Lakota Law Statement on Leonard Peltier's Release from Prison
Lakota Law's Chase Iron Eyes discusses Leonard Peltier's long-awaited release and the context of his imprisonment.
Lakota Law has supported Leonard Peltier’s release since our inception in 2004, and we are overjoyed that his double life sentence has been commuted. This should allow him to live out his remaining years among family and participating in ceremony, and it’s a long overdue gesture of goodwill toward renegotiating the relationship between sovereigns.
We cannot forget that the corporation of the United States currently occupies Indigenous sovereign territory by force of “law” and the threat of military violence. Leonard will remain a ward of the Bureau of Prisons simply because he is a patriot of the land currently claimed by America.
For 50 years, corrupt operations kept Leonard’s story covered up. For 50 years, the state actors have defamed the American Indian Movement (AIM) and the cause of Indigenous sovereignty. For 50 years, they tried to remove the heroic symbols of our struggle to uphold Indigenous sovereignty and the validity of American constitutional sovereignty.
Leonard Peltier has done 50 years for the cause of indigenous sovereignty. To mention Leonard’s name is to call into being the entire history and current lived experiences of the colony and those people targeted by the colony to this day. We are the true patriots of this land, and we have recognized any legitimate claim of Americans to be here in this land only through the treaty-making process.
We need to talk about the “deep state,” what consciously-raised Indigenous kids know as “the Feds.” Why was Leonard Peltier a captive, a political prisoner of the corrupt FBI? Why did they steal 50 years from Leonard, from us? Why has no single operative been held to account for the scores of murders of Oglala people and supporters of the American Indian Movement on the Pine Ridge reservation during the corrupt FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO)?
I recall a potential operative visiting our home in 1991 in an attempt to cajole information out of my mother, Bernice Iron Eyes, relating to the incidents on the Jumping Bull property which led to Leonard’s imprisonment.
The pain of corruption is borne by us. We experience the lifelong apprehension of being on the receiving end of politically-motivated abuses of corporate and state power. My mother told us not to share things over phones. We know the learned security culture of those whose bodies rush with cortisol when pulled over by a cop, because this may be that last day.
I am committed to reparations for Leonard Peltier — and all those murdered by corrupt people in those agencies who committed horrible crimes to imprison Leonard, murder scores of Oglala and Native people during the tumultuous years of the 1970s, and expropriate valuable lands now within the so-called Badlands National Park.
Our silence on these matters can no longer be expected.