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‘Free Leonard Peltier' Follows A 50-Year Trail To Justice For Native American Icon – Thessaloniki Int'l Documentary Festival

‘Free Leonard Peltier' Follows A 50-Year Trail To Justice For Native American Icon – Thessaloniki Int'l Documentary Festival

Yahoo12-03-2025

It's an elusive dream for so many docmakers: to impact legislation, to find justice, to make a difference. To change the world. With Free Leonard Peltier, filmmakers Jesse Short Bull (Lakota Nation vs. United States) and David France (How To Survive a Plague) achieved their eponymous goal: Seven days before the world premiere of their film at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival in January, President Joe Biden, in his last act before leaving office, issued a clemency order, commuting Peltier's sentence to home confinement.
The Native American activist had served nearly 50 years in a federal prison, having been convicted of murder of two FBI agents in a shootout at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1975. Peltier's attorneys and supporters would wage a decades-long battle through appeals, writs and petitions to circuit courts, federal courts, the U.S. Supreme Court and three U.S. presidents, alleging numerous incidents of misconduct by the FBI in Peltier's case. His cause became a global cause célèbre, attracting the support of Nobel Laureates, scholars, artists, and civil rights leaders.
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The Free Leonard Peltier team rushed back to the editing room to add this happy ending, working at a feverish pace to craft a new DCP for the January 27th premiere. Peltier was released on February 18 from a federal correctional facility in Florida to home confinement at the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota. The film screens Wednesday at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival after celebrating its international premiere at TiDF Tuesday night.
While Jesse Short Bull and David France hadn't worked together before, they both came to the project with a long history of activism–and a deep admiration for Peltier and his iconic stature. France was in the audience at a 2022 screening of Short Bull's previous film, Lakota Nation vs. United States. Short Bull's producers, Jody Archambault, Jane Myers and Bird Runningwater, made the introduction between the filmmakers.
France has had a distinguished career as a journalist, activist and filmmaker, having focused primarily on the LGBTQ+ movement. He was very much aware of, and inspired by, the American Indian Movement (AIM) during its heyday in the 1970s. 'The American Indian Movement was in my childhood, a very significant force, drove a lot of news coverage and animated a lot of people's interest in justice,' France tells Deadline. 'I saw it as a natural outgrowth of the kind of political activism that I've covered from the queer perspective, to see where those parallels were.'
Short Bull, a member of the Oglala Lakota Tribe, grew up in South Dakota, near the Pine Ridge Reservation. Over the past decade, he's been active in his community, helping to provide support for Native college students and participating in filmmaking workshops. How did the two filmmakers complement each other? 'My philosophy is, How can I best serve the story?' he says. 'David had a pretty extensive background with Leonard's story, and I didn't have anywhere near that level of understanding of some of the events. However, I'm from Pine Ridge. I live here, in southwestern South Dakota. I'm active within my tribe. I'm really rooted here in the community. Once I started to familiarize myself with Leonard's story, then it became whatever we can do to make it the most effective that we can. I became a servant to the story, in that sense.'
The story of AIM, Peltier and the conflicts at Pine Ridge have been the subject of several documentaries over the past few decades, including Michael Apted's Incident at Oglala (1993) and Stanley Nelson and Julianna Brannum''s Wounded Knee (2009). Much has come to light in the decades since those films, including, most recently, a letter from U.S. Attorney James H. Reynolds that sharply criticized Peltier's trial and how federal authorities handled the case. 'We wanted to use the advantage of having hindsight, to be able to tell the full story,' says France. 'We wanted to ask the question, Why did this happen? As far as our division of labor went, Jesse really led the research initiative to try to get to those answers. Jesse brought all of that to the interviewing; I was more involved in the shaping of the archive.'
In a 2024 interview with Julianna Brannum in the Oklahoma-based publication Luxiere, Brannum points out that in making Wounded Knee, Nelson had admitted that he didn't know much about Native history but as an African American, 'he knew about generational trauma, and he understood that there are differences in trauma and how it affects different people.'
For France, generational trauma figured largely in joining the Free Leonard Peltier project. 'At one of our meetings, I realized that all of us who were principally involved were either Native or queer or both,' France recalls. 'We all brought a tremendous history of personal trauma to all of these questions that we were taking on. That united us in our dedicated pursuit of truth in this story. What we all shared was the experience of having things go remarkably badly based on prejudice in our personal lives, in our collective communities. It wasn't hard for us to see where that happened in the story of Leonard Peltier, where he was carrying the weight of punishment that the federal government wanted to burden the entire movement with.'
