BELCOURT, N.D. — After dwelling in a windowless, concrete field for practically 50 years, Leonard Peltier is discovering the little joys that include being in a two-bedroom home of his personal.
He can see the solar. He has a fridge, and a TV with extra channels than he can depend. He has his now-cherished recliner, the flamboyant type that lays you all the best way again and, with some navigating on a distant management, pushes you up and proper out of the seat. It’s the place Peltier, who simply turned 81, is content material to spend most of his days, nestled in with a fleece blanket as a house well being aide brings him rounds of espresso.
“Making an attempt to search for one other phrase, however I can’t discover any, so I’ll go along with the identical one: superior,” stated Peltier, a time period he used repeatedly to explain his life over the previous seven months.
Till January, Peltier was the longest-serving political prisoner in America. An activist for Indigenous rights, he was convicted in 1977 of murdering two FBI brokers, which he has all the time denied doing. In actual fact, there was by no means proof Peltier killed anybody. And as he sat in jail for all these years — his story turning into the topic of numerous books and movies and highschool assignments, the injustice of his case triggering calls for for his launch by worldwide human rights leaders, authorized consultants, politicians, Indigenous leaders and celebrities — Peltier got here to represent one thing a lot greater than himself.
Between his early years of trauma in an Indian boarding college, his years of activism with the American Indian Motion and the previous 5 many years spent behind bars, Peltier, for a lot of, grew to become the embodiment of so lots of the injustices Native People and tribes have confronted by the hands of the U.S. authorities. And the truth that he survived all of it, with a resolute angle of resistance, has made some hail Peltier as a hero.
However not everybody. As a lot as there had been political will to launch him, there had additionally been political requires him to remain incarcerated for the remainder of his life. Sitting in his cell early this yr, after many years of U.S. presidents in each events passing him over for clemency, Peltier didn’t suppose President Joe Biden would let him go house, both.
“I had already given up,” he stated in an in depth interview with JHB at his house. “So I went and laid on my bunk, and I used to be pondering, ‘Properly? That is the place I die, I assume.’ As a result of I wasn’t getting the medical consideration I wanted. And I used to be actually feeling sick and weak, and I figured, properly? That is it. As a result of I’m gonna die right here.”
However a close-by inmate who was listening to his radio heard the information of Biden’s clemency announcement, and shouted from down the corridor, “You bought it! You bought it, Leonard!” A month later, he was strolling out of his Florida jail and boarding a personal airplane house.
Peltier retains Biden’s clemency order framed and prominently on show in his lounge. However he doesn’t suppose the president freed him out of mercy or a way of justice. He thinks Biden caved to stress from influential Democrats and Indigenous leaders, together with his personal inside secretary, Deb Haaland, to let him go house.
“I don’t suppose he did it as a result of he beloved me or something,” Peltier stated, shrugging. “I feel it was as a result of it could have been dangerous politics. … I actually didn’t anticipate something from him.”
Picture by Tailyr Irvine for JHB
Rather a lot has modified since Peltier went to jail in 1976. He’s primarily been in a time capsule for 50 years, and is enjoying catch-up to all of the advances in expertise he’s missed. He’s talked to Alexa. He can’t consider how savvy iPhones are, after years of utilizing jail pay telephones. Trendy automobiles are particularly wild to Peltier, contemplating most individuals he knew didn’t even have automobiles when he was rising up — and a few had been nonetheless utilizing horses and wagons.
“I can’t consider it,” he stated. “I imply, goddamn, some bought every thing in them.”
However some issues haven’t modified in any respect. His relentless deal with preventing the U.S. authorities’s efforts to take civil and authorized rights away from Indigenous folks and tribes, and lifting up the well being and well-being of Native communities, is simply as agency as when he went into jail. Within the Nineteen Sixties, he co-owned an auto store in Seattle that used the higher degree as a midway home for Indigenous folks battling alcohol dependancy. Immediately, Peltier is raring to work with Native youth to stem drug and alcohol abuse.
