Leonard’s conviction, Peter Matthiessen published an investigative account of the fatal shootout between FBI agents and members of the American Indian Movement: In the Spirit of Crazy Horse.
Matthiessen’s book was an important addition to other exposés of US efforts to imprison AIM leaders. I wrote a strong positive review, calling it “a momentous work”.
The US fought back.
An FBI agent and a former South Dakota governor each sued Matthiessen and his publisher for libel. Courts eventually dismissed the suits, but the costs to defend the book amounted to two million dollars.2 The lawsuits also delayed distribution of the book at a crucial time in Leonard's appeals.
Matthiessen’s book riled not only the FBI and a governor, but also some reviewers. Two negative reviews of particular significance were in Newsweek magazine (March 28, 1983) and The New York Times Book Review (March 6, 1983).
The Newsweek reviewer, Peter Prescott, found the book "bloated" with interviews and documents, but nevertheless said:
"Matthiessen argues convincingly that…Peltier…was railroaded into an illegal conviction…. The accounts he gives of federal lawlessness…become in time stupefying."
In an astonishing turnabout, however, Prescott concluded that Peltier did not deserve further attention because his case is "not particularly interesting. Its manifold injustices are in no way unique or even uncommon…."
Prescott wrote:
“…likely criminals are illegally convicted in New York City every day. I don't suggest we ignore injustice. But Matthiessen seems to have missed a point we learned from the Weathermen and the Black Panthers: the people the government unlawfully persecutes are not necessarily good guys.”
🤯 In other words, the Newsweek reviewer dismissed the significance of Leonard's case on the ground that the same injustices are happening to other people all the time… and that these people are by definition “bad”, without their “badness” having to be proved.
Prescott refused to engage with the big historical picture, the basis for Matthiessen’s book title reference to Crazy Horse. Prescott referred to Matthiessen’s discussion of historical “government betrayals of Indian rights and usurpation of Indian lands” as “an elaborate series of excursions and retrograde maneuvers”!
Prescott wrote:
“Matthiessen runs the dismal history by us again. Today little has changed: the white man is poised to exploit the uranium recently discovered in the Indian-owned Black Hills. Some Indians -- mostly armed young radicals with prison records -- have rebelled against the subversion of their culture.”
The historical Crazy Horse and thousands of other warriors were also deemed “armed young radicals” — called “hostiles” in those days. Many of them were imprisoned, too.
The New York Times book reviewer was Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz. Despite his reputation as a constitutional and criminal law scholar, Dershowitz did not regard the evidence of an FBI frame-up as significant. He wrote, "Matthiessen…fails to convince."
Dershowitz's review was replete with white guilt clichés, like the comment that it will be "impossible for any sensitive reader ever again to enjoy Mount Rushmore."
Dershowitz waxed romantic about the historical Crazy Horse—"a noble 19th-century leader of Indian resistance"—but as for Leonard Peltier and AIM, they were "violent…self-destructive…self-appointed…radical(s)" who "exploited their…heritage for their own personal ends."
Dershowitz concluded, like Prescott, with the statement that Peltier "ended where (he belongs)—in jail."
Matthiessen's understanding of Native peoples and cultures is an essential grounding, without which the book never could have been written. No amount of "objective interest" would have been enough to gain admittance to the homes, hearts, minds, and memories of the numerous people whom Matthiessen interviewed.
Too many Natives have been affronted by too many well-intentioned whites— authors, missionaries, lawyers—for any Native person to easily share information with a writer or reporter, especially on a topic of potentially lethal significance.
Matthiessen's ability to enter people's lives gave him access not only to AIM members and others present at the shoot-out and involved in previous and subsequent events, but also to crucial informants on the other side—most notably David Price, the FBI Special Agent whose aggressive surveillance of AIM leaders made him a key figure in the prosecution of Leonard.
Matthiessen didn't idealize “Indians” or anything else to conclude that Leonard Peltier's conviction and imprisonment amount to injustice.
Matthiessen's interviews—revealing fabricated testimony, intimidated witnesses, suppressed evidence, and other prosecutorial wrongs—were confirmed in 12,000 pages of documents obtained from the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by Peltier's attorneys.
These documents eventually led Matthiessen to conclude that "Leonard Peltier deserved a new trial, not only because of dishonest proceedings…but because of accumulating evidence that the authorities had wanted him out of the way whether he was guilty or not."
In the Spirit of Crazy Horse includes chapters about the American Indian Movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, providing a valuable addition to that historical period.
Despite the enormous publicity focused on AIM during its periods of high conflict, no comprehensive account of the movement and its organization occurred until Matthiessen's book. His interviews with most of the key figures and many observers offer a definitive history of AIM.
Matthiessen also includes a very useful chapter on the Wounded Knee trials, showing the misconduct and political aspects of those prosecutions. Still other chapters discuss the impact on AIM of COINTELPRO, the FBI secret counter-intelligence project directed against domestic protest groups—including a discussion of the activities of then South Dakota Assistant Attorney General William Janklow cooperating with the FBI's program to "neutralize" AIM.
The bulk of In the Spirit of Crazy Horse consists of a very detailed presentation of the 1975 Pine Ridge shoot-out and its aftermath in criminal prosecutions. Separate chapters present the shoot-out itself from the viewpoints of AIM and the FBI.
Matthiessen provided extensive documentation and interview material, and carefully reviewed every aspect of each event in an attempt to come as close as possible to what may be said to be the truth. In the course of several chapters, a full, moving history emerges.
Ultimately, the central thread of In the Spirit of Crazy Horse is an exploration of the long conflict between Whites and the Original Peoples of this continent, showing it as genocide and attempted genocide.
Matthiessen helped us understand that the “Indian wars” have not ended. Today, rangeland is less important than the minerals beneath it, and the forces of giant energy corporations have supplemented and supplanted the cowboys.
The overall coordination of the “Indian wars” is still in the hands of people whose vision of the world is dominated by the quest for ever-greater accumulation of material wealth.
In this context, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse demonstrates that a shoot-out between AIM and FBI agents at Pine Ridge reservation in 1975 was a battle and not simply a crime.
Leonard Peltier is not an ordinary prisoner. He is a warrior.
“At a hearing, an examiner is in charge of reviewing the inmate’s case and hearing from witnesses. The hearing examiner’s recommendation on whether to grant parole moves to at least one other examiner who does not attend the hearing, and the ultimate decision then falls to a parole commissioner…. If the parole commissioner agrees with the examiners’ recommendation, that becomes the official decision. But if the first parole commissioner disagrees, a second commissioner must concur with either that commissioner or the examiners. …In addition, the Parole Commission typically has five members, but it has had only two since about 2018….” [Leonard Peltier, Native activist imprisoned for nearly 50 years, faces what may be "last chance" parole hearing, Erik Ortiz, NBC News, June 9, 2024: https://www.yahoo.com/news/leonard-peltier-native-activist-imprisoned-130000560.html ]
“$1,000,000 in 1983 is equivalent in 2024 purchasing power to about $3,153,303.21.” [CPI Inflation Calculator: https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1983?amount=1000000 ]
Great piece!
What a stupid tragedy! The FBI 's grudge against Leonard is ever ongoing, but they're too biased and stuck in time look at the truths staring them in the face. Yes, Leonard was there but he didn't pull the trigger on the gun that killed the two stupid agent pursuing a number of armed warriors onto their lands -- and all for a case of stolen cowboy boots! Besides, I know--many of us know who killed them and it wasn't Leonard. The warrior that did it died a number of years later in Canada.