In the process of interviewing the witnesses, survivors and elders, Short Bull deployed a style rooted more in the Lakota culture of storytelling than in common journalistic practice. 'What was ingrained in me being around Pine Ridge was how you communicate with people. Essentially, every word that you speak should be viewed like a prayer. So you have to be really careful about what you say and how you talk to people that are older than you.
'In this process of filmmaking, it's a delicate balance,' Short Bull continues. 'You want to try to get to the story, but you also have to take into account that there's a spiritual component to every action that we do. How I navigate that balance is by trying to treat everyone like I would my grandparents or my closest relative. Some of these things are so intense that how you talk about them has to be done with great care, great purpose'
For France, this protocol meant rethinking the art of interviewing, as informed by his longtime journalistic practice. 'When I first started on the project, I'd spent some time on the reservation in Pine Ridge, but [this] was my first time as a storyteller, as a journalist, and I recognized that it was a world that was very different from the one I come from. One of our producers suggested that we begin our process with a prayer for the production. We reached out to a spiritual leader, who gathered us together and offered a prayer for us, but it was also a kind of a master class in how we had to go about our research on this project. The key thing that he said to me was, 'Don't ask for anything; wait for it to come.' He also said something that they tell us in journalism school: Leave yourself behind.
'I attempt to practice what I sometimes call 'radical empathy' in my journalism,' France continues. 'It's an effort to really remove my own perspective and point of view in order to try and feel what the person feels, whose story I'm telling, or what their community feels. I knew it was going to be difficult for me in this story. Just watching Jesse's remarkable interviewing patterns and how deep he was able to penetrate the story, without really asking for the story. And often, Jesse would keep his eyes closed through the interview, and didn't ask follow-up questions.'
Speaking of interviews, journalist Kevin McKiernan, who covered the Pine Ridge episode and its aftermath, spoke to Peltier in 1990, and that conversation serves as a narrative throughline for the film. Short Bull and France used other audio sources, such as phone conversations friends and family had surreptitiously recorded. Thanks to AI technology, the filmmakers enhanced the quality of all of the recordings.
'We were able to take the vocal data set from that interview that Kevin did and use Leonard's voice to re-voice Leonard's voice, and put it all into this kind of singular vocal environment to make it seem as though it were a master interview that drove the entire thing,' France explains. 'And there was a small part where we used his writings to address an area that he hadn't covered. This was all done with his permission.'
In addition to the interviews and footage, the filmmakers availed themselves of massive amounts of material compiled by both AIM and the NDN Collective, a South Dakota-based Indigenous-led activist organization.
President Biden's 11th-hour clemency culminated a positive series of circumstances: Biden had also appointed the first Native American cabinet secretary, Deb Haaland, as Secretary of the Interior, and just weeks before the U.S. presidential election, he issued a public apology for the U.S. Indian Boarding School Program, a notorious chapter of cultural erasure, forced assimilation and rampant abuse. In addition, the filmmakers and their impact team presented a work-in-progress screening of Free Leonard Peltier on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC in December that was well-attended and well-received. 'People really felt the need to do something on Leonard's case,' France maintains. 'Biden's legacy is that he has been the most pro-Indigenous president in U.S. history, and that he could really seal that with clemency for Leonard. I think that that conversation, of which we played a very small part, was really beginning to ramp up after December.'
But now, given the current administration's turbo-charged authoritarian proclivities, the team is facing significant headwinds. Nonetheless, they are fielding invitations from festivals, are in talks with prospective distributors, and as part of their impact campaign, they will take Free Leonard Peltier on a reservation tour, with significant support from the California-based San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, the film's presenting partner.
'There is hope,' Short Bull asserts. 'Back in the '70s, things got so bad. There was no justice; it was just so dangerous, but especially to a lot of the people that I know from Pine Ridge, who keep history and stories. We've seen darker days, where our people were hurting each other regularly. But a lot of positive activity grew out of that. So you can look to history to see how you can get through times where these things seem scary. If we can crawl out of that, we can get out of any situation.'
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Under Patel, FBI heightens focus on violent crime, illegal immigration. Other threats abound, too
Under Patel, FBI heightens focus on violent crime, illegal immigration. Other threats abound, too

