‘Stand With Us Again’: 120 Tribal Leaders Urge Biden To Release Leonard Peltier

WASHINGTON ― With just one week left in Joe Biden’s presidency, more than 120 tribal leaders on Monday urged him to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier, the ailing Native American rights activist who has been in prison for nearly 50 years after a trial riddled with misconduct and a broken parole process.

“Mr. President, we honor your demonstrated commitment to Indian Country. You have stood with us many times – both in the White House and in the U.S. Senate,” reads their letter. “Our standing in the world as a champion of freedom, justice, and human rights cannot be maintained in a system that allows Leonard Peltier to die in prison.”

A number of prominent tribal leaders are on the letter, including Frank Star Comes Out, president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota; Nick Tilsen, founder and CEO of NDN Collective, an Indigenous-led advocacy group; Mark Macarro, president of the National Congress of American Indians and tribal chair of the Pechanga Band of Indians in California; and Deborah Parker, executive director of the Native American Boarding School Coalition.

A White House spokesperson declined comment.

Here’s a copy of their letter:

Peltier has been in prison ever since the U.S. government accused him of murdering two FBI agents in a 1975 shoot-out on a reservation in South Dakota. There was never evidence that Peltier committed a crime, and the government never did figure out who shot those agents. But federal officials needed someone to take the fall and all of Peltier’s co-defendants were acquitted on grounds of self-defense. So, they settled on Peltier.

His trial was riddled with misconduct: The FBI threatened and coerced witnesses into lying. Federal prosecutors hid evidence that exonerated Peltier. A juror admitted on the second day of the trial that she had “prejudice against Indians,” but she was kept on anyway.

The U.S. government’s case fell apart after these revelations, so it just revised its charges against Peltier to aiding and abetting whoever did kill the agents ― based entirely on the fact that he was one of dozens of people present when the shoot-out took place.

Peltier, now 80, has maintained his innocence the entire time he’s been in prison, which has almost certainly led to him being denied parole. His prolonged imprisonment is so unusual that it prompted a panel of United Nations legal experts to review his case in 2022. In a damning 17-page legal opinion, they concluded his imprisonment is “arbitrary,” and the only reason he’s still being detained is “because he is Native American.”

Peltier’s health has faltered in recent years. He’s mostly blind now and uses a walker to get around when he’s not confined to the inches of space in his cell. He has struggled with an aortic aneurysm and diabetes, which sent him to the hospital in July with “open wounds and tissue death on his toes and feet.” He was hospitalized again in October.

The only reason Peltier is still in prison is because of staunch opposition from the FBI, even as its stated arguments for blocking his release are either outdated, misleading or simply false.

The FBI still hasn’t publicly addressed the key context of that 1975 shoot-out, either: The bureau itself was intentionally fueling tensions on that reservation as part of a covert campaign to suppress the activities of the American Indian Movement (AIM), a grassroots movement for Indigenous rights. Peltier was an active AIM member and an FBI target.

Virtually every international human rights leader in modern history, including Pope Francis and Nelson Mandela, has called for Peltier’s release. Remarkably, so have some of the same people who put Peltier in prison in the first place.

Former U.S. Attorney James Reynolds, who prosecuted Peltier decades ago, has been privately urging Biden to grant him clemency. He did so in a stunning letter to the president a few years ago, and again, in a new video released Monday.

“I had been, as a U.S. Attorney, I had been involved in the prosecution of Leonard’s case,” Reynolds says in the video. “As it went on and went on and went on, and more and more stuff was revealed, it became quite embarrassing that I had anything to do with it.”

“When I saw that Leonard was asking for clemency, I decided on my own, and I hadn’t talked to people or anyone, I just decided on my own it was my duty as the U.S. Attorney that was involved in the case to write to the president,” he said.

You catch watch Reynolds’ video here: