Leonard is a 55 year old Chippewa/Lakota who grew up on the Turtle Mountain reservation in North Dakota. He has seven children ranging in age from 19 through 31. He has five grandchildren ranging in age from 1 through 12. His dream is to, with his grandchildren, own a large farm in the northwest and raise buffalo. He also wishes to become an instructor of oil painting and is an accomplished artist. He plans to continue to help Indian people.

Leonard is a Native American activist who has been imprisoned since 1977 for a 1975 shoot-out between the FBI and the American Indian Movement (AIM) in which two federal agents and an Indian man were killed. Four years after his incarceration, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit released documents which prove Leonard Peltier's innocence and FBI's use of their infamous COINTELPRO program in their efforts to "neutralize" members of the Movement.

During the civil unrest of the 1960s and 1970s, the FBI created a program called COINTELPRO or Counter Intelligence Program. This program was designed to destroy any organization considered by the U.S. Government, FBI, or CIA to be politically or socially dissident. By using the techniques of infiltration, bad-jacketting, forgery, and provoking violence with and between groups and law enforcement, the FBI hoped to nullify their progress. Those targeted included groups focused on anti-war demonstrations, Black civil rights, Native civil rights, and equal rights for women.

The years 1973-1975 were considered the "reign of terror" on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. The Tribal Chairman, Dick Wilson, was voted into office with less than 20% of the vote (there were more votes to impeach him whem people voted for him). Wilson assembled a squad of thugs who "kept peace on the reservation" and also were the cause of hundreds of homocides and assaults. His squad, known as GOONS, (Guardians of the Oglala Nation) was armed by the FBI.

AIM was called onto Pine Ridge by terrified elders of the Nation asking for protection. On June 26, 1975, the day of the shootout, two agents followed a red pick up truck onto a family's land on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the property of Harry and Cecelia Jumping Bull, an elderly couple who were celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary. The FBI claims the agents had a warrant for the arrest of Jimmy Eagle who had supposedly stolen a pair of used cowboy boots. The warrant never materialized. The pick up truck stopped and three men got out. They faced the agents who had also exiled their cars. No one knows for sure who fired first, but a firefight erupted.

The odds soon becoming 150 plus FBI agents, US Marshals, and military renegades versus approximately 30 Native men, women, and children, the firefitht lasted hours during which two agents and one Indian man were killed. At the same time 1/8 of Pine Ridge Reservation was signed over by Dick Wilson to the United States Government for uranium mining.

After the shootout four men were arrested for the deaths of the agents. There was no investigation in the death of the Indian man. One man was released due to lack of evidence. Two others were tried in Cedar Rapids , Iowa. They were found innocent on grounds of self-defense. Following this loss, the FBI did all it could to secure the conviction of its last defendant. Leonard Pelier was tried by a new jdge in a hostile state, Fargo, North Dakota. Judge Benson (a known racist and owner of Indian land) ruled that NO EVIDENCE from the first trial would be permitted in Leonard's trial. The jury was told that at any moment snipers would try to kill them, windows were painted black, armed Marshals stood around the courtroom. Peltier was convicted in the minds of judge and jury before his trial even began.

Four years later the release of documents received following a FOIA suit proved not only his innocence, but caused the appelate court to chastise the FBI for manufacturing evidence, coercing witnesses, and withholding evidence favorable to Peltier. Yet he remains to this day imprisoned.

Leonard was a close associate of Dennis Banks (one of the founders of AIM) and showed signs of potential leadership. ALL AIM leadership was targeted. The FBI wanted desperately to destroy the Movement and force Native people into assimilating into the white culture and allow the government control of their mineral (oil, uranium, gold) rich land. Peltier so concerned the FBI that a memo was sent out in which Peltier's occupation was described as: Manager of AIM. Not only was Peltier NOT the manager of AIM (he was a mechanic), no such position even existed.

Leonard had been previously identified as an A.I.M. leader by the FBI and targeted by their notorious COINTELPRO program which "NEUTRALIZED" people by slander, attack, and arrest. Fearing no possibility of a fair trial and perhaps even immediate execution, he fled to Canada where he was arrested and extradited by affidavits manufactured by the FBI that the government now concedes were false.

Three men were initially accused of these murders. Two were acquitted and the government dropped all charges against the third to concentrate the "full" prosecutorial weight of the government against Leonard Peltier. He was convicted and sentenced to two life terms. The government has subsequently changed it's theory on who killed the agents and today admits they have NO IDEA WHO KILLED THEM. This change of theory came about during an appeal when a judge suggested to the prosecution that the evidence was, at best, only circumstantial. The government then argued that they had tried Leonard as both the murderer and an aider and abettor. According to the final decision of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, Peltier's trial and previous appeals had been riddled with FBI misconduct and judicial impropriety, including: coercion of witnesses, perjury, fabrication of evidence and the suppression of evidence which could have proved his innocence.

The Court called the FBI's misconduct a clear abuse of the investigative process. Yet they ruled against a new trial for Leonard Peltier because they were "reluctant to impute further improprieties to them (FBI).

No one deserves treatment like this. That is why more than 55 members of congress, Amnesty international, 78 world religious leaders (including Archbishop of Canterbury and Desmond Tutu), the National Conference of Christians and Jews, and millions of world citizens have called for a new trial and an investigation into the illegalities of the Peltier case.

Leonard's FINAL appeal was on November 9, 1992. July 7, 1993 brought the most recent decision. Again, a denial. The decision rests on the following standards: arguments of misconduct either had been litigated before or should or could have been and that the government tried the case on alternate theories of close up murder, close up aiding and abetting, or long range aiding and abetting, thus completely ignoring and abandoning the conclusions of their own Circuit Court in two previous appeals.

In November of 1993, a petition to the President for executive clemency was filed. We are still awaiting a decision. Several large scale events have brought new attention to the case in Washington DC, including Peltier Weekend and the Walk for Justice in June and July 1994, and the Mothers of All Colors Caravan in October 1994.