Bury My Heart with Leonard Peltier
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Bury My Heart with Leonard Peltier
How long will he still be with us? How long will the genocide continue?
American Indian Movement leader, Leonard Peltier, at 77 years of age, came down with Covid-19 this weekend. Upon hearing this, I broke down and cried. An innocent man, locked up behind bars for 44 years, Peltier is now America’s longest-held political prisoner. He suffers in prison tonight even though James Reynolds, one of the key federal prosecutors who sent Peltier off to life in prison in 1977, has written to President Biden and confessed to his role in the lies, deceit, racism and fake evidence that together resulted in locking up our country’s most well-known Native American civil rights leader. Just as South Africa imprisoned for more than 27 years its leading voice for freedom, Nelson Mandela, so too have we done the same to a leading voice and freedom fighter for the indigenous people of America. That’s not just me saying this. That’s Amnesty International saying it. They placed him on their political prisoner list years ago and continue to demand his release.
And it’s not just Amnesty leading the way. It’s the Pope who has demanded Leonard Peltier’s release. It’s the Dalai Lama, Jesse Jackson, and the President Pro-Tempore of the US Senate, Sen. Patrick Leahy. Before their deaths, Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa and Bishop Desmond Tutu pleaded with the United States to free Leonard Peltier. A worldwide movement of millions have seen their demands fall on deaf ears.
And now the calls for Peltier to be granted clemency in DC have grown on Capitol Hill. Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI), the head of the Senate committee who oversees the Bureau of Indian Affairs, has also demanded Peltier be given his freedom. Numerous House Democrats have also written to Biden.
The time has come for our President to act; the same President who appointed the first-ever Native American cabinet member last year and who halted the building of the Keystone pipeline across Native lands. Surely Mr. Biden is capable of an urgent act of compassion for Leonard Peltier — especially considering that the prosecutor who put him away in 1977 now says Peltier is innocent, and that his US Attorney’s office corrupted the evidence to make sure Peltier didn’t get a fair trial. Why is this victim of our judicial system still in prison? And now he is sick with Covid.
For months Peltier has begged to get a Covid booster shot. Prison officials refused. The fact that he now has COVID-19 is a form of torture. A shame hangs over all of us. Should he now die, are we all not complicit in taking his life?
President Biden, let Leonard Peltier go. This is a gross injustice. You can end it. Reach deep into your Catholic faith, read what the Pope has begged you to do, and then do the right thing.
For those of you reading this, will you join me right now in appealing to President Biden to free Leonard Peltier? His health is in deep decline, he is the voice of his people — a people we owe so much to for massacring and imprisoning them for hundreds of years.
The way we do mass incarceration in the US is abominable. And Leonard Peltier is not the only political prisoner we have locked up. We have millions of Black and brown and poor people tonight in prison or on parole and probation — in large part because they are Black and brown and poor. THAT is a political act on our part. Corporate criminals and Trump run free. The damage they have done to so many Americans and people around the world must be dealt with.
This larger issue is one we MUST take on. For today, please join me in contacting the following to show them how many millions of us demand that Leonard Peltier has suffered enough and should be free:
President Joe Biden
Phone: 202-456-1111
E-mail: At this link
Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland
Phone: 202-208-3100
E-mail: feedback@ios.doi.gov
Attorney General Merrick Garland
Phone: 202-514-2000
E-mail: At this link
I’ll end with the final verse from the epic poem “American Names“ by Stephen Vincent Benet:
I shall not rest quiet in Montparnasse.
I shall not lie easy at Winchelsea.
You may bury my body in Sussex grass,
You may bury my tongue at Champmedy.
I shall not be there. I shall rise and pass.
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee.
PS. Also — watch the brilliant 1992 documentary by Michael Apted and Robert Redford about the framing of Leonard Peltier— “Incident at Oglala”
If you haven’t listened to my guest appearance this week on the SmartLess podcast with Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett — an experience I loved and wanted to share with you — please give it a listen.
Bury My Heart with Leonard Peltier
I have worked nonstop to free Leonard Peltier since 1995! I met him in Leavenworth in 2000 and have communicated, mostly by letter, ever since. I have sent dozens of emails to the WH during each administration starting with Clinton when there seemed to be a chance. Bottom line -the FBI has every president scared stiff to let him go! The FBI and DOJ railroaded him b/c the real trigger man, the late Bob Robideau, Leonard's cousin admitted under oath to doing the deed after he was acquitted by reason of self-defense. For reasons of double jeopardy they knew they could not touch him. But someone had to pay. The prosecution and appeal judge even admitted to the sound reasons for retrying his case but still refused to do the right thing stating that "someone had to pay" even if that someone was innocent. Is that justice? Still the DOJ would not budge as year after year an army of researchers went through FBI documentation and found tons of evidence of their lying duplicity in the case.
There is a horrid regulation that currently provides the excuse for disallowing compassionate release for Leonard. It also justifies keeping a federal parole board around despite it being disbanded by Act in Congress in 1984. He is an "Old Law" inmate, meaning his conviction predates 1987. "New Law" prisoners convictions post 1987 are eligible for compassionate and mandatory release while "Old Law" prisoners are not and are at the mercy of a parole board controlled by the FBI. This reg. in essence assigns a de facto DEATH PENALTY from COVID 19 to a vast number of minority elderly inmates. Leonard jokingly opines that this regulation was made specifically to keep him in jail forever.
There is currently a bipartisan Senate Bill sponsored by Dick Durbin and Chuck Grassley to strike this unconstitutional regulation down. But it will come too late for Leonard. Biden MUST enact an executive order, effective IMMEDIATELY if Leonard is to survive this latest DOJ attempt to execute him. Scream like hell for Leonard, an innocent man and for every elderly inmate stuck in these hell hole death traps!
Hi Michael. Thanks for your message about Leonard Peltier. There will be an event honoring Leonard on February 24 at Brava Theater in San Francisco (Flor y Canto Indigenista): Please pass the word: https://www.brava.org/all-events/flor-y-canto-indigenista.