29-01-2025
‘Today we rejoice': Leonard Peltier supporters gather to pray, celebrate
Kevin AbourezkICT
OGLALA, South Dakota — Standing before a fire on a hill overlooking a frozen creek, Frank Star Comes Out recounted 50-year-old memories of this land.
As a young boy, he would come here to his grandparents' land to pick berries, swim in the creek and ride horses. But in June 1975, he and his mother came to visit Native American activists camping on Harry and Cecelia Jumping Bull's land.
Days later, he would learn those activists — including a Turtle Mountain Chippewa man named Leonard Peltier — were involved in a shootout that left Joe Stuntz, a Coeur d'Alene activist, and two FBI agents dead.
'There's a lot of history around here,' he said.
Star Comes Out, now the 54-year-old Oglala Sioux Tribe president, shared his family's history with more than 100 people gathered for a prayer ceremony and celebration on Jan. 25 on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota following former President Joe Biden's Jan. 20 decision to grant Peltier clemency.
The decision means Peltier, 80 and suffering from several serious health problems, will be allowed to return home to the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota to live out his final days.
The official clemency proclamation for Peltier says his clemency will become effective Feb. 18, though it's unclear whether he will be released that day. After he leaves Coleman Federal Corrections Complex in Florida, Peltier will be forced to serve the remainder of his sentence on home confinement.
Peltier – who was not convicted of murder in the deaths of FBI agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams – has served 49 years after being convicted of aiding and abetting in the murder of the federal officers. He also received a seven-year sentence for an escape attempt.
Until Biden's last-minute action, Peltier had repeatedly been denied parole, pardon, clemency and compassionate release and had seen eight presidents leave office without pardoning him or commuting his sentence.
His commutation comes after decades of grassroots organizing in Indian Country and the presentation of evidence of misconduct and constitutional violations during the prosecution of Peltier's case.
Star Comes out said Pelter is a 'warrior who was wrongfully accused of a crime.'
'We don't know what happened that day, who the person is pulling that trigger,' he said.
In a grove of trees near an old log home leaning against the wind, nearly 100 people came to hear Star Comes Out and his cousin Ivis Long Visitor share their stories about the shootout and to take part in prayer ceremonies, including prayers, songs and the smoking of the sacred canupa, or medicine pipe.
Longtime AIM activists and young people held their fists high into the air and war-whooped and trilled when those leading the ceremony mentioned Peltier, as well as the names of Lakota leaders Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse and AIM leaders Russell Means, Dennis Banks and John Trudell.
Star Comes Out warned those gathered to continue to pray for Peltier and expressed concern that his release might be delayed or canceled somehow by the new presidential administration.
'This is a true warrior that stood up for Indian Country, took one for the team,' he said. 'So we need to recognize him, let him know that we were also frustrated with this and it's still not over.'
Peltier had been asked to come to the Pine Ridge Reservation to protect members of the American Indian Movement who were taking a stand against supporters of Oglala Sioux Tribe Chairman Dick Wilson. Roslyn Jumping Bull, daughter of Harry and Cecelia Jumping Bull, was a longtime AIM supporter who had invited the group to camp on her parents' land.
The day of the shootout, she and her parents were gone from the ranch, but her son, Ivis Long Visitor, his wife Angie and their three children were there when the firing began.
Long Visitor said the two FBI agents were chasing a pickup truck driven by Jimmy Eagle, who they suspected of stealing a pair of cowboy boots. The agents drove their cruiser down the hill toward a creek. The agents and AIM activists on the hill overlooking the creek began firing at each other.
Long Visitor gathered his family and made their way east near the creek, away from the shooting, attempting to escape federal officers who had begun arriving. They encountered three young female AIM members, who asked them what was going on before walking toward the sound of gunfire.
Eventually, Long Visitor and his family arrived at the nearby highway and caught a ride back to Oglala.
'A thing happened here,' Long Visitor said during the gathering. 'People fought for our way of life here. People laid their life down. Joe Stuntz left his body here.
'It was a tough day but today we rejoice. Victory for Leonard for getting out. Wopilatanka. There is power in prayer, my people.'
The Jan. 25 gathering on the Pine Ridge Reservation was among the first celebrations to occur following Peltier's release. At a potluck dinner held in Rapid City, South Dakota a few days earlier, on Jan. 20, local Native leaders and activists gathered to celebrate the news.
A local drum group sang honoring songs, including the AIM anthem. People shared their recollections about the turbulent 1970s on the reservation, and others shared their feelings about Peltier's release.