Chicago Tribune

timean hour ago

  • Chicago Tribune

Under Patel, FBI heightens focus on violent crime, illegal immigration. Other threats abound, too

WASHINGTON — When the FBI arrested an accused leader of the MS-13 gang, Kash Patel was there to announce the case, trumpeting it as a step toward returning 'our communities to safety.' Weeks later, when the Justice Department announced the seizure of $510 million in illegal narcotics bound for the U.S, the FBI director joined other law enforcement leaders in front of a Coast Guard ship in Florida and stacks of intercepted drugs to highlight the haul. His presence was meant to signal the premium the FBI is placing on combating violent crime, drug trafficking and illegal immigration, concerns that have leapfrogged up the agenda in what current and former law enforcement officials say amounts to a rethinking of priorities and mission at a time when the country is also confronting increasingly sophisticated national security threats from abroad. A revised FBI priority list on its website places 'Crush Violent Crime' at the top, bringing the bureau into alignment with the vision of President Donald Trump, who has made a crackdown on illegal immigration, cartels and transnational gangs a cornerstone of his administration. Patel has said he wants to 'get back to the basics.' His deputy, Dan Bongino, says the FBI is returning to 'its roots.' Patel says the FBI remains focused on some of the same concerns, including China, that have dominated headlines in recent years, and the bureau said in a statement that its commitment to investigating international and domestic terrorism has not changed. That intensifying threat was laid bare over the past month by a spate of violent acts, most recently a Molotov cocktail attack on a Colorado crowd by an Egyptian man who authorities say overstayed his visa and yelled 'Free Palestine.' 'The FBI continuously analyzes the threat landscape and allocates resources and personnel in alignment with that analysis and the investigative needs of the Bureau,' the FBI said in a statement. 'We make adjustments and changes based on many factors and remain flexible as various needs arise.' Signs of restructuring abound. The Justice Department has disbanded an FBI-led task force on foreign influence and the bureau has moved to dissolve a key public corruption squad in its Washington field office, people familiar with the matter have told The Associated Press. The Trump administration, meanwhile, has proposed steep budget cuts for the FBI, and there's been significant turnover in leadership ranks as some veteran agents with years of experience have been pushed from their positions. Some former officials are concerned the stepped-up focus on violent crime and immigration — areas already core to the mission of agencies including the Drug Enforcement Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement — risks deflecting attention from some of the complicated criminal and national security threats for which the bureau has long borne primary if not exclusive responsibility for investigating. 'If you're looking down five feet in front of you, looking for gang members and I would say lower-level criminals, you're going to miss some of the more sophisticated strategic issues that may be already present or emerging,' said Chris Piehota, who retired from the FBI in 2020 as an executive assistant director. Enforcement of immigration laws has long been the principal jurisdiction of immigration agents tasked with arresting people in the U.S. illegally along with border agents who police points of entry. Since Trump's inauguration, the FBI has assumed greater responsibility for that work, saying it's made over 10,000 immigration-related arrests. Patel has highlighted the arrests on social media, doubling down on the administration's promise to prioritize immigration enforcement. Agents have been dispatched to visit migrant children who crossed the U.S-Mexico border without parents in what officials say is an effort to ensure their safety. Field offices have been directed to commit manpower to immigration enforcement. The Justice Department has instructed the FBI to review files for information about those illegally in the U.S. and provide it to the Department of Homeland Security unless doing so would compromise an investigation. And photos on the FBI's Instagram account depict agents with covered faces and tactical gear alongside detained subjects, with a caption saying the FBI is 'ramping up' efforts with immigration agents to locate 'dangerous criminals.' 'We're giving you about five minutes to cooperate,' Bongino said on Fox News about illegal immigrants. 'If you're here illegally, five minutes, you're out.' That's a rhetorical shift from prior leadership. Though Patel's direct predecessor, Christopher Wray, warned about the flow of fentanyl through the southern border and the possibility migrants determined to commit terrorism could illegally cross through, he did not characterize immigration enforcement as core to the FBI's mission. There's precedent for the FBI to rearrange priorities to meet evolving threats, though for the past two decades countering terrorism has remained a constant atop the agenda. Then-Director Robert Mueller transformed the FBI after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks into a national security, intelligence-gathering agency. Agents were reassigned from investigations into drugs, violent crime and white-collar fraud to fight terrorism. In a top 10 priority list from 2002, protecting the U.S. from terrorism was first. Fighting violent crime was near the bottom, above only supporting law enforcement partners and technology upgrades. The FBI's new list of priorities places 'Crush Violent Crime' as a top pillar alongside 'Defend the Homeland,' though FBI leaders have also sought to stress that counterterrorism remains the bureau's principal mandate. Wray often said he was hard-pressed to think of a time when the FBI was facing so many elevated threats at once. At the time of his departure last January, the FBI was grappling with elevated terrorism concerns; Iranian assassination plots on U.S. soil; Chinese spying and hacking of Americans' cell phones; ransomware attacks against hospitals; and Russian influence operations aimed at sowing disinformation. Testifying before lawmakers last month, Patel took care to note the surge in terrorism threats following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas and a Chinese espionage threat he said had yielded investigations in each of the bureau's offices. But the accomplishments he dwelled on first concerned efforts to 'take dangerous criminals off our streets,' including the arrests of three suspects on the 'Ten Most Wanted' list, and large drug seizures. Rounding out the priority list are two newcomers: 'Rebuild Public Trust' and 'Fierce Organizational Accountability.' Those reflect claims amplified by Patel and Bongino that the bureau had become politicized through its years of investigations of Trump, whose Mar-a-Lago home was searched by agents for classified documents in 2022. Close allies of Trump, both men have committed to disclose files from past investigations, including into Russian election interference and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, that have fueled grievances against the bureau. They've also pledged to examine matters that have captivated attention in conservative circles, like the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade. 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A European Perspective: Why Digital Sovereignty Concerns Us All
A European Perspective: Why Digital Sovereignty Concerns Us All

