May 29, 2025 • 48 mins
Ben Bowlin, new co-host of Wrongful Conviction and host of the long-standing podcast Stuff the Don’t Want You to Know and Jason Flom from the Wrongful Conviction podcast had the honor of sitting down for many hours to speak with Leonard Peltier about his personal life, the historical context of the resistance movement and events that led to the attack on Jumping Bull Ranch in ‘75, as well as his near 50 year fight for justice that led to his sentence commutation in the final minutes of the Biden Administration.
In part one of this three-part series, Leonard discusses his early life and experiences with American injustice before joining the American Indian Movement (AIM). He goes on to explain how the FBI targeted AIM with the same counterintelligence apparatus that was used against Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and the Black Panthers.
When American businesses were interested in mining uranium in South Dakota, the FBI funded a paramilitary group that sought to neutralize any resistance on the Pine Ridge Reservation. To support the resistance effort, AIM set up camp at Jumping Bull Ranch. Leonard and his co-defendant Dino Butler tell us about their harrowing experience on June 26th, 1975, when tensions broke out into a deadly firefight.
The Wrongful Conviction of Leonard Peltier is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1. It follows the January 2025 Sundance premiere of the documentary FREE LEONARD PELTIER, a searing investigation of the case from Public Square Films and directors David France and Jesse Short Bull.
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Before and after seventeen seventy six, European colonizers traveled to
the Americas, slowly eroding indigenous land as they went. When
uranium was discovered in the Black Hills of South Dakota,
the US government sought to take land from the Oglala
Sioux and deliver it to private enterprise. Thus began a
(00:24):
reign of terror in nineteen seventy two that led to
over sixty unsolved murders on the Pine Ridge Reservation and
came to a climax in a nineteen seventy five firefight
that left one Native man and two federal agent instead.
Now by FBI estimates, forty two Native people were engaged
(00:44):
in the firefight with swatims from all around the country
that had been lying in wait, but the chaos and
crossfire made it very difficult to pinpoint who was responsible
for the deaths. Two Native men were tried and acquitted
on the grounds of self defense, so and evidence changed
when they then tried one of the leaders of the
(01:04):
American Indian Movement, Leonard Peltier, sending him away for two
consecutive life sentences. This is wrongful conviction. You're listening to
wrongful conviction. You can listen to this and all the
Lava for Good podcasts one week early n AD free
(01:26):
by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction. I mean, I have a
lot of heroes, and I've had the chance to meet
and interview many of them, but none greater than the
man that we're interviewing today. He's very humble, so he
(01:49):
probably hates the sound of that, but I got to
say it like it is. Leonard Peltier is an American
legend of civil rights who survived countless assassination attend dodged hundreds,
if not thousands, of bullets, escaped from federal prisons, from
manhunts from the country. I mean, I feel like Johnny
(02:09):
Depp needs to play you, Leonard in a movie someday.
I hope he will.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Johnny and I are okay perfect.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Then we're going to produce this movie. And I'm joined
today by Ben Bolin, one of my favorite podcasters, who's
going to be co hosting this episode and this season
of Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Yes, sir, on stuff they don't want you to do.
My colleagues and I intensely studied aim the American Indian
Movement your story as well. We are overjoyed to be
speaking with you today when you have emerged from what
I would call a gross miscarriage of American justice.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
And later on we're going to be joined by one
of Leonard's co defendants, Darryl Dino Butler, who was acquitted
in a separate trial. We will also speak with a
member of Leonard's original defense, Bruce Allison, who has remained
steadfast two and four Leonard for the last fifty years,
as well as legal legend Ron Kobe and Holly maccaro,
(03:10):
a tribal advocate who was instrumental in winning Leonard's clemency,
but before Leonard's ronful incarceration, prosecution, or even his political activism.
Leonard or Tate Wikowa was born in nineteen forty four
in North Dakota.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
My English name is Leonard Peltier. I'm a nation Abbi
were called Chipwa and many different places, and were called
Sue's also Lakota in a number of different places, but
those are our real names. I'm eighty years old. I've
just got out of prison after spending forty nine point
juniors in federal prisons across the country. I have been
(03:49):
an activist since I was nine years old when I
was first taken from my home and forcibly put into
a boarding school. How it happened was my grandmother and
grand father basically adopted us and was raising myself and
my sister Betty, and my cousin Pauline. And then Grandpa,
who was a provider for the family, died in fifty two.
(04:14):
Grandma was by herself, so she thought, well, I got
to have some help to feed these kids. So she
went to the BIA agency and asked for help.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
And BIA is the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Yes, and they found an excuse to take us and
put us in a boarding school in Watson, North Dakota,
and they were trying to beat the Native language and
religion and culture out of us.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Today, the BIA is part of the Federal Department of
the Interior and now manages about fifty six million acres
of land held in trust with Native nations, and they
implement federal laws and policy regarding policing, resources, agricul infrastructure,
economic issues. But back in the fifties, the federal government
(05:06):
was on a mission to assimilate Native people into Anglo
American culture. It's a mission that began even before the
eighteen eighty three Code of Indian Offenses. That code outlawed
various Indigenous religious practices for the comfort of their new
European neighbors, we could call them. And so, even in
(05:29):
the aftermath of World War Two, in which so many
Native men served, fought, and died, for Leonard and his siblings,
getting food assistants meant being ripped away from their families,
robbed of their language and religion, in a boarding school
system where abuse ran rampant.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
I myself almost died when I was ten years old
escaping from there. But I wasn't the only child, and
this was not the only school. I was just one
of thousands of kids that were facing this type of brutality.
That's when my political activism started. When I got there,
there was already a group of older kids that had
(06:14):
started a group called Resistors, and we would go behind
the gymnasm and sing our songs and talk native to
each other and our prayers and stuff like this. I
was there from nineteen fifty three to nineteen fifty six.
I happened to go in there at a time when
I hit it. Lucky the people were lobbying, and the
(06:37):
soldiers were lobbying the President of the United States Eisenhower,
and so Eisenhower put out a presidential order no more
maltreatment of the Indian kids and the schools, because there
was so many kids that were literally becoming lost. They
call them and they don't know what happened to them.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
You may have seen the news articles in the last
decade or so about the discovery of mass graves near
old Native boarding schools. So while Eisenhower's intervention was a
welcome public change in tone in the nineteen fifties, we
have to remember a nefarious agenda was still afoot. It's
(07:18):
an agenda that began even before the first iteration of
the BIA, way back when it was called the Committee
on Indian Affairs under Ben Franklin. This committee oversaw trade
and treaty relations. The authority was transferred to the Secretary
of War in seventeen eighty nine, and this led to
(07:39):
a century of wars, treaties, broken treaties, and above all,
the slow erosion of indigenous land.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
When they first got here, the first lands they took
with our agricultural land, all of the vegetables and stuff
you see on the table came from us. Our farmers
domesticated a while vegetable into a domesticated one, and we
had some of the best agricultural land in the world.
So they took us off of that and put us
(08:09):
on barren land that they didn't take we would ever
exist then, I mean, you can find writings where they
said this, they should not be able to live through
somebody's lands that they put us on. But we did
because we knew how to develop barn land into productive land.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
But as more Europeans arrived, the transgressions continued, like the
Indian Removal Act of eighteen thirty signed by then President
Andrew Jackson, which meant for the Natives who would not assimilate,
they would be moved west of the Mississippi River into
what was at that time called Indian Territory. Yet in
(08:48):
the eighteen thirty four Worcester v. Georgia Supreme Court decision,
the court ruled in favor of previous treaties and the
sovereignty of the Cherokee Nation.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Jackson notoriously infamously remarked, let's see them enforce it, and
in one of the first times in American history, a
sitting President ignored the Supreme Court and began the deadly
trail of tears, marching the Cherokees from their rightful place
in Georgia to present day Oklahoma.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
And over the following half century, many more wars were
fought and new treaties were signed, only spoiler to later
be broken again. Probably the most egregious land grab occurs
in eighteen eighty seven, when the US Congress passes the
DAWs Act under the guise of assimilation. This act divides
(09:41):
land that was collectively held by various Native nations into
what they called individual land allotments, like the ones settled
by their European counterparts, and then once settled. This leaves
one hundred and thirty eight million surplus acres of Native nations.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Land, which was then made available for purchase by non natives,
and by nineteen thirty four, only forty eight million of
those acres remained, at which point the Indian Reorganization Act
sought to drastically change the relationship by ending assimilation mandates,
encouraging tribal self governance and constitutions, elections in corporation for
(10:22):
resource management, and that tribal land would be protected by
the federal government, and any federal lands that were unused
would be returned to native control. But of the ninety
out of one hundred and thirty eight million acres to
be returned by twenty ten, only about eight percent of
them had been restored. Unsurprisingly, it appears that economic interests
(10:45):
caused a change of course.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
As time went by, they start to find out that
the Baron lands they put us on was rich in
minerals uranium, uranium, gold, silver, I mean copper. They wanted
this land for themselves, so they started again a system
of termination for us. In nineteen fifty six, they were
(11:07):
starting to write American Termination Act, which was supposed to
be completed by nineteen eighty five, and that was to
terminate all Indian reservations in this country. They were going
to supposedly buy our lands. But the first reservation to
be terminated was the Monominee of Wisconsin. Then they came
(11:28):
here to the Turtle Mountain, chip Or Cree Nation and
told us that we had to leave, we had to relocate.