His activism with the American Indian Motion within the early Nineteen Seventies was largely centered on stopping police brutality and defending tribal sovereignty, or the inherent rights of federally acknowledged tribes to manipulate themselves, unbiased of the U.S. authorities. Tribes entered into lots of of treaties with the federal government between 1778 and 1871, and so they stay the authorized framework wherein tribes function as we speak. Usually, these treaties concerned exchanging tribal land for guarantees of government-provided well being care and training.
However the U.S. authorities has an extended historical past of breaking its guarantees on its treaties with tribes. And searching in the intervening time we’re in, Peltier may be very involved.
“We’re nonetheless in peril,” he stated. “[President Donald] Trump is speaking about our treaties [being] too outdated, and they need to be abolished and every thing like this. If our treaties are abolished, meaning us, as a race, have been abolished fully. We don’t exist no extra.”
Peltier didn’t specify what treaties he was speaking about, however Trump has taken actions this yr that undermine tribal sovereignty and treaty rights. In June, he withdrew the U.S. from a 2023 settlement with tribes to revive fish populations within the Columbia River. In April, his administration unsuccessfully tried to problem birthright citizenship by citing a Nineteenth-century authorized precedent that excluded some Native People from birthright citizenship. His sweeping cuts to federal spending might have violated treaty rights, too.
“Proper now, that is the one factor that now we have that’s retaining us acknowledged as a sovereign folks, as a sovereign nation,” Peltier warned. “So, we’re in peril. Nothing has modified there. We’re organizing.”
Organizing has modified too, although. In contrast to his days with AIM, when Peltier and his allies had been actually within the streets preventing again towards police brutality and racism, as we speak’s social justice motion features a huge community of native, state and nationwide teams demanding motion and preventing for systemic adjustments for Native folks and tribes. The Nationwide Congress of American Indians speaks for lots of of tribal governments. The Native American Rights Fund supplies authorized support to tribes and folks. Grassroots Indigenous-led teams like NDN Collective and Native Organizers Alliance are consistently organizing on points like voting rights and environmental protections.
Regardless of Trump’s present efforts to wipe out range initiatives in America, the nation has shifted through the years, culturally and politically, in assist of lifting up Native communities and folks. Indigenous folks aren’t remoted of their struggle for social justice; they’ve been welcomed into broader advocacy efforts by organizations throughout the nation centered on strengthening civil rights for Black, brown and LGBTQ+ folks.
Biden centered his administration on supporting Native folks and tribes. He prioritized a radical evaluate of the U.S. authorities’s ugly historical past of Indian boarding colleges. He took significant actions to guard sacred Indigenous websites and cultural assets, and to handle the disaster of lacking and murdered Indigenous girls. He canceled the Keystone XL oil pipeline, a serious win for tribes and environmentalists, and crammed his administration with high-level Indigenous workers, not the least of whom was Haaland.
Peltier stated he’s impressed with how subtle social justice teams have turn out to be. The power behind them, he stated, provides him hope for the subsequent era of activists.
“We’re extra unified than we [were] after I left,” he stated. “I’m reorganizing the American Indian Motion, from ‘American Indian’ to ‘American Indigenous.’ … We’re getting lots of good responses. Individuals need to be a part of it. Everywhere in the nation.”
Picture by Tailyr Irvine for JHB
It was solely on his flight house in February that Peltier, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, discovered his supporters had purchased him a home on his reservation.
Leaders of NDN Collective, a few of whom joined Peltier on his journey house, had spent months gathering cash from supporters nationwide to assist him get arrange. Some folks may solely chip in $5; others gave 1000’s of {dollars}. Additionally they purchased him a automobile, so his family and friends — Peltier has restricted imaginative and prescient — can drive him across the group.
Peltier stated he needed to cry when he discovered what his supporters had completed for him, however he “held all of it again” as a result of he needed to look powerful.
“I’m purported to be a warrior, purported to be a solar dancer, so you’ll be able to’t be crying in public,” he stated, referring to the Solar Dance non secular ceremony practiced in Native cultures within the Nice Plains area. “Making an attempt to be a traditionalist, you realize? We consider that as warriors, sundance warriors, we don’t consider in crying like a child.”
He’s taken journeys across the group, visiting his outdated childhood house and attending a current powwow, the place native Indigenous residents danced and celebrated his return. However Peltier appears most joyful when he’s holding court docket from his recliner. His favourite factor to do is “simply bullshitting like this,” he stated, and that’s what he’s been doing for months, internet hosting a gentle stream of tourists at his home, lots of whom are strangers who traveled to this distant city 20 miles south of the Canadian border to deliver him presents and properly needs.
His home, which sits on the finish of a nondescript dust highway, feels extra like a museum than a personal residence. Each inch of wall house in his lounge is roofed with vibrant, elaborate work made by Peltier during the last 50 years, earlier than his eyes went dangerous. Rows of colourful beaded necklaces cling from the partitions, a backdrop for one apparently very efficient strip of fly tape dangling from the ceiling. Throughout the room from his recliner, a big bookshelf is overflowing with feathers, painted animal skulls, sage sticks, pale pictures of ancestors and associates, and unopened packets of Gambler pipe tobacco.
Picture by Tailyr Irvine for JHB
He has much more of his work on show in his bed room — he retains dozens of others locked up in safes — along with dream catchers and a poster from Haaland’s 2025 marketing campaign for New Mexico governor. A bit of paper is taped to his bed room door with a printed message: “DO NOT ENTER.” Slightly below it, in tiny letters, it reads, “UNLESS INVITED.”
Peltier can get round his home with a cane or a bit help from somebody, however most of what he wants is inside arm’s attain from his favourite chair. His cellphone sits on a small desk to his left, propped up for simple entry to take all of the calls coming in at a jarringly loud decibel degree. To his proper, a small desk holds an array of things he may want at any given second: fly swatters, the TV distant management, a bottle of hand sanitizer and three pairs of sun shades. A pile of unopened letters and postcards additionally awaits his consideration right here.
He’s by no means alone. He has two house well being aides who alternate between 12-hour shifts at his home. Previous associates drop by. Managing all of the guests and media requests for interviews has been so overwhelming that Peltier’s circle of relatives has had a tough time getting within the door.
“My youngsters. My grandchildren. Too many individuals,” he stated. “However you’ll be able to’t say no to them. They helped get me out of jail. They fought for me.”
Picture by Tailyr Irvine for JHB
The U.S. authorities put Peltier in jail after convicting him for murdering two FBI brokers throughout a 1975 shoot-out on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. However it bought caught threatening and coercing witnesses to lie below oath, excluding proof essential to Peltier’s protection and hiding exculpatory proof with the intention to do it. The truth was the FBI and U.S. Legal professional’s Workplace desperately wanted guilty somebody for the high-profile deaths of the 2 brokers, and all of Peltier’s different co-defendants had been acquitted based mostly on self-defense. There was no one left guilty — besides Peltier.
Extremely, the U.S. authorities later admitted it by no means did determine who shot these brokers. The U.S. legal professional who initially prosecuted Peltier in 1977, Lynn Crooks, instructed the eighth Circuit Courtroom of Appeals in 1985, “We don’t know who killed the brokers or what precise participation [Peltier] might have had.” A federal decide on that court docket, Gerald Heaney, later stated the FBI deserved equal blame for the shoot-out that day and known as for clemency for Peltier.
One other U.S. legal professional who had beforehand helped put Peltier in jail, James Reynolds, later urged his launch and conceded, “We weren’t capable of show that Mr. Peltier personally dedicated any offense on the Pine Ridge Reservation.”