'There shouldn't be any innocent or guilty elders sitting in a cage at the end of their years,' said Natalie Means, a local community organizer. 'I am overjoyed that Leonard Peltier will be going home for the time he has remaining. He was held for far too long.'
Christopher Pina, a model and actor, said he was appreciative of the gathering as it gave people an opportunity to express their joy and gratitude for the decision.
'I am happy to know that Leonard will be able to live the rest of his life healing and taking part in our cultural ways,' he said. 'I needed to be around my community to hear the singing and the drumming and feel the energy of being around our relatives and eating our sacred food.'
At the Jan. 25 celebration on the Pine Ridge Reservation, attendees gathered for an afternoon lunch at Loneman School, where AIM activists and tribal leaders shared stories about the tumultuous days when traditional Lakota on the reservation fought daily with Wilson's personal militia, the Guardians of the Oglala Nation, or GOONs as he called them.
Dick Marshall, a former enforcer for Means who killed a man at a saloon in Scenic, South Dakota, in 1975 and spent 19 years in prison before being released on parole five years ago, talked about shooting at GOONs who had shot at his home, including one who broke his door down and who Marshall shot.
'Son of a bitch didn't die though. He lived,' he said.
GOONs terrified old people and children, anyone who supported AIM, he said. Dozens of Lakota people were killed or disappeared, he said, describing that time on the reservation as a 'reign of terror.'
He credited AIM with giving Lakota people pride and courage to stand up to their oppressors. He said Lakota people were all but colonized before AIM convinced them to reclaim their culture and Indigenous identity.
'People used to have a rosary hanging off their car or truck mirror because they were colonized by the Catholics,' he said. 'Nowadays you look, there's sage all the way across the dash, eagle feathers hanging off the mirror now. It's changed. It's changed, people finally getting proud.
'That's what Leonard stood up for, for the people.'
Besides serving as AIM enforcers, Marshall and Peltier also were convicted based on testimony given by the same woman, Myrtle Poor Bear, who alleged she was both men's girlfriend and had witnessed them commit the crimes for which they were convicted. Poor Bear later recanted her testimony, claiming she was coerced by federal authorities.
'They gave Leonard two life sentences,' Marshall said. 'They gave me life.'
He said he plans to travel to North Dakota when Peltier is released so they can visit with one another as free men.
He thanked those gathered for fighting for Peltier's freedom.
'He gets to sit on his porch with a cup of coffee, watch the sun go down, watch the sun rise with his takojas, with his family,' Marshall said. 'Finally, he's going to see daylight. He's going to be home amongst us.'
Regina Brave, an Oglala Lakota activist who took part in the 1973 Wounded Knee siege and became famous for a photo taken of her sitting on steps holding a rifle, described learning about the 1975 Oglala shootout while working for the Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense Committee in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
As a public relations official for the committee, Brave wrote one of the first press releases about the shootout that she shared with several news organizations. She also helped discover that agents Coler and Williams had been sent to the Pine Ridge Reservation by an FBI office in San Francisco.
She said the evidence against Peltier was flimsy at best, describing how prosecutors attempted to convict him by presenting a rifle that he allegedly used but that lacked a firing pin, an essential piece.
'If he killed those FBI agents, how could you kill somebody with a gun that didn't have a firing pin?' she said.
She said Peltier's decades-long prison sentence for aiding and abetting was meant as a warning to other Native activists.
'Leonard was kept in jail all this time, in a prison without any kind of a parole … because he was an example of what the United States government could do to our people,' she said.
At the gathering, a staff member for Star Comes Out's office described the efforts to free Peltier leading up to Jan. 20.
Valerie Adams, public relations coordinator for the tribe, talked about a Dec. 11 meeting between the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of the Pardon attorney and Office of Tribal Justice and tribal leaders from the Oglala Sioux Tribe, Rosebud Sioux Tribe and Crow Creek Sioux Tribe, as well as NDN Collective President Nick Tilsen, to discuss Peltier's imprisonment.
'When we got in there, it was very somber because we knew this might be the last opportunity we had to try to put this case out there for Leonard,' she said.
While no promises were made by the government attorneys in attendance, those gathered to support Peltier's release felt energized and hopeful afterward, Salomon said. After they exited the government office, those tribal leaders and staff gathered in a circle, burned sage, prayed and sang.
'It felt different,' Adams said. 'It felt like this was really going to happen.'
Freelancer Karin Eagle contributed to this story.
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