But my father that his generation fought back. I was
only thirteen years old and I was able to participate.
We fought back here and literally drove them away. From
terminating this nation. And it wasn't just Turtle Mountains, it
(11:49):
was Pine Ridge. All of us was in that danger.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
And part of that termination policy was the Indian Relocation Program,
through which the BA promised economic opportunity in urban areas,
offering vocational training and relocation assistance. Yet the Native people
who were willing to believe in this promise often found
nothing but low wage opportunities, racial discrimination, poverty, homelessness. Yet Leonard,
(12:19):
at this point is still young. It's nineteen fifty eight.
After being sure that there were no reports of abuse,
he enrolls in a boarding school in Land Crew, South Dakota.
Upon arrival, he's called to a meeting by other Native teens.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
So this guy comes over, I think he was sophomore,
and he said, come down to the rec room. We're
going to talk to all of you guys. So we
go down there and this guy comes I take he
was a senior, and he said, there is a group
of white boys driving around the city Flinger of South Dakota,
and they're picking up these young Indian girls by force,
(12:57):
taking them out in the country. They're beating them up,
they're raping them, and they're leaving them out there to die.
Your job is to escort them from the boarding school
grounds to the movies, and there was a soda shop
right next door to it. Your job is to protect him.
And I know, I was, Yeah, we'll be there, goddamn rights,
we'll be there.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
But why did these teenagers feel responsible for public safety? Well,
according to the Major Crimes Act of eighteen eighty five,
the tribal police only had jurisdiction over nonviolent crimes committed
by Native people, while federal authorities had jurisdiction over all
violent crimes, no matter who committed them, So federal authorities
were typically approached after the fact by Native crime victims,
(13:42):
as they were. In reference to a South Dakota teenager
named Bill Janklow.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Bill Janquell, his family was a very rich racture and
this one girl gets beat up. He raped her and everything,
and they thought she was knocked out, and she got
Bill Jenkuill license plate number, and that's how they caught him.
He pled guilty. He was given a choice of either
going to a farm school till he was twenty one
(14:09):
or going into the military for two years. So he
goes to the military, serves two years, it comes out
and he goes to college on a GI bill and
he gets a lawyer's degree. So he comes back to
the South Dakota area and somehow he's the leader part
of the agency that handles all Rosebud funding from Washington.
(14:32):
He's married, now got two kids, and he starts doing
it again.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
In January nineteen sixty seven, when Janklow was the director
of the Rosebudsoe Legal Services Program, he allegedly raped a
young woman whom he employed as a babysitter. Her name
Jensita Eagle Deer.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
The head of the BI Police Department was telling us
he takes Bill Janquell to jail, he makes a call
and the FBI comes in said, you've got no jurisdiction.
You've got to let him out. That's the way it
was back. So Bill Jenkle was never charged for raping
Genese to Eagle there or any of those other young
girls they were children. He never was charged for that.
(15:15):
He starts running for office for the Attorney General's office.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
And Jancy the Eagle Deer's allegations resurface.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
So we were demonstrating raising hell and talking about we
want this son of a bitch in jail or some
god damn thing. He's raped numerous of our children. We
were pissed. We couldn't get nobody and listened to us.
So we become an active enemy of Bill Jenkles and
he becomes the Attorney General of South Dakota. God and
the attorney general himself was outraged. He said, I don't
(15:48):
believe this. You have kicked me out of office and
elected a admitted rapist child molest her.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Soon after that election, Jencita Eagle Deer is killed in
a hit and run accident, and Bill Jinklow went on
to be the twenty seventh and then thirtieth governor of
South Dakota before a stint in Congress that gets cut
short when Jinkler runs through a stop sign at about
(16:18):
sixty five miles per hour and kills a motorcyclist.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
He hits him on his motorcycle and kills him, and
his father, who was happy to be a successful rancher, himself, said,
this guy ain't gonna get away with this, not this time. Well,
he got found guilty in a trial, but he was
sentenced to weekend in prison. So what they were having
him do is coming in the morning Saturday morning and
(16:43):
Sunday night, he would sign out to go back to
his job.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
I don't want to sound cynical, but it's almost like
the white, wealthy and well connected experience a completely different
version of the legal system. Is that to an extreme,
and so the righteous commitment to justice that drove their
opposition to not only the protection of Janklow but also
(17:08):
his elevated status.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Well.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
That driving force continued to guide Leonard when he moved
to Seattle, Washington in nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
My uncle Toby he'd probably get me a job up there,
so I did. I went up there. Later on I
met this state of he was older than me. It's
like a father to me. Howard Miller, him and I
got to talking about opening a auto shop. We did.
And I was staying with Howard and his wife and
come home for supper and I'm watching there was a
demonstration going on about the fishing and hunting, the struggles
(17:40):
that was going on since the forties or whatever. Way
back there. In nineteen fifty five, Marlon Branda got involved
and even got arrested, and it just kept escalating, and
they were out there tear gashing and beaten out the people,
and they had this one young lady. He had about
a five six year old son. They had ripped her
(18:01):
blouse and everything, which was a common practice they did
to the women. And there was beaten on her. And
this little boy come running up there and they said,
don't hit her, and he started beating him. So I
told Howe, I said, you can have everything. I'm going
on with them.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
I'm gonna go fight with them.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
I started getting involved, and I started joining different organizations,
and one of the ones was the Alcatraz occupation.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
According to several treaties and the Indian Reorganization Act of
nineteen thirty four, surplus federal lands were supposed to be
returned to Native people. So with Alcatraz the penitentiary closed
in nineteen sixty three, it should have but was not
returned to its rightful tribe. From November of nineteen sixty
(19:04):
nine to July of nineteen seventy one, a collective of
Native organizations, including the American Indian Movement or AIM, occupied
this island Alcatraz under the following banner Indians of Old Tribes.
And this was not the only action taken for land reclamation.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
We were doing the same thing on Fort Lawton that
land was being given to the city for one dollar,
and the city didn't want it. We've got too many
parks now, we can't pay for them, so let dominions
have it with the rich and people that were involved
in it had plans on building whatever. Would you give
it up. They finally gave us fifteen acres, but that
(19:47):
was nothing compared to I think it was fifteen hunderd
acres there. But those were the type of actions that
we were going and we got a confrontation with the
army there, and the military one of the things that
they did that still stays in my mind, and I
kind of believe that they would have never used them
on us. But one time they got off their buses
(20:08):
and they had flame drawers and so a lot of
people left to the back trail. But they never used them,
of course, but it was used as a tactic of
fear against us.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
But the American Indian Movement wasn't deterred. In nineteen seventy two,
they organized a caravan to Washington that picked up more
numbers as it drove through other nativations along the way,
until they had about two thousand people descending on the
BIA building in a protest called the Trail of Broken Treaties.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
We went to Washington to the Burevern and Affairs, that's
our White House, hoping we could get an audience with
somebody that could help us, because we were not getting
any help back there on the reservations and the termination
was being enforced upon us, and they're supposed to be
protecting us. Of course they weren't. They were fighting against
(21:02):
us to eliminate our control of our lands and depend
on the United States government for handouts. That's how they
controlled us. They forced us to submit to them through
these handouts, and people were tired about it. We wanted
to bring our treaties back up to them and make
them abide by their promises, and of course they weren't
(21:23):
doing that. So when we got there, we all ended
up in the parking lot, parked our cars and demonstrating
around the Bureau of Indian Affairs building. Like I said,
it's supposed to be our white house, and the superintendent,
Leo Bruce, was supposed to be our president, although he
was appointed but whatever party was in power at the time.
(21:43):
So we went in and asked them. We said, look,
we got all these people here, old people, some of
our headsmen and chiefs and stuff like this. And we
got children out there, us young people to sleep out
on the ground. We don't care about that, but we
want you to give these people lodging somehow. Lei Bruce UPSI,
I can't do that. I ain't got to fund it,
and got to well, what are you doing with the
(22:05):
millions and millions of dollars that goes into the budget
every year, Why can't you take care of our elders?
We know, lion, we knew that. And Russell Mean said
you're not going to let you do the Star elders,
and it escalated into occupation.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
And during this six day occupation in November nineteen seventy two,
AIM leadership rifled through the BIA's documents. Bruce Ellison, who
supported AIM as an attorney throughout the standoff at Wounded Knees,
South Dakota in nineteen seventy three, as well as in
the aftermath of the shootout at Pine Ridge in nineteen
(22:41):
seventy five. Well Bruce told us about some of the
things that they discovered in the BIA building occupation in
nineteen seventy two, as well as what it meant specifically
for the Oglala Sioux on the Pine Ridge Reservation there
in South Dakota.
Speaker 5 (22:57):
When the BIA building was taken over by American Movement
in nineteen seventy two, there were a whole troughs of
documents that were taken and removed from that building. People
who have heard of this have generally heard of the
fact that it disclosed a four sterilization program for Native women.
Another part of that, though, was that this area was
(23:17):
given a priority for uranium mining. That was seventy two, right,
and then you have Wounded Knee seventy three, and then
you have this firefight in seventy five. You have resistance
basically all over the country, and now this new goal
of aim to stop destructive mining or anium mining. Most
people don't realize the front end of the nuclear fuel
(23:38):
cycle is an incredibly environmentally destructive process. It leaves the
earth poisoned for eons of time, as well as a
myriad about other things because not just uranium. It so
they having metals that get out, arsenic that gets out
during a lot of these processes. So I would say
that the economics, they always say that what are war's about,
(23:59):
They're about lane and or resources. Well, this one was
kind of government had already seized the land, not officially,
not legally, it's still unseated territory, but they did want
to go after those resources. At that time, there were
some twenty uranium mining companies which were staking out claims
throughout the Black Hills, and this went on from mid
seventies into the late seventies.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
When American business interests need Uncle Sam's help justly or not,
and nations around the globe, well, they may or may
not go as far as to medal in elections, and
it appears the Feds had a clear favorite in South
Dakota tribal politics, in which there was a deep divide
between traditionalists who maintained Native culture and refused assimilation, and
(24:44):
those like the newly elected Oglala Siu Tribal chairman of
nineteen seventy two, Dick Wilson, a so called progressive native,
the type that really took to assimilation and to the
interests of the United States federal government.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Well, you have a group of natives that we call sellouts.
They accept everything that the government tells them or gives
us commodities and all this says to and will do
anything the government says, will fight against us. I mean,
I had had some of them say I wish I
wasn'tn Indian, and I used to tell them, well, what
the hell are you doing here? Gold leave? Ain't nobody
(25:23):
keep in your hair. If you don't like being an Indian,
the hell out of here. But we got those types
of groups that fight against US. Dick Wilson was one
of them.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
And in the aftermath of the BIA Building occupation, Dick
Wilson signs a resolution that authorizes him to create a
paramilitary group called the Guardians of the Oglala Nation, giving
them the acronym Goon.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Well, the FBI financed them, They gave them sophisticated weapons,
various calibers of ammunition intelligence. This all came out from
Dwayne Brewer, who was the leader of the squad.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
And this mercenary force was comprised of other so called
progressive Natives. While other progressives were active at FBI counter Intelligence,
the same program that targeted the Black Panthers. Co Intel
pro they would infiltrate, sew division, create paranoia, undermine legitimate goals,
and supply information. And of course we're all familiar with
(26:24):
how history ran its course over any successful Black leadership,
while AIM was no different. It appears the FEDS were
targeting AIM leadership with criminal prosecutions, like the time when
Leonard was at a restaurant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the
months before the standoff at Wounded Me in nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
They're following me out everything I was doing. They were
put in this restaurant. We don't know who they are.
We were all in our AIM jackets, and they start
intimidating us. So we thought it was just two white
races and we're going to get in a fight with them.
And the next thing I know, Oh, I'm charged for
attempted murder on two police officers. I went to trial
(27:05):
there years later and I was found not guilty. I
was acquitted at that bullshit charge. You know, that wasn't
the only place. Other places they were trying to connect
me to some kind of criminal activity. Just trying to
set me up is what it was.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
But while he was in jail in Wisconsin on these
trumped up attempted murder charges, the traditionalist natives on the
Pine Ridge Reservation were seeking to impeach Dick Wilson. He
was accused of corruption, voter fraud as well as violence
and intimidation of his political foes.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
I think two hundred people were voted, had been dead
for fifty hundred years or whatever else. That's how he
won the election. To fraud. He was making his family rich,
is what he was doing. His brother all of a
sudden on a big pack of land and filled with
cattle and everything like this, and prior to his election
(28:03):
did not have that amount to land or cattle. So corruption,
corruption at its best under him.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Well, it seems like all of these operations, the co
Intel pro operations against the Black Panthers, Malcolm X et cetera,
they always involved an inside trader electic Wilson. Is that
a fair word to use for him?
Speaker 2 (28:24):
We call them worse in that?
Speaker 1 (28:27):
And when legal avenues failed to oust Wilson, Aim and
their allies chose the town of Wounded Knee, the site
of the last large scale massacre of Natives in eighteen ninety,
as their next target for occupation, and they were in
a standoff with US marshalls for seventy one days.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
I was in jail for the first couple weeks of
Wounded Knee, but as soon as I got out, I
heard they needed supplies food and everything like this. So
I went to work immediately gathered food and everything. In Oleft, Wisconsin.
During the Wounded Kney occupation, Richard Nixon ordered the eighty
second Airborne out there to put the military on a
(29:06):
domestic issue is against the constitution United States. So the
colonel that was head of the eighty second Airborne came
out to the reservation and he went first to Dick Wilson.
And when he came out, there was a group of
our elders and they called them over to cross the
road and they told we would like to show you
and tell you what's really going on here. And when
(29:29):
he went back to report to Nixon, he said that
a tribal chairman, Dick Wilson, I think he's a big liar.
I don't believe a word he said. So the traditionalist
took me out to the reservation and I said, I've
seen poverty. There's worse than Central America. And he said,
I don't blame those people for fighting. I don't blame
(29:51):
him for uprising. He said, if you send us out there,
you ordered us out there, the majority of us are
going to fight with the Indians. Wo oh, I heard
that Nixon's mother told him, don't you hurt those Indians.
Don't you hurt those people that? And his daughter was
also another one.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Three people were killed in total over those seventy one days.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Finally, Wounded Me was over after Buddy Lamont was shot
in the forehead by a sniper and Grandma Lamont wanted
to end because she wanted to bury her son, who
was a Vietnam War hero. So that's how wounded the
end it. Actually, there's a lot of promises were made
(30:34):
to the Native people that they were going to do this,
they were going to do that, and didn't that happen? Again,
most of us knew that was just some more lies.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
One of Ames's objectives was reopening treaty negotiation and holding
the federal government accountable for violating the eighteen sixty eight
Treaty of Fort Laramie with the Oglala Sioux. That violation
was the Fed stealing you've guessed it more can land,
this time in the Black Hills, you know, the place
(31:04):
where Mount Rushmore is located. A nineteen eighty Supreme Court
decision later ruled in favor of the Sioux, awarding them
compensation plus interest starting from when the treaty was violated
back in eighteen seventy seven, but they refused to accept
that compensation in favor of the return of the land
and this disagreement has still not been resolved. But back
(31:27):
in nineteen seventy three, after Wounded me, the FEDS tried
to prosecute the Visible AIM leadership Dennis Banks and Russell Means,
with charges that held a potential fifteen hundred years in prison.
What does they even mean a these numbers? But the
case was dismissed based on prosecutorial misconduct, including evidence tampering,
(31:49):
So the FEDS regrouped and plotted their next moves.
Speaker 5 (31:53):
In nineteen seventy four or ear least seventy five, the
FBI considered aimed to be one of the most dangerous
organizations to the country. When they listen their reasons for
why AIM was being targeted, they specifically noted a new
what they called mission statement of the American movement, which
was to protect the earth from destructive mining. And the
(32:15):
FBI starts switching from a canter intelligence operation to a
counter insurgency operation.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
And they had help from various assets who had infiltrated AIM,
including the head of security during the Wounded Knee occupation.
Doug Durham. It's believed that he was the one who
supplied the aim memo, the one that contained the mission
statement threatening federal interest in uranium mining.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Doug Durham. You got to hear this guy's story. This
guy's a police officer and Omaha, Nebraska, and he's right
next to Omaha's a reservation, look Quota reservation. He's grabbing
these girls and forcing drugs on them, getting them hooked,
and prosecuting them. That Omaha Nebraska police force fires him.
(33:04):
He immediately goes to work for the FBI and that
gets on their payroll and he infiltrated the American Indian moment.
So they asked him in this hearing, they said, what
about the American Indian moment? Do we have to be
concerned about Russell and Dennis? And he tells him no,
He said, I think the fifteen hundred years has pretty
(33:24):
much silenced them. He said, the person you have to
be concerned about is Leonard Peltier. He's a young guy.
He's not afraid of the government. You won't get in
the front of a camera because he just want this
picture out there. But he's getting very popular among the people,
and he's the person that we have to worry about.
And after wounded knee, they really start coming after me.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
While Leonard was traveling the country to support various political
actions back on the Pine Ridge Reservation, tensions with Dick
Wilson and the Goon squad got even worse. So the
Oglallas sup once again called upon Aime and Dennis Banks,
who was in Arizona at the time with one of
Leonard's co defendants, Daryl Dino Butler.
Speaker 6 (34:23):
My name is Dino Butler. I'm a member of the
Sledge Competitive Tribes of Oregon. In nineteen seventy four, I
was in Arizona. A call came in from South Dakota.
They said that the goons were up there and they
were throwing beer bottles and ecuting out houses and beating
people up and everything. They were just getting out of control.
(34:44):
They called Dennis to ask him if there was any
warriors that were willing to come up there and stay
there for a while and help them. So Leonard and
me and some other brothers and sisters agreed to go
up there to South Dakota at that time. We went
to the housing projects there and we stayed there for
a while and then we went to Ted Lange's place.
(35:05):
Then we ended up at Jumping both plays. During all
this time, the goons were still acting up and shooting
up everything.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
The goons, they were going around the reservation and terrorizing
single mothers that were strong, aim people, the elders, their
homes are being shot up. We went and spent hours
in the middle of the night going over there protecting
those people. Anybody that affiliated themselves with the American Indian
moment are traditionalists.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
So when Bruce said counterinsurgency earlier, you can hear how
that doesn't appear to be hyperbole. There were sixty unsolved
murders on Pine Ridge between seventy three and seventy five,
and with a population of only twelve thousand, they had
the highest murder rate in the country.
Speaker 5 (35:55):
Scores of people being killed, people being kept on the
floors of their home, homes well, bullets swam through the walls.
And we're talking about homes where families were living, where
young kids were living, where elders were living.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
These murders would have been under FBI jurisdiction, yet for
some reason, no one was ever pursued. Meanwhile, the FEDS
were trying Dennis Banks for a second time, this time
for the alleged assault and rioting associated with the Wounded
de occupation, and they knew he was being protected at
(36:28):
an aim stronghold called Jumping Bull Ranch. It seems they
also knew Leonard was there from.
Speaker 5 (36:34):
Documents we got parts of or all of. A little
bit later, they had their security and their intelligence informants focusing.
I mean, they were looking for Leonard all over the country.
So we get to a month before the firefight and
a bunch of FBI agents are brought into Pine Ridge.
Most of them are SWAT Team members. They're on sixty
day special assignment.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Before the shoot out, we've seen a lot of activities
with helicopters and stuff, and they had these machines out
the windows and everything. We didn't find out un till
years later, but they were surveying that whole area. And
then they had these ages driving around like stormtroopers, and
they would walk into people's doors. They would not knock,
(37:15):
they would just push the doors open. That's the same
thing that's kicking them over. And they terrified the community.
A lot of the people were getting scared. A lot
of the people were getting angry. A lot of the men.
We were saying, you know, something's going to happen. They can't
keep doing this to us. That's not legal.
Speaker 5 (37:34):
Three weeks before the firefight, the FBI issues a document
in which they talk about jumping balls. They claimed that
there were bunkers there, that there are probably going to
have to assault these bunkers. And three weeks later there's
a paramilitary assault on that particular area. And as the
US Comission on stil Rights pointed out, those bunkers are
really aged root sellers that you wouldn't want to stand
(37:56):
behind if someone was throwing rocks at you less defensive position.
What also is clear is that once the first shots
were fired, and I got to say that, the government
began to lie right away from the start of the firefight.
Right away, it became a big lie for their own
particular narrative.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
So, after a two year long federally funded terror campaign
through the Goon Squad, which as you can imagine, only
intensified with the arrival of SWAT teams from all over
the country in that climate, the FBI claimed that they
were simply carrying out just an ordinary, everyday arrest warrant
for a guy named Jimmy Eagle.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
There was a warrant. Supposedly, that's a lie because the
FBI don't have this jurisdiction. They were saying that they
had a warrant out for Jimmy you go, for stealing
a pair of used cowboy.
Speaker 5 (38:51):
Boots, used cowboy pots.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
They don't have. They don't have jurisdiction. There's no jurisdiction
for them to do that. They can't do that, so
that was a lie.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
If you remember, we mentioned the Major Crimes Act of
eighteen eighty five. This designated all violent crimes and other
offenses under federal jurisdiction. A pair of stolen cowboy boots
would have been handled by tribal police. In addition, it
appears that Jimmy Eagle was in Wyoming at the time,
on another reservation entirely, yet he was allegedly known to
(39:27):
drive a red pickup. So on June twenty sixth, nineteen
seventy five, the FBI claimed that agents Ronald Williams and
Jack Koehler, who were in plain clothes and unmarked vehicles,
not identifying themselves. The FBI claims these guys were allegedly
in hot pursuit of what they claimed to have thought
(39:49):
was Jimmy Eagle's vehicle, a red van but with a
white top, and as the federal narrative goes, the car
would not stop until it arrived at Jumping Bull Ranch.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
That's not true. That's not true. They didn't follow that
red and white van in there. That red and white
van was there ten minutes, at least ten minutes before
they showed up. I know I'm the one that drove
it in there because I had just taken it down
to Ogla to get something fixed on it. So that
was another lie. But we come in and parked in
(40:22):
front of the Jumping Bowl house and we were talking
to some of the people there about something. These guys
just come driving in like they owned the place and
they've been right past us, and went down to where
the shooting took place.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
Which was about five hundred yards off US Highway eighteen,
onto this sprawling private compound. Now remember this is after
a nearly three year reign of terror, when these men
in plane clothes and unmarked cars which doesn't appear how
to identify themselves through their weapons.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
We didn't start it. They started it. We were defending
our homes and my responsibility it was getting the women
and children out of there.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
Soon, every able bodied person either in the houses or
campgrounds on jumping bull ranches doing their part, including Dino Butler.
Speaker 6 (41:12):
I just come out of our teetheet on a jumping
bull property. I came out and I heard this brother
come running down towards the camp call telling us that brothers,
gather up your guns, gather up your weapons, and get
up here. They're attacking the families up there jumping bulls.
So we all gathered up our rifles and we ran
up there. I didn't know who was shooting at us
(41:36):
at first, but then I understood later on it was
the FBI that were firing at it. Two FBI agents
came there and they opened fired on the people, and
that that I didn't understand what was going on, why
why they were doing that.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
I helped Angie and her babies who were crying, terrified
and everything. I helped them get out of there. I
let him down to a trail, and you knew that,
so I tore to go that way and all us
hope they don't kill you. So they hope they don't
shoot you, because you got these little kids here, and
they did go that way and they got out.
Speaker 5 (42:15):
People I talked to said they were within moments being
surrounded and receiving gunfire from all directions.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
When I got back, we could see from the tops
we were surrounded. They had swat teams from as far
away as Los Angeles, from Minneapolis, and all the cities
around South Dakota there within minutes. So they were housed
someplace close to the reservation because they were there within
(42:44):
ten minutes at the most.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
In addition, there was a small single propeller plane that
had been flying around all day that was now surveilling
the siege from above.
Speaker 5 (42:54):
And so this massive force comes in and in the
processual stunts who a young Native defender within the community
was shot between the eyes and two fpigands were killed.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
So I told everybody, all right, come on, we got
to get out of here. So we went down to
the camp, which was about a quarter of a mile
from the house, and picked up what we could carry
and everything like this, and we knew there was the
highest hill that way, so I said, we got to
get to that place. And as we were walking down
across the creek, I had no idea who was out there.
(43:30):
On the roads, and we knew was surrounded. So I said,
we got to get out of here. We got to
somehow find a hole to get out of here.
Speaker 6 (43:39):
Leonard wanted to get and get in a vat and
run a roadblock and get out of there. And I
told Leonard, I think that would be complete suicide. And
so we all knelt down and we started praying.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
I told these guys, come on, let's just say a
prayer here, asking the Great Spirit to lead us out
of there. And all of a sudden, there was a
shadow in the trees and there was a like something
was big was flying there. And I looked up and
I seen it. These eagles took off under the trees.
Norman Brown says he also seen it. Everybody else didn't
(44:11):
see it, but he heard it too, and he's seen it.
Speaker 6 (44:14):
So Norman said, let's follow that eagle. So we followed
that eagle brought us to this calvert that ran under
the road, and we all went into that culvert and
Leonard went first and I went second, and there was
an airplane flying around. It was there since early morning.
(44:35):
So Leonard said, well, let's pray pray for that airplane
to leave. So me and him started praying, and after
we got done, that plane left. It went back to
Pine Ridge to gas up. I guess I don't know what,
but it left. And when it left, we called everybody
out of the culvert and we sent the women up
the hill.
Speaker 5 (44:53):
First.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
We had some young fourteen fifteen year old kids with us,
and my responsibility is to make sure that they safe,
and I believe in the Great Spirit helped us get
out of there. How did we find that hole? What?
Why did those cops leave that area? I mean it
was what three cars I believe it, it's maybe even
been four took off from that area where we went
(45:16):
under this culvert. I swear on my Shinoopa, I swear
to my God. If we hadn't fought back, we probably
all got chilled. This was a war.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
And this is where we'll stop in the first of
three episodes covering the absolutely insane, wrongful conviction story of
Leonard Peltier. And there's so much left to come.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
I sent them ahead of me. I told them, go,
I'll take.
Speaker 5 (45:47):
Up the rear.
Speaker 6 (45:47):
I could just feel the bullets buzzing around me.
Speaker 5 (45:50):
They even included at one point every Native man who
had ever been in combat in Indo, China on their
suspect list.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Wow, they also included a four year old and we
didn't know why we were the ones being accused.
Speaker 6 (46:05):
My little brother, he said, when he woke up an
Fbis was pointing a pistol in his head and says,
worre's your fucking brother.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
At Marlon Brando gave us a mobile home. I went
to Canada of Astra asylum and they were supposed to
produce any evidence that they had against me, and very
conservative judge said, there is no evidence.
Speaker 5 (46:23):
In the Dino Butler trial, we were able to present
members of the community who helped the jury understand what
was regarded as the reign of terror.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
If they did that to a white community, they would
have been shot too.
Speaker 6 (46:36):
That Leonard Woods to try with us there and see
the rapids who would have never been convicted.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
Because Dino and Robert were acquitted, they changed the whole story.
Speaker 5 (46:46):
And the testimony becomes much more definitive.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
I never met her in my life, but she was
claiming she was my girlfriend, and that was the beginning
of the type of trial I was going to receive.
Speaker 6 (46:58):
There was a kangaroo court all the way.
Speaker 1 (47:01):
Don't forget to tune in for episode two of our
coverage of Leonard Peltier's Wrongful Conviction. Thank you for listening
to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this and all
the Lava for Good podcasts one week early and ad
free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
(47:22):
I want to thank our production team, Connor Hall and
Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler,
Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Kliber The music in this production
was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Be sure to follow us across all social media platforms
at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can
also follow me on Instagram at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful
(47:43):
Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and
association with Signal Company Number One.
Speaker 7 (47:48):
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported
in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed
by the individuals featured in this show are their own
and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.
Speaker 2 (48:05):
Sh
Before and after seventeen seventy six, European colonizers traveled to
the Americas, slowly eroding indigenous land as they went. When
uranium was discovered in the Black Hills of South Dakota,
the US government sought to take land from the Oglala
Sioux and deliver it to private enterprise. Thus began a
(00:24):
reign of terror in nineteen seventy two that led to
over sixty unsolved murders on the Pine Ridge Reservation and
came to a climax in a nineteen seventy five firefight
that left one Native man and two federal agent instead.
Now by FBI estimates, forty two Native people were engaged
(00:44):
in the firefight with swatims from all around the country
that had been lying in wait, but the chaos and
crossfire made it very difficult to pinpoint who was responsible
for the deaths. Two Native men were tried and acquitted
on the grounds of self defense, so and evidence changed
when they then tried one of the leaders of the
(01:04):
American Indian Movement, Leonard Peltier, sending him away for two
consecutive life sentences. This is wrongful conviction. You're listening to
wrongful conviction. You can listen to this and all the
Lava for Good podcasts one week early n AD free
(01:26):
by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction. I mean, I have a
lot of heroes, and I've had the chance to meet
and interview many of them, but none greater than the
man that we're interviewing today. He's very humble, so he
(01:49):
probably hates the sound of that, but I got to
say it like it is. Leonard Peltier is an American
legend of civil rights who survived countless assassination attend dodged hundreds,
if not thousands, of bullets, escaped from federal prisons, from
manhunts from the country. I mean, I feel like Johnny
(02:09):
Depp needs to play you, Leonard in a movie someday.
I hope he will.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Johnny and I are okay perfect.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Then we're going to produce this movie. And I'm joined
today by Ben Bolin, one of my favorite podcasters, who's
going to be co hosting this episode and this season
of Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Yes, sir, on stuff they don't want you to do.
My colleagues and I intensely studied aim the American Indian
Movement your story as well. We are overjoyed to be
speaking with you today when you have emerged from what
I would call a gross miscarriage of American justice.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
And later on we're going to be joined by one
of Leonard's co defendants, Darryl Dino Butler, who was acquitted
in a separate trial. We will also speak with a
member of Leonard's original defense, Bruce Allison, who has remained
steadfast two and four Leonard for the last fifty years,
as well as legal legend Ron Kobe and Holly maccaro,
(03:10):
a tribal advocate who was instrumental in winning Leonard's clemency,
but before Leonard's ronful incarceration, prosecution, or even his political activism.
Leonard or Tate Wikowa was born in nineteen forty four
in North Dakota.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
My English name is Leonard Peltier. I'm a nation Abbi
were called Chipwa and many different places, and were called
Sue's also Lakota in a number of different places, but
those are our real names. I'm eighty years old. I've
just got out of prison after spending forty nine point
juniors in federal prisons across the country. I have been
(03:49):
an activist since I was nine years old when I
was first taken from my home and forcibly put into
a boarding school. How it happened was my grandmother and
grand father basically adopted us and was raising myself and
my sister Betty, and my cousin Pauline. And then Grandpa,
who was a provider for the family, died in fifty two.
(04:14):
Grandma was by herself, so she thought, well, I got
to have some help to feed these kids. So she
went to the BIA agency and asked for help.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
And BIA is the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Yes, and they found an excuse to take us and
put us in a boarding school in Watson, North Dakota,
and they were trying to beat the Native language and
religion and culture out of us.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Today, the BIA is part of the Federal Department of
the Interior and now manages about fifty six million acres
of land held in trust with Native nations, and they
implement federal laws and policy regarding policing, resources, agricul infrastructure,
economic issues. But back in the fifties, the federal government
(05:06):
was on a mission to assimilate Native people into Anglo
American culture. It's a mission that began even before the
eighteen eighty three Code of Indian Offenses. That code outlawed
various Indigenous religious practices for the comfort of their new
European neighbors, we could call them. And so, even in
(05:29):
the aftermath of World War Two, in which so many
Native men served, fought, and died, for Leonard and his siblings,
getting food assistants meant being ripped away from their families,
robbed of their language and religion, in a boarding school
system where abuse ran rampant.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
I myself almost died when I was ten years old
escaping from there. But I wasn't the only child, and
this was not the only school. I was just one
of thousands of kids that were facing this type of brutality.
That's when my political activism started. When I got there,
there was already a group of older kids that had
(06:14):
started a group called Resistors, and we would go behind
the gymnasm and sing our songs and talk native to
each other and our prayers and stuff like this. I
was there from nineteen fifty three to nineteen fifty six.
I happened to go in there at a time when
I hit it. Lucky the people were lobbying, and the
(06:37):
soldiers were lobbying the President of the United States Eisenhower,
and so Eisenhower put out a presidential order no more
maltreatment of the Indian kids and the schools, because there
was so many kids that were literally becoming lost. They
call them and they don't know what happened to them.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
You may have seen the news articles in the last
decade or so about the discovery of mass graves near
old Native boarding schools. So while Eisenhower's intervention was a
welcome public change in tone in the nineteen fifties, we
have to remember a nefarious agenda was still afoot. It's
(07:18):
an agenda that began even before the first iteration of
the BIA, way back when it was called the Committee
on Indian Affairs under Ben Franklin. This committee oversaw trade
and treaty relations. The authority was transferred to the Secretary
of War in seventeen eighty nine, and this led to
(07:39):
a century of wars, treaties, broken treaties, and above all,
the slow erosion of indigenous land.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
When they first got here, the first lands they took
with our agricultural land, all of the vegetables and stuff
you see on the table came from us. Our farmers
domesticated a while vegetable into a domesticated one, and we
had some of the best agricultural land in the world.
So they took us off of that and put us
(08:09):
on barren land that they didn't take we would ever
exist then, I mean, you can find writings where they
said this, they should not be able to live through
somebody's lands that they put us on. But we did
because we knew how to develop barn land into productive land.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
But as more Europeans arrived, the transgressions continued, like the
Indian Removal Act of eighteen thirty signed by then President
Andrew Jackson, which meant for the Natives who would not assimilate,
they would be moved west of the Mississippi River into
what was at that time called Indian Territory. Yet in
(08:48):
the eighteen thirty four Worcester v. Georgia Supreme Court decision,
the court ruled in favor of previous treaties and the
sovereignty of the Cherokee Nation.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Jackson notoriously infamously remarked, let's see them enforce it, and
in one of the first times in American history, a
sitting President ignored the Supreme Court and began the deadly
trail of tears, marching the Cherokees from their rightful place
in Georgia to present day Oklahoma.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
And over the following half century, many more wars were
fought and new treaties were signed, only spoiler to later
be broken again. Probably the most egregious land grab occurs
in eighteen eighty seven, when the US Congress passes the
DAWs Act under the guise of assimilation. This act divides
(09:41):
land that was collectively held by various Native nations into
what they called individual land allotments, like the ones settled
by their European counterparts, and then once settled. This leaves
one hundred and thirty eight million surplus acres of Native nations.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Land, which was then made available for purchase by non natives,
and by nineteen thirty four, only forty eight million of
those acres remained, at which point the Indian Reorganization Act
sought to drastically change the relationship by ending assimilation mandates,
encouraging tribal self governance and constitutions, elections in corporation for
(10:22):
resource management, and that tribal land would be protected by
the federal government, and any federal lands that were unused
would be returned to native control. But of the ninety
out of one hundred and thirty eight million acres to
be returned by twenty ten, only about eight percent of
them had been restored. Unsurprisingly, it appears that economic interests
(10:45):
caused a change of course.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
As time went by, they start to find out that
the Baron lands they put us on was rich in
minerals uranium, uranium, gold, silver, I mean copper. They wanted
this land for themselves, so they started again a system
of termination for us. In nineteen fifty six, they were
(11:07):
starting to write American Termination Act, which was supposed to
be completed by nineteen eighty five, and that was to
terminate all Indian reservations in this country. They were going
to supposedly buy our lands. But the first reservation to
be terminated was the Monominee of Wisconsin. Then they came
(11:28):
here to the Turtle Mountain, chip Or Cree Nation and
told us that we had to leave, we had to relocate.
But my father that his generation fought back. I was
only thirteen years old and I was able to participate.
We fought back here and literally drove them away. From
terminating this nation. And it wasn't just Turtle Mountains, it
(11:49):
was Pine Ridge. All of us was in that danger.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
And part of that termination policy was the Indian Relocation Program,
through which the BA promised economic opportunity in urban areas,
offering vocational training and relocation assistance. Yet the Native people
who were willing to believe in this promise often found
nothing but low wage opportunities, racial discrimination, poverty, homelessness. Yet Leonard,
(12:19):
at this point is still young. It's nineteen fifty eight.
After being sure that there were no reports of abuse,
he enrolls in a boarding school in Land Crew, South Dakota.
Upon arrival, he's called to a meeting by other Native teens.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
So this guy comes over, I think he was sophomore,
and he said, come down to the rec room. We're
going to talk to all of you guys. So we
go down there and this guy comes I take he
was a senior, and he said, there is a group
of white boys driving around the city Flinger of South Dakota,
and they're picking up these young Indian girls by force,
(12:57):
taking them out in the country. They're beating them up,
they're raping them, and they're leaving them out there to die.
Your job is to escort them from the boarding school
grounds to the movies, and there was a soda shop
right next door to it. Your job is to protect him.
And I know, I was, Yeah, we'll be there, goddamn rights,
we'll be there.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
But why did these teenagers feel responsible for public safety? Well,
according to the Major Crimes Act of eighteen eighty five,
the tribal police only had jurisdiction over nonviolent crimes committed
by Native people, while federal authorities had jurisdiction over all
violent crimes, no matter who committed them, So federal authorities
were typically approached after the fact by Native crime victims,
(13:42):
as they were. In reference to a South Dakota teenager
named Bill Janklow.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Bill Janquell, his family was a very rich racture and
this one girl gets beat up. He raped her and everything,
and they thought she was knocked out, and she got
Bill Jenkuill license plate number, and that's how they caught him.
He pled guilty. He was given a choice of either
going to a farm school till he was twenty one
(14:09):
or going into the military for two years. So he
goes to the military, serves two years, it comes out
and he goes to college on a GI bill and
he gets a lawyer's degree. So he comes back to
the South Dakota area and somehow he's the leader part
of the agency that handles all Rosebud funding from Washington.
(14:32):
He's married, now got two kids, and he starts doing
it again.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
In January nineteen sixty seven, when Janklow was the director
of the Rosebudsoe Legal Services Program, he allegedly raped a
young woman whom he employed as a babysitter. Her name
Jensita Eagle Deer.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
The head of the BI Police Department was telling us
he takes Bill Janquell to jail, he makes a call
and the FBI comes in said, you've got no jurisdiction.
You've got to let him out. That's the way it
was back. So Bill Jenkle was never charged for raping
Genese to Eagle there or any of those other young
girls they were children. He never was charged for that.
(15:15):
He starts running for office for the Attorney General's office.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
And Jancy the Eagle Deer's allegations resurface.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
So we were demonstrating raising hell and talking about we
want this son of a bitch in jail or some
god damn thing. He's raped numerous of our children. We
were pissed. We couldn't get nobody and listened to us.
So we become an active enemy of Bill Jenkles and
he becomes the Attorney General of South Dakota. God and
the attorney general himself was outraged. He said, I don't
(15:48):
believe this. You have kicked me out of office and
elected a admitted rapist child molest her.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Soon after that election, Jencita Eagle Deer is killed in
a hit and run accident, and Bill Jinklow went on
to be the twenty seventh and then thirtieth governor of
South Dakota before a stint in Congress that gets cut
short when Jinkler runs through a stop sign at about
(16:18):
sixty five miles per hour and kills a motorcyclist.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
He hits him on his motorcycle and kills him, and
his father, who was happy to be a successful rancher, himself, said,
this guy ain't gonna get away with this, not this time. Well,
he got found guilty in a trial, but he was
sentenced to weekend in prison. So what they were having
him do is coming in the morning Saturday morning and
(16:43):
Sunday night, he would sign out to go back to
his job.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
I don't want to sound cynical, but it's almost like
the white, wealthy and well connected experience a completely different
version of the legal system. Is that to an extreme,
and so the righteous commitment to justice that drove their
opposition to not only the protection of Janklow but also
(17:08):
his elevated status.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Well.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
That driving force continued to guide Leonard when he moved
to Seattle, Washington in nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
My uncle Toby he'd probably get me a job up there,
so I did. I went up there. Later on I
met this state of he was older than me. It's
like a father to me. Howard Miller, him and I
got to talking about opening a auto shop. We did.
And I was staying with Howard and his wife and
come home for supper and I'm watching there was a
demonstration going on about the fishing and hunting, the struggles
(17:40):
that was going on since the forties or whatever. Way
back there. In nineteen fifty five, Marlon Branda got involved
and even got arrested, and it just kept escalating, and
they were out there tear gashing and beaten out the people,
and they had this one young lady. He had about
a five six year old son. They had ripped her
(18:01):
blouse and everything, which was a common practice they did
to the women. And there was beaten on her. And
this little boy come running up there and they said,
don't hit her, and he started beating him. So I
told Howe, I said, you can have everything. I'm going
on with them.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
I'm gonna go fight with them.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
I started getting involved, and I started joining different organizations,
and one of the ones was the Alcatraz occupation.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
According to several treaties and the Indian Reorganization Act of
nineteen thirty four, surplus federal lands were supposed to be
returned to Native people. So with Alcatraz the penitentiary closed
in nineteen sixty three, it should have but was not
returned to its rightful tribe. From November of nineteen sixty
(19:04):
nine to July of nineteen seventy one, a collective of
Native organizations, including the American Indian Movement or AIM, occupied
this island Alcatraz under the following banner Indians of Old Tribes.
And this was not the only action taken for land reclamation.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
We were doing the same thing on Fort Lawton that
land was being given to the city for one dollar,
and the city didn't want it. We've got too many
parks now, we can't pay for them, so let dominions
have it with the rich and people that were involved
in it had plans on building whatever. Would you give
it up. They finally gave us fifteen acres, but that
(19:47):
was nothing compared to I think it was fifteen hunderd
acres there. But those were the type of actions that
we were going and we got a confrontation with the
army there, and the military one of the things that
they did that still stays in my mind, and I
kind of believe that they would have never used them
on us. But one time they got off their buses
(20:08):
and they had flame drawers and so a lot of
people left to the back trail. But they never used them,
of course, but it was used as a tactic of
fear against us.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
But the American Indian Movement wasn't deterred. In nineteen seventy two,
they organized a caravan to Washington that picked up more
numbers as it drove through other nativations along the way,
until they had about two thousand people descending on the
BIA building in a protest called the Trail of Broken Treaties.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
We went to Washington to the Burevern and Affairs, that's
our White House, hoping we could get an audience with
somebody that could help us, because we were not getting
any help back there on the reservations and the termination
was being enforced upon us, and they're supposed to be
protecting us. Of course they weren't. They were fighting against
(21:02):
us to eliminate our control of our lands and depend
on the United States government for handouts. That's how they
controlled us. They forced us to submit to them through
these handouts, and people were tired about it. We wanted
to bring our treaties back up to them and make
them abide by their promises, and of course they weren't
(21:23):
doing that. So when we got there, we all ended
up in the parking lot, parked our cars and demonstrating
around the Bureau of Indian Affairs building. Like I said,
it's supposed to be our white house, and the superintendent,
Leo Bruce, was supposed to be our president, although he
was appointed but whatever party was in power at the time.
(21:43):
So we went in and asked them. We said, look,
we got all these people here, old people, some of
our headsmen and chiefs and stuff like this. And we
got children out there, us young people to sleep out
on the ground. We don't care about that, but we
want you to give these people lodging somehow. Lei Bruce UPSI,
I can't do that. I ain't got to fund it,
and got to well, what are you doing with the
(22:05):
millions and millions of dollars that goes into the budget
every year, Why can't you take care of our elders?
We know, lion, we knew that. And Russell Mean said
you're not going to let you do the Star elders,
and it escalated into occupation.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
And during this six day occupation in November nineteen seventy two,
AIM leadership rifled through the BIA's documents. Bruce Ellison, who
supported AIM as an attorney throughout the standoff at Wounded Knees,
South Dakota in nineteen seventy three, as well as in
the aftermath of the shootout at Pine Ridge in nineteen
(22:41):
seventy five. Well Bruce told us about some of the
things that they discovered in the BIA building occupation in
nineteen seventy two, as well as what it meant specifically
for the Oglala Sioux on the Pine Ridge Reservation there
in South Dakota.
Speaker 5 (22:57):
When the BIA building was taken over by American Movement
in nineteen seventy two, there were a whole troughs of
documents that were taken and removed from that building. People
who have heard of this have generally heard of the
fact that it disclosed a four sterilization program for Native women.
Another part of that, though, was that this area was
(23:17):
given a priority for uranium mining. That was seventy two, right,
and then you have Wounded Knee seventy three, and then
you have this firefight in seventy five. You have resistance
basically all over the country, and now this new goal
of aim to stop destructive mining or anium mining. Most
people don't realize the front end of the nuclear fuel
(23:38):
cycle is an incredibly environmentally destructive process. It leaves the
earth poisoned for eons of time, as well as a
myriad about other things because not just uranium. It so
they having metals that get out, arsenic that gets out
during a lot of these processes. So I would say
that the economics, they always say that what are war's about,
(23:59):
They're about lane and or resources. Well, this one was
kind of government had already seized the land, not officially,
not legally, it's still unseated territory, but they did want
to go after those resources. At that time, there were
some twenty uranium mining companies which were staking out claims
throughout the Black Hills, and this went on from mid
seventies into the late seventies.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
When American business interests need Uncle Sam's help justly or not,
and nations around the globe, well, they may or may
not go as far as to medal in elections, and
it appears the Feds had a clear favorite in South
Dakota tribal politics, in which there was a deep divide
between traditionalists who maintained Native culture and refused assimilation, and
(24:44):
those like the newly elected Oglala Siu Tribal chairman of
nineteen seventy two, Dick Wilson, a so called progressive native,
the type that really took to assimilation and to the
interests of the United States federal government.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Well, you have a group of natives that we call sellouts.
They accept everything that the government tells them or gives
us commodities and all this says to and will do
anything the government says, will fight against us. I mean,
I had had some of them say I wish I
wasn'tn Indian, and I used to tell them, well, what
the hell are you doing here? Gold leave? Ain't nobody
(25:23):
keep in your hair. If you don't like being an Indian,
the hell out of here. But we got those types
of groups that fight against US. Dick Wilson was one
of them.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
And in the aftermath of the BIA Building occupation, Dick
Wilson signs a resolution that authorizes him to create a
paramilitary group called the Guardians of the Oglala Nation, giving
them the acronym Goon.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Well, the FBI financed them, They gave them sophisticated weapons,
various calibers of ammunition intelligence. This all came out from
Dwayne Brewer, who was the leader of the squad.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
And this mercenary force was comprised of other so called
progressive Natives. While other progressives were active at FBI counter Intelligence,
the same program that targeted the Black Panthers. Co Intel
pro they would infiltrate, sew division, create paranoia, undermine legitimate goals,
and supply information. And of course we're all familiar with
(26:24):
how history ran its course over any successful Black leadership,
while AIM was no different. It appears the FEDS were
targeting AIM leadership with criminal prosecutions, like the time when
Leonard was at a restaurant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the
months before the standoff at Wounded Me in nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
They're following me out everything I was doing. They were
put in this restaurant. We don't know who they are.
We were all in our AIM jackets, and they start
intimidating us. So we thought it was just two white
races and we're going to get in a fight with them.
And the next thing I know, Oh, I'm charged for
attempted murder on two police officers. I went to trial
(27:05):
there years later and I was found not guilty. I
was acquitted at that bullshit charge. You know, that wasn't
the only place. Other places they were trying to connect
me to some kind of criminal activity. Just trying to
set me up is what it was.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
But while he was in jail in Wisconsin on these
trumped up attempted murder charges, the traditionalist natives on the
Pine Ridge Reservation were seeking to impeach Dick Wilson. He
was accused of corruption, voter fraud as well as violence
and intimidation of his political foes.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
I think two hundred people were voted, had been dead
for fifty hundred years or whatever else. That's how he
won the election. To fraud. He was making his family rich,
is what he was doing. His brother all of a
sudden on a big pack of land and filled with
cattle and everything like this, and prior to his election
(28:03):
did not have that amount to land or cattle. So corruption,
corruption at its best under him.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Well, it seems like all of these operations, the co
Intel pro operations against the Black Panthers, Malcolm X et cetera,
they always involved an inside trader electic Wilson. Is that
a fair word to use for him?
Speaker 2 (28:24):
We call them worse in that?
Speaker 1 (28:27):
And when legal avenues failed to oust Wilson, Aim and
their allies chose the town of Wounded Knee, the site
of the last large scale massacre of Natives in eighteen ninety,
as their next target for occupation, and they were in
a standoff with US marshalls for seventy one days.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
I was in jail for the first couple weeks of
Wounded Knee, but as soon as I got out, I
heard they needed supplies food and everything like this. So
I went to work immediately gathered food and everything. In Oleft, Wisconsin.
During the Wounded Kney occupation, Richard Nixon ordered the eighty
second Airborne out there to put the military on a
(29:06):
domestic issue is against the constitution United States. So the
colonel that was head of the eighty second Airborne came
out to the reservation and he went first to Dick Wilson.
And when he came out, there was a group of
our elders and they called them over to cross the
road and they told we would like to show you
and tell you what's really going on here. And when
(29:29):
he went back to report to Nixon, he said that
a tribal chairman, Dick Wilson, I think he's a big liar.
I don't believe a word he said. So the traditionalist
took me out to the reservation and I said, I've
seen poverty. There's worse than Central America. And he said,
I don't blame those people for fighting. I don't blame
(29:51):
him for uprising. He said, if you send us out there,
you ordered us out there, the majority of us are
going to fight with the Indians. Wo oh, I heard
that Nixon's mother told him, don't you hurt those Indians.
Don't you hurt those people that? And his daughter was
also another one.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Three people were killed in total over those seventy one days.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Finally, Wounded Me was over after Buddy Lamont was shot
in the forehead by a sniper and Grandma Lamont wanted
to end because she wanted to bury her son, who
was a Vietnam War hero. So that's how wounded the
end it. Actually, there's a lot of promises were made
(30:34):
to the Native people that they were going to do this,
they were going to do that, and didn't that happen? Again,
most of us knew that was just some more lies.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
One of Ames's objectives was reopening treaty negotiation and holding
the federal government accountable for violating the eighteen sixty eight
Treaty of Fort Laramie with the Oglala Sioux. That violation
was the Fed stealing you've guessed it more can land,
this time in the Black Hills, you know, the place
(31:04):
where Mount Rushmore is located. A nineteen eighty Supreme Court
decision later ruled in favor of the Sioux, awarding them
compensation plus interest starting from when the treaty was violated
back in eighteen seventy seven, but they refused to accept
that compensation in favor of the return of the land
and this disagreement has still not been resolved. But back
(31:27):
in nineteen seventy three, after Wounded me, the FEDS tried
to prosecute the Visible AIM leadership Dennis Banks and Russell Means,
with charges that held a potential fifteen hundred years in prison.
What does they even mean a these numbers? But the
case was dismissed based on prosecutorial misconduct, including evidence tampering,
(31:49):
So the FEDS regrouped and plotted their next moves.
Speaker 5 (31:53):
In nineteen seventy four or ear least seventy five, the
FBI considered aimed to be one of the most dangerous
organizations to the country. When they listen their reasons for
why AIM was being targeted, they specifically noted a new
what they called mission statement of the American movement, which
was to protect the earth from destructive mining. And the
(32:15):
FBI starts switching from a canter intelligence operation to a
counter insurgency operation.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
And they had help from various assets who had infiltrated AIM,
including the head of security during the Wounded Knee occupation.
Doug Durham. It's believed that he was the one who
supplied the aim memo, the one that contained the mission
statement threatening federal interest in uranium mining.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Doug Durham. You got to hear this guy's story. This
guy's a police officer and Omaha, Nebraska, and he's right
next to Omaha's a reservation, look Quota reservation. He's grabbing
these girls and forcing drugs on them, getting them hooked,
and prosecuting them. That Omaha Nebraska police force fires him.
(33:04):
He immediately goes to work for the FBI and that
gets on their payroll and he infiltrated the American Indian moment.
So they asked him in this hearing, they said, what
about the American Indian moment? Do we have to be
concerned about Russell and Dennis? And he tells him no,
He said, I think the fifteen hundred years has pretty
(33:24):
much silenced them. He said, the person you have to
be concerned about is Leonard Peltier. He's a young guy.
