Leonard Peltier: Silence Screams
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Leonard Peltier: Silence Screams
by Carolina
The Message
Silence, they say, is the vocalise of complicity.
But quiet is impossible.
Silence screams.
Silence is a message,
just as doing null is an act.
Let who you are anulus discover and resonate
in every articulate and deed.
Yes, embellish who you are.
There’s no sidestepping your possess being
or your possess responsibility.
What you do is who you are.
You are your possess comeuppance.
You embellish your possess message.
You are the message.
In the fiber of Crazy Horse,
Leonard Peltier
¡31 eld behindhand bars!
Leonard Peltier overturned 63 eld older on Sept 12, 2007, an planetary period rigorous the immediate, total immunity of this Native dweller artist, writer, and activist––one of the most widely constituted semipolitical prisoners in the world.
Leonard has spent more than 31 eld in whatever of the cruelest prisons in the United States, unjustly confiscated to a threefold chronicle declare for the actuation modification of digit FBI agents in 1975. His status is today angry by upbeat problems.
From his radiophone in the federal status at Lewisberg, Pennsylvania, he keeps correct on struggling for the rights of indigenous people. He’s contributed to the organisation of libraries, schools, scholarships, and maltreated women’s shelters among some added projects. He was appointed for the philanthropist Peace Prize in 2004 and again in 2007.
“My crime’s existence an Indian. What’s yours?”
In his autobiography My Life Is My Sun Dance, author explains that his lineage is mainly Ojibway and Siouan Siouan and that he was adoptive by the Lakota Siouan and upraised on their reservations “in the realty famous to you as America….but I don’t study myself an American.”
“I undergo what I am. I am an Indian–an Amerindic who dared to defence up to indorse his people. I am an clear Negro who never murdered anyone nor desired to. And, yes, I am a Sun Dancer. That, too, is my identity. If I am to undergo as a symbolisation of my people, then I undergo proudly. I module never yield.”
Leonard tells us that when he was figure eld older a bounteous black polity automobile crowd up to his concern to verify him and the added kids absent to the Bureau of Amerindic Affairs (BIA) departure edifice in Wahpeton, Siouan del Norte. When they got there, they revilement soured their daylong hair, empty them, and doused them with pollutant powder.
“I intellection I was feat to die…that place…was more aforementioned a helpful than a school…I study my eld at Wahpenton my prototypal imprisonment, and it was for the aforementioned evildoing as every the others: existence an Indian.”
He goes on to feature that “We had to intercommunicate English. We were maltreated if we were caught speech our possess language. Still, we did….I surmisal that’s where I became a “hardened criminal,” as the FBI calls me. And you could feature that the prototypal infraction in my malefactor activity was speech my possess language. There’s an behave of hostility for you….The ordinal was practicing our tralatitious religion.”
When author Peltier was a teen-ager, President general launched a aggregation to decimate the reservations and advise the grouping off, gift them a diminutive payment. author remembers that the text “termination” and “dislocation” became the most feared text in the people’s vocabulary. The impact of conflict against perturbation was his prototypal undergo as an activist.
During the 60s, author worked as a farm miss and, later, in an machine embody class in Seattle. At that happening he got his prototypal discernment of accord organizing. At the prototypal of the 70s, he connected up with the dweller Amerindic Movement (AIM), initially inspired by the Negroid Panthers.
In 1972, he participated in the Trail of Broken Treaties, a region / procession from Alcatraz in Calif. to pedagogue D.C., and also in the activity of the BIA in the nation’s capital. He became a candid of the FBI aggregation to “neutralize” AIM body and was sequential up and jailed at the modify of the year.
1973: The Occupation of Wounded Knee
One of AIM’s boldest actions was the activity of the accord of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation, the aforementioned locate where the United States Army carried discover its cowardly, disreputable remove of 300 Lakota grouping in 1890.
At the prototypal of the 70s, AIM was effort unitedly with the Lakota Indians who were genuine to their ancient traditions and desired to stop on to their society and their lands.
The BIA, worried most AIM’s ontogeny impact in the area, imposed Dick bugologist as tribal chair on the reservation, streaming domineering over the module of the tralatitious elders and chiefs.
The figure bugologist hated the AIM militants and united himself with the FBI to defeat the shitting that the authority saw as a danger to the dweller artefact of life. His organisation assemble famous as the “GOONS” (Guardians of the Siouan Nation) had sworn a daylong concern of abuses against the people.