Forbes

time2 hours ago

  • Forbes

A European Perspective: Why Digital Sovereignty Concerns Us All

Prof. Dr. Dennis-Kenji Kipker is a cyber security expert and works as Scientific Director of the getty There are countless definitions of what constitutes digital sovereignty: Some define it politically, and others define it technically. Then, there are legal and sociocultural attempts to define it. And that makes sense, because digitalization affects all areas of life, society and the economy. That is why this article will not attempt to define the entire possible spectrum of digital sovereignty, because that would be boring. Instead, my aim is to identify specific reasons for the lack of digital sovereignty to date and consider how we can work together to find a way out of this dilemma. Here are just two examples of a lack of digital sovereignty: When President Donald Trump announced that he will make changes to the transatlantic data protection agreement between the EU and the United States—and we in the European Union had to consider what consequences this could have for our economy—I do not believe that is digital sovereignty. Or, when Vice President JD Vance stated in February 2025 that the European Union is digitally overregulated—and the EU Commission then considered reducing European data protection by reforming the GDPR—I do not believe that is digital sovereignty, either. To me, sovereignty therefore means being able to decide freely whether and how to digitize—so that the greatest possible added value can be achieved for everyone, regardless of foreign interference. And digital sovereignty is not just an abstract end in itself: It helps companies in the EU use the best possible IT products at an efficient business price. On the other hand, U.S. companies also benefit from EU digital sovereignty. In a free, sovereign market, it is also easier for startups and scale-ups abroad to build a business case in the EU. Unfortunately, we in the EU are still too far away from this ideal, at least at present. But why is this the case? It's a long story, because a lack of digital sovereignty didn't happen overnight or in just a few years. No, to answer this question, you have to go back almost 30 years in the history of European technology development. The best example of this for Germany is the mobile phone market. Immediately after the start of the cell phone boom in the 1990s, the country began to rely on outsourcing IT development. This ultimately resulted in the closure of Siemens Mobile, a formerly big-name mobile developer in the country. As a result, while companies were initially able to rely on suppliers from abroad, decades later, they became dependent on these same suppliers. And the consequences of this can be felt by everyone today: the European smartphone market has long since ceased to be dominated by European manufacturers, as was the case with cell phones just a few decades ago. This worked well for many years because the credo of the European digital economy and others was always that globalization is the way forward. In the last decade in particular, a lot has been digitized and networked with the expansion of mobile 5G connections, and more and more computing capacities have been outsourced to the global cloud without hesitation. However, the global turnaround that began with Covid-19 in 2020 and that has since continued with political unrest and tension have made this difficult. The insight is clear: While we trusted in digital globalization all those years ago, it is now a question of digital trust. Digitalization without trust is no longer sustainable in these times. Regionalization instead of globalization has therefore become the credo of our decade—and this also includes regaining the digital sovereignty we gave up. But that is, of course, easier said than done. We've had decades to lose our digital sovereignty, but we have been confronted with the global turnaround at such a rapid pace that it will be extremely difficult for us to establish digital sovereignty from now on. But this is where the circle must close. Digital sovereignty affects us all, and therefore, everyone can make a contribution. It's not just about us as the European Union investing more in the development of our own digital economy by supporting startups and scale-ups with targeted funding. It's even more important to get young people interested in training in STEM subjects. And ultimately, it's about how we as states, as individual companies and as individual consumers purchase IT. In this very concrete business context, in order to achieve digital sovereignty and technological resilience, it is first necessary to carry out a risk analysis. What technology do I use? In which areas do I most use it? To what extent are my processes dependent on it, and from which manufacturers does it come from? On the other hand, U.S. manufacturers, for example, should also ask themselves these questions, as the increasing regulatory requirements for cybersecurity as part of digital sovereignty also offer new business opportunities. Where EU-compliant products are offered, European companies can also integrate them more easily into their IT infrastructure. Because of this, ideally, digital sovereignty is a win-win situation for everyone. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?