The million-dollar query for many years was all the time, why is that this particular person nonetheless in jail, after all of the misconduct that was revealed in his case and regardless of so many pleas for his freedom, from highly effective voices starting from Nelson Mandela to Mom Teresa to Pope Francis? As Peltier’s former legal professional Kevin Sharp as soon as put it, the reply was easy: politics, as a result of the FBI was complicit within the misconduct that led to Peltier being imprisoned within the first place.
“With a view to get clemency, you need to get the FBI on board. They’ve an inherent battle. You must get the U.S. Legal professional’s Workplace on board. They lied to get him in jail. They’ve an inherent battle,” Sharp instructed JHB in 2021. “They’re not going to say, ‘Oops, sorry.’”
“It’s this holdover with the FBI,” he added.
Some U.S. presidents had been near releasing Peltier, significantly Invoice Clinton. However he backed off his obvious plan after lots of of FBI brokers protested outdoors the White Home in 2000 in an unprecedented present of public opposition by the bureau, and after being privately lobbied by his buddy and former fellow state legal professional basic, Invoice Janklow.
Biden knew he was defying FBI management by granting Peltier clemency in January. Weeks earlier, then-FBI Director Christopher Wray expressed his “vehement and steadfast opposition” to Biden’s obvious plan, and the FBI Brokers Affiliation ripped the president for his motion afterward, saying the group was “outraged.”
Nonetheless, the FBI appeared to scramble to defend its place lately. When contacted by JHB for requests for remark in tales about Peltier, it usually supplied the identical boilerplate assertion that was wildly outdated and based mostly on proof that has since been disproven. The FBI nonetheless hasn’t publicly addressed the broader context of that 1975 shoot-out, both: the proof that the bureau itself was deliberately fueling intra-tribal tensions on that reservation as a part of a covert marketing campaign to suppress AIM’s actions. Peltier, an lively AIM chief, was a chief FBI goal.
An FBI spokesperson initially didn’t reply to requests for remark. After this story printed, a spokesperson stated the bureau declined remark.
Even when Biden launched Peltier, he did so with a nod to the FBI. He put Peltier below house confinement as an alternative of pardoning him, which might have meant Peltier was absolutely free and primarily forgiven by the federal government. As an alternative, Peltier is serving out the rest of his two consecutive life sentences at house, with restrictions on his actions.
Picture by Tailyr Irvine for JHB
Peltier has been preventing to loosen these restrictions, after all.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons, which oversees his house confinement, initially instructed him he wasn’t allowed to have a automobile, however now he can. He wasn’t initially allowed to journey greater than 100 miles from Belcourt, however now he can with a particular go, for medical causes. The jail bureau additionally instructed him he wasn’t allowed to have a girlfriend, which can have infuriated Peltier greater than something, as he made it very clear he loves the corporate of ladies.
“I stated, ‘What the hell, man?’ , why can’t I’ve a girlfriend? What’s that bought to do with this shit?” Peltier stated, noting he has a girlfriend in Minnesota. “So that they stated, ‘OK, you’ll be able to have a girlfriend. However she will’t spend all evening.’ Actually.”
He pushed again on the bureau some extra and now he’s allowed to have a girlfriend, and he or she’s allowed to spend the evening. She simply can’t transfer in.
Picture by Tailyr Irvine for JHB
Within the hours that we spoke, it was straightforward to neglect that this wasn’t only a informal dialog with somebody’s grandpa. Peltier had a lot of anecdotes to share from his lengthy life. He talked about his well being, which has significantly improved during the last a number of months. He gushed about his elementary-school-age granddaughter turning into a powerful swimmer, pointing to a photograph of her pinned to the wall subsequent to his recliner.
However his 81-year-old physique is churning with rage. Peltier’s reminiscence is remarkably intact, and he has a wealth of tales he desires to inform, involving many years of U.S. presidents and main moments in American historical past — all of which inevitably lead again to him shedding 49 years of his life to most safety prisons for a criminal offense he maintains he didn’t commit.
“I’m pissed off,” he stated sharply. Requested how usually he wakes up livid about what occurred to him, he replied with out hesitation, “I feel virtually daily.”
Peltier stated he may have gotten out of jail “a very long time in the past” if he’d been prepared to lie and say he shot these FBI brokers, however he wouldn’t do it. He additionally stated he wasn’t prepared to falsely accuse others of the crime to safe his personal freedom.
To throw a fellow Indigenous ally below the bus like that might be “treason to my folks,” Peltier stated.
Requested if he’d ever thought of saying he was responsible of murdering the 2 FBI brokers simply to get out of jail sooner, he abruptly rejected that possibility. “My pricey, I took an oath to struggle for my folks,” he stated. “I took an oath for our lives. They had been attempting to terminate us.”
Peltier introduced up the U.S. authorities’s so-called Indian termination coverage, a sequence of legal guidelines put in place from the Forties to the Nineteen Sixties aimed toward assimilating Native People into mainstream tradition by abolishing tribes and forcing Native People to relocate to city areas. The coverage was reversed in 1970, but it surely brought about lasting harm to tribes and Native communities, specifically by the lack of land and disruptions to cultural practices.
“We’d be gone as a race of individuals” if these insurance policies had continued, Peltier fumed. “One in every of my uncles introduced the newspaper house, I used to be most likely 5 or 6 years outdated, they stated, ‘Take a look at this, they’re saying we’re the vanishing People. They don’t know what occurred to us.’ That was the duvet of Look Journal. Grandma began crying, she stated, ‘What are they saying that for? We’re nonetheless right here, have a look at us. Proper? Why are they doing that?’”
“So I do know that was true,” he stated of the federal government attempting to wipe out Native People. “I used to be standing there listening to that.”
JHB requested if he thinks anybody will ever know who killed these FBI brokers in 1975.
“I don’t give a shit in the event that they ever know,” Peltier fired again. He stated the larger query is why dozens of AIM members and allies had been murdered on Pine Ridge Reservation between 1973 and 1976, throughout the years of excessive rigidity between tribes and the federal authorities.
“No one desires to say something about Joe Stuntz,” he stated, referring to an Indigenous AIM member who was killed within the 1975 shoot-out with the FBI brokers, and whose loss of life prompted no authorized motion. “What about them 62 individuals who had been killed? Who desires to know?”
“They’re not doing a goddamn factor about them,” he continued. “However these two white folks?”
Picture by Tailyr Irvine for JHB
Peltier’s puppies broke out of the basement because the interview was wrapping up.
His daughter, who had been drifting out and in with a headache, had simply adopted two child huskies and so they ran wild as Peltier beamed and shared their names in Anishinaabe and Lakota, his Native languages. It was one of many many surreal moments of this go to, watching Peltier swap between being an iconic and controversial determine within the Indigenous rights motion, and an 81-year-old man hocking loogies right into a can and speaking about his canines.
He has a lot of huge plans forward, even in his superior years. He desires to file an audiobook about his life, as a result of writing books by hand, which he’s completed prior to now, “was a fuckin’ killer.” He desires to remodel his storage into an artwork studio and get again to portray. He’d want to repair his eyes first, so he’s been speaking to Mayo Clinic medical doctors about procedures that would assist his imaginative and prescient. He’s ready to journey to the Mayo Clinic based mostly in Minnesota in the event that they will help.
He’ll want a particular go from the Bureau of Prisons to go, although.
Peltier’s house well being aide had been sitting quietly within the kitchen all through the day. A girl in her early 30s, she stated she’d solely been on the job for just a few weeks, and politely smiled when requested if it’s been annoying having so many individuals coming out and in of the home. She stated no, and conveyed that she, too, feels how surreal it’s being round Peltier.
“I discovered about him in class,” she stated. “We needed to write papers on him.”