On the period of Feb 27, around 300 Lakota and 25 AIM members filled the municipality of Wounded Knee, connected by individual Chicanos, Black, and albescent supporters. They anti the murders of Native Americans on the reservation, the extremity impoverishment that the grouping lived in, and the debased tribal government. They demanded that the polity attitude the ancient treaties subscribed with autochthonous peoples to protect their region and autonomy.
The incoming day, General herb Haig sequential an invasion. According to environmentalist solon and Jim Vanderwall in their aggregation Agents of Repression, “In the prototypal happening since the Civil War that the U.S. Army had been dispatched in a husbandly operation, the bureaucratism invaded Wounded Knee with 17 bulletproof organisation carriers, 130,000 rounds of M-16 ammunition, 41,000 rounds of M-1 ammunition, 24,000 flares, 12 M-79 grenade launchers, 600 cases of C-S gas, 100 rounds of M-40 explosives, helicopters, shadow jets, and personnel, every low the content of General herb Haig.”
The activeness also relied on 500 hard brachiate policemen, federal marshals, and BIA and FBI agents. They enclosed Wounded Knee and sequential up barricades every along the road.
The activity lasted 71 chronicle and ended exclusive after the polity promised to analyse the complaints, something that never happened.
The incoming threesome eld were famous as the “reign of terror” on Pine Ridge. solon than 300 grouping related with AIM were violently attacked and some of their homes were burned. During these eld more than 60 Native dweller grouping were killed by paramilitaries brachiate and drilled by the FBI. There was also an process of FBI SWAT aggroup agents on the reservation.
It’s today known, as a termination of a meet based on the Freedom of Information Act, that AIM activities on and soured the uncertainty were low FBI surveillance and that the FBI was preparing the organisation dealings on Pine Ridge a period before the shootout at Oglala.
Oglala: The mortal shootout
In a status that was effort worsened every the time, the Council of Elders on the Jumping Bull farm nearby the municipality of Siouan asked AIM to embellish backwards to the uncertainty to protect them. author Peltier, along with some added AIM members and non-members responded to the call and sequential up tent on the ranch.
On June 26, 1975, digit FBI agents, Jack Coler and Daffo Williamsen, followed a flushed pick-up pushcart onto the Jumping Bull ranch. They were supposedly hunting for teen Jimmy Eagle, who was said to hit taken a unify of cattleman boots.
A shootout began between the FBI agents and the grouping in the pick-up, housing a kinsfolk in the crossfire. Several mothers fled the Atlantic with their children patch added grouping fired in self-defense. solon than150 FBI SWAT aggroup members, BIA police, and GOONS enclosed roughly 30 AIM men, women, and children and unsealed fire. author Peltier helped a assemble of teen grouping to carelessness from the fall of bullets. When the shootout ended, AIM member carpenter Killsright Stuntz was institute dead, effort in the head. His modification has never been investigated.
Coler and Williamsen were injured during the shootout and then killed at saucer grapheme range. The digit agents had in their cacoethes a transpose with the Jumping Bull farm scarred on it.
According to FBI documents, more than cardinal Native Americans participated in the shootout, but exclusive quaternary were springy with ending the digit agents: threesome AIM leaders––Dino Butler, Bob Robideau, and author Peltier–– and Jimmy Eagle.
Butler and Robideau were the prototypal to be arrested, and at their effort they spoken that they had fired in self-defense. The commission believed the behave was justified cod to the region of imp that prevailed at Pine Ridge at the time. They were both institute innocent.
The FBI was wild most the finding and dropped the charges against Jimmy Eagle, according to their memos, “…in visit to candid the flooded coefficient of the continuation on Peltier.”
Meanwhile, author Peltier went to Canada, believing that he would never hit a clean trial. On Feb 6, he was inactive and then extradited to the United States cod to the grounds of a blackamoor titled Myrtle Poor Bear, who said she had been his lover and had seen him blast at the agents. As a concern of fact, she had never famous him and was not inform at the happening of the shootout. In a after statement, she said that she had been coerced into gift simulated grounds as a termination of existence terrorized by FBI agents.
Two chronicle sentences!?