NY Times says 'real emergency' is Trump sending troops to Los Angeles
NY Times says 'real emergency' is Trump sending troops to Los Angeles

Fox News

time2 hours ago

  • Fox News

NY Times says 'real emergency' is Trump sending troops to Los Angeles

The New York Times editorial board argued on Sunday that the "real emergency" with regard to the Los Angeles anti-ICE demonstrations was that President Donald Trump sent troops to quell the unrest. The editorial board wrote that the National Guard was typically called in for natural disasters, civil disturbances or for support during a public health crisis, adding, "There was no indication that was needed or wanted in Los Angeles this weekend, where local law enforcement had kept protests over federal immigration raids, for the most part, under control." Trump sent the National Guard to California over the weekend as anti-ICE riots escalated, with participants vandalizing vehicles and buildings and assaulting police officers to protest the ICE raids in LA. The Times editors argued that sending the National Guard in was creating "the very chaos it was purportedly designed to prevent." "Past presidents, from both parties, have rarely deployed troops inside the United States because they worried about using the military domestically and because the legal foundations for doing so are unclear. Congress should turn its attention to such deliberations promptly. If presidents hesitate before using the military to assist in recovery after natural disasters but feel free to send in soldiers after a few cars are set on fire, the law is alarmingly vague," the editors wrote. The FBI is searching for a suspect accused of assaulting a federal officer and damaging government property during the anti-ICE demonstrations in Los Angeles. On Saturday, the suspect allegedly threw rocks at law enforcement vehicles on Alondra Blvd. in Paramount, Calif., resulting in injury to a federal officer and damage to government vehicles. While The New York Times discouraged violence from protesters, it argued that Trump's move to send in the National Guard was not helping. "Mr. Trump's order establishes neither law nor order. Rather it sends the message that the administration is interested in only overreaction and overreach. The scenes of tear gas in Los Angeles streets on Sunday underscored that point: that Mr. Trump's idea of law and order is strong-handed, disproportionate intervention that adds chaos, anxiety and risk to already tense situations," the editorial board wrote. The Los Angeles Police Department declared an "unlawful assembly" Sunday night as protesters failed to disperse in the downtown area. California Gov. Gavin Newsom also criticized Trump for deploying the National Guard, accusing him of making it worse. "Let's get this straight: 1) Local law enforcement didn't need help. 2) Trump sent troops anyway — to manufacture chaos and violence. 3) Trump succeeded. 4) Now things are destabilized, and we need to send in more law enforcement just to clean up Trump's mess," Newsom wrote on social media. During a press conference Sunday evening, LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell called the anti-ICE riots happening in the city and violence against law enforcement "disgusting."

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