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Minneapolis, MN – Over the past two years, leaders within the American Indian Movement (AIM) organized a 1,103-mile walk from “the heart of AIM” in Minneapolis to Washington, D.C. “to seek elder Leonard Peltier’s release,” according to the main organizer Rachel Thunder. The walk’s primary purpose was to raise awareness about the case of Leonard Peltier, who they say was wrongfully convicted in 1977 of killing two FBI agents in a shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
Leonard Peltier, who turned 78 on September 12, is known around the world as a political prisoner. Peltier has received worldwide support for his case including from Nelson Mandela, Bishop Desmond Tutu, and Rev. Jesse Jackson. He was even nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, however the U.S. government has repeatedly refused to grant him parole.
The day before the start of the walk, directors and leaders with AIM, along with those in solidarity, rallied on August 31, 2022, to hold ceremony, sing songs, and speak not only on Peltier’s case, but on the many injustices Indigenous communities face on turtle island. AIM chapters from across the nation and Canada were represented including Rachel Thunder of Central Texas, Suzanne Smoke of Southern Ontario, Ray Bacasegua Valdez of Northern Nevada, and Lisa Bellinger who is the national co-director of AIM along with Frank Paro.
The last of Leonard’s children, Kathy Peltier, was also present. She spoke about the one time she was able to see her father and he was able to see her. She was about two years old and attended his trial.
Central Texas AIM Director Rachel Thunder says that the inspiration to start the 1,103-mile journey started with a dream, where she was transported to Peltier’s prison cell.
“You know, we didn’t just wake up one day and say, ‘Oh, we’re going to walk for Leonard Peltier.’ There were dreams that were coming to us. The dreams that were coming to me, I would be in Leonard’s prison cell with him, locked up with him. Doing that time with him. And he’d be sitting there on his bed with his face in his hands. And he wouldn’t say anything. But in each of these dreams, I would say, ‘Your people are coming to get you, that aim is coming to get you. Your people haven’t forgotten about you. Don’t worry. We’re coming.’”
Rachel Thunder, AIM Director Central Texas
A three-year period of political violence on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation began in 1973 with the Wounded Knee occupation. The FBI supplied a group known as the Guardians of The Oglala Nation, created by then-elected tribal chairman Richard Wilson, with intelligence on AIM members and looked away as the group committed crimes.
The “GOON squad” took part in large-scale militarization, harassment, and intimidation of Native American activists with support from the FBI-backed tribal government.
In 1975, traditionalists at Pine Ridge asked AIM leaders to send members to protect against further GOON squad attacks. Among the members who responded was Leonard Peltier.
John Trudell, who served as the chairman of AIM during most of the 1970s, spoke on Leonard Peltier via Portland Oregon Public Access:
“They are not going to let him out; that has never been their intention. The government had an operative, not an informant or a snitch. An operative is someone they put amongst you to direct activities. I think there was a government operative amongst that level of AIM leadership who wasn’t necessarily a part of the AIM leadership, but had access to the AIM leadership.”
Trudell continued, “And the way that it appears to me is that I think that this operative manipulated both sides against each other on the firefight thing, as part of a larger plan. But the plan went wrong and the agents got killed.”
The U.S. Department of Justice suppressed hundreds of thousands of pages of documents that would indicate Peltier’s innocence, including ballistic evidence in the 1975 shootout at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.
The U.S. suppressed that evidence, in part, to extradite him from Canada. In 1994 an international effort to obtain Peltier’s release was launched, but the FBI issued a memorandum outline to counter that campaign.
Peltier was denied parole on August 31, 2009. His next available parole hearing is in 2024, when he will be 79 years old. He has been in prison since 1977.
AIM Arrives In DC
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The post Leonard Peltier AIM ‘Walk to Justice’ from MN to DC Started With a Dream appeared first on UNICORN RIOT.
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