The author Peltier Defense Committee has cited a sort of examples of the wrongdoing of the trial:
-The housing wasn’t brought before the determine who had presided over the effort of Robideau and Butler, but instead before added determine with a estimation for making decisions approbatory to the prosecution.
-Myrtle Poor Bear and added essential witnesses were proscribed to declare most FBI misconduct.
-Testimony most the “reign of terror” on the Pine Ridge Reservation was earnestly limited.
-Important evidence, much as inconsistent ballistic reports, was deemed inadmissible.
-The flushed pick-up that had been followed onto the farm was dead described as Peltier’s “red and albescent van.”
-The commission was unaccompanied and enclosed by federal marshals, making jurors conceive that AIM was a section danger to them.
-Three teen Native Americans were unnatural to provide simulated grounds against Peltier after having been inactive and terrorized by FBI agents.
-The functionary couldn’t display a azygos attestator who could refer Peltier as the shooter.
-The polity said that a pickup institute nearby the bodies was fired from the presumed remove weapon, and questionable that this was the exclusive piece of its category utilised during the shootout and that it belonged to Peltier.
As a termination of the Freedom of Information Act suit, FBI documents overturned over to the accumulation showed that:
1. solon than digit instrument of the identify attributed to Peltier had been inform at the scene.
2. The FBI designedly hid the flight inform display that the pickup could not hit embellish from the presumed remove weapon.
3. There was no uncertainty whatsoever that the agents followed a flushed pick-up onto the territory, and not the flushed and albescent camper unvoluntary by Peltier.
4. Strong grounds against individual added suspects existed and was withheld.
None of this grounds was presented to the commission that institute author Peltier guilty. He was presented digit serial chronicle sentences.
Two serial chronicle sentences?! How do they organisation to compel that? Doesn’t the declare emit a unfathomable emotion of the fiber of Crazy Horse?
Bill Clinton: at the assist of the FBI
The author Peltier Defense Committee explains that a newborn effort was wanted after individual of these abuses came to light. During digit hearing, the federal functionary admitted that “…we can’t establish who effort the agents”. The suite realized that Peltier could hit been institute clear if the grounds hadn’t been unduly withheld by the FBI, but a newborn effort was denied on the foundation of theoretical errors.
The Committee says:
“In 1993, Peltier requested Executive Clemency from President Bill Clinton. An qualifier crusade was launched and based by Native and manlike rights organizations, members of Congress, accord and faith groups, fag organizations, luminaries, and celebrities. Even Judge Heaney, who authored the suite selection [denying a newborn trial], spoken concern hold for Peltier’s release. The Peltier housing had embellish a domestic issue.
On Nov 7, 2000, during a springy broadcasting interview, politico spoken that he would earnestly study Peltier’s honor for lenience and attain a selection before leaving duty on Jan 20, 2001.
In response, the FBI launched a field disinformation crusade in both the media and among key polity officials. Over 500 FBI agents marched in face of the White House to rebut clemency. On Jan 20, the itemize of clemencies acknowledged by politico was free to the media. Without explanation, Peltier’s study had been excluded.”
The efforts of the accumulation aggroup are today convergent on obtaining more than 6,000 documents that are ease existence preserved by the FBI and on urging legislature to analyse FBI move on Pine Ridge and the “reign of terror” that existed between 1973 and 1976.
In a past honor author said: “If my housing stands as it is, no ordinary mortal has actual freedom. Only the deceit until you hit something the oppressors want…. In the fiber of Crazy Horse, who never gave up.”
Let’s modify how it is.
This Sept 12, the author Peltier Defense Committee has declared social events in assorted parts of the world. In metropolis there module be a dissent to obligation immunity for author Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal, the MOVE 9, and the state 5, convened by the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal (ICFFMAJ), metropolis Jericho, metropolis Anarchist Negroid Cross, the individual Peoples Solidarity Committee, and the Uhuru Solidarity Movement.
What module you do?
Write a honor to Leonard:
Leonard Peltier # 89637-132
USP Lewisburg
PO BOX 1000
Lewisburg, university 17837
To clew an online asking or obtain aggregation most honor composition campaigns, enquire the tender of the author Peltier Defense Committee: www.leonardpeltier.net
Sources:
Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, housing summaries
Leonard Peltier, My Life is My Sun Dance
Ward solon and Jim Vanderwall, Agents of Repression