He's not afraid of the government. You won't get in
the front of a camera because he just want this
picture out there. But he's getting very popular among the people,
and he's the person that we have to worry about.
And after wounded knee, they really start coming after me.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
While Leonard was traveling the country to support various political
actions back on the Pine Ridge Reservation, tensions with Dick
Wilson and the Goon squad got even worse. So the
Oglallas sup once again called upon Aime and Dennis Banks,
who was in Arizona at the time with one of
Leonard's co defendants, Daryl Dino Butler.
Speaker 6 (34:23):
My name is Dino Butler. I'm a member of the
Sledge Competitive Tribes of Oregon. In nineteen seventy four, I
was in Arizona. A call came in from South Dakota.
They said that the goons were up there and they
were throwing beer bottles and ecuting out houses and beating
people up and everything. They were just getting out of control.
(34:44):
They called Dennis to ask him if there was any
warriors that were willing to come up there and stay
there for a while and help them. So Leonard and
me and some other brothers and sisters agreed to go
up there to South Dakota at that time. We went
to the housing projects there and we stayed there for
a while and then we went to Ted Lange's place.
(35:05):
Then we ended up at Jumping both plays. During all
this time, the goons were still acting up and shooting
up everything.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
The goons, they were going around the reservation and terrorizing
single mothers that were strong, aim people, the elders, their
homes are being shot up. We went and spent hours
in the middle of the night going over there protecting
those people. Anybody that affiliated themselves with the American Indian
moment are traditionalists.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
So when Bruce said counterinsurgency earlier, you can hear how
that doesn't appear to be hyperbole. There were sixty unsolved
murders on Pine Ridge between seventy three and seventy five,
and with a population of only twelve thousand, they had
the highest murder rate in the country.
Speaker 5 (35:55):
Scores of people being killed, people being kept on the
floors of their home, homes well, bullets swam through the walls.
And we're talking about homes where families were living, where
young kids were living, where elders were living.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
These murders would have been under FBI jurisdiction, yet for
some reason, no one was ever pursued. Meanwhile, the FEDS
were trying Dennis Banks for a second time, this time
for the alleged assault and rioting associated with the Wounded
de occupation, and they knew he was being protected at
(36:28):
an aim stronghold called Jumping Bull Ranch. It seems they
also knew Leonard was there from.
Speaker 5 (36:34):
Documents we got parts of or all of. A little
bit later, they had their security and their intelligence informants focusing.
I mean, they were looking for Leonard all over the country.
So we get to a month before the firefight and
a bunch of FBI agents are brought into Pine Ridge.
Most of them are SWAT Team members. They're on sixty
day special assignment.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Before the shoot out, we've seen a lot of activities
with helicopters and stuff, and they had these machines out
the windows and everything. We didn't find out un till
years later, but they were surveying that whole area. And
then they had these ages driving around like stormtroopers, and
they would walk into people's doors. They would not knock,
(37:15):
they would just push the doors open. That's the same
thing that's kicking them over. And they terrified the community.
A lot of the people were getting scared. A lot
of the people were getting angry. A lot of the men.
We were saying, you know, something's going to happen. They can't
keep doing this to us. That's not legal.
Speaker 5 (37:34):
Three weeks before the firefight, the FBI issues a document
in which they talk about jumping balls. They claimed that
there were bunkers there, that there are probably going to
have to assault these bunkers. And three weeks later there's
a paramilitary assault on that particular area. And as the
US Comission on stil Rights pointed out, those bunkers are
really aged root sellers that you wouldn't want to stand
(37:56):
behind if someone was throwing rocks at you less defensive position.
What also is clear is that once the first shots
were fired, and I got to say that, the government
began to lie right away from the start of the firefight.
Right away, it became a big lie for their own
particular narrative.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
So, after a two year long federally funded terror campaign
through the Goon Squad, which as you can imagine, only
intensified with the arrival of SWAT teams from all over
the country in that climate, the FBI claimed that they
were simply carrying out just an ordinary, everyday arrest warrant
for a guy named Jimmy Eagle.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
There was a warrant. Supposedly, that's a lie because the
FBI don't have this jurisdiction. They were saying that they
had a warrant out for Jimmy you go, for stealing
a pair of used cowboy.
Speaker 5 (38:51):
Boots, used cowboy pots.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
They don't have. They don't have jurisdiction. There's no jurisdiction
for them to do that. They can't do that, so
that was a lie.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
If you remember, we mentioned the Major Crimes Act of
eighteen eighty five. This designated all violent crimes and other
offenses under federal jurisdiction. A pair of stolen cowboy boots
would have been handled by tribal police. In addition, it
appears that Jimmy Eagle was in Wyoming at the time,
on another reservation entirely, yet he was allegedly known to
(39:27):
drive a red pickup. So on June twenty sixth, nineteen
seventy five, the FBI claimed that agents Ronald Williams and
Jack Koehler, who were in plain clothes and unmarked vehicles,
not identifying themselves. The FBI claims these guys were allegedly
in hot pursuit of what they claimed to have thought
(39:49):
was Jimmy Eagle's vehicle, a red van but with a
white top, and as the federal narrative goes, the car
would not stop until it arrived at Jumping Bull Ranch.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
That's not true. That's not true. They didn't follow that
red and white van in there. That red and white
van was there ten minutes, at least ten minutes before
they showed up. I know I'm the one that drove
it in there because I had just taken it down
to Ogla to get something fixed on it. So that
was another lie. But we come in and parked in
(40:22):
front of the Jumping Bowl house and we were talking
to some of the people there about something. These guys
just come driving in like they owned the place and
they've been right past us, and went down to where
the shooting took place.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
Which was about five hundred yards off US Highway eighteen,
onto this sprawling private compound. Now remember this is after
a nearly three year reign of terror, when these men
in plane clothes and unmarked cars which doesn't appear how
to identify themselves through their weapons.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
We didn't start it. They started it. We were defending
our homes and my responsibility it was getting the women
and children out of there.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
Soon, every able bodied person either in the houses or
campgrounds on jumping bull ranches doing their part, including Dino Butler.
Speaker 6 (41:12):
I just come out of our teetheet on a jumping
bull property. I came out and I heard this brother
come running down towards the camp call telling us that brothers,
gather up your guns, gather up your weapons, and get
up here. They're attacking the families up there jumping bulls.
So we all gathered up our rifles and we ran
up there. I didn't know who was shooting at us
(41:36):
at first, but then I understood later on it was
the FBI that were firing at it. Two FBI agents
came there and they opened fired on the people, and
that that I didn't understand what was going on, why
why they were doing that.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
I helped Angie and her babies who were crying, terrified
and everything. I helped them get out of there. I
let him down to a trail, and you knew that,
so I tore to go that way and all us
hope they don't kill you. So they hope they don't
shoot you, because you got these little kids here, and
they did go that way and they got out.
Speaker 5 (42:15):
People I talked to said they were within moments being
surrounded and receiving gunfire from all directions.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
When I got back, we could see from the tops
we were surrounded. They had swat teams from as far
away as Los Angeles, from Minneapolis, and all the cities
around South Dakota there within minutes. So they were housed
someplace close to the reservation because they were there within
(42:44):
ten minutes at the most.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
In addition, there was a small single propeller plane that
had been flying around all day that was now surveilling
the siege from above.
Speaker 5 (42:54):
And so this massive force comes in and in the
processual stunts who a young Native defender within the community
was shot between the eyes and two fpigands were killed.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
So I told everybody, all right, come on, we got
to get out of here. So we went down to
the camp, which was about a quarter of a mile
from the house, and picked up what we could carry
and everything like this, and we knew there was the
highest hill that way, so I said, we got to
get to that place. And as we were walking down
across the creek, I had no idea who was out there.
(43:30):
On the roads, and we knew was surrounded. So I said,
we got to get out of here. We got to
somehow find a hole to get out of here.
Speaker 6 (43:39):
Leonard wanted to get and get in a vat and
run a roadblock and get out of there. And I
told Leonard, I think that would be complete suicide. And
so we all knelt down and we started praying.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
I told these guys, come on, let's just say a
prayer here, asking the Great Spirit to lead us out
of there. And all of a sudden, there was a
shadow in the trees and there was a like something
was big was flying there. And I looked up and
I seen it. These eagles took off under the trees.
Norman Brown says he also seen it. Everybody else didn't
(44:11):
see it, but he heard it too, and he's seen it.
Speaker 6 (44:14):
So Norman said, let's follow that eagle. So we followed
that eagle brought us to this calvert that ran under
the road, and we all went into that culvert and
Leonard went first and I went second, and there was
an airplane flying around. It was there since early morning.
(44:35):
So Leonard said, well, let's pray pray for that airplane
to leave. So me and him started praying, and after
we got done, that plane left. It went back to
Pine Ridge to gas up. I guess I don't know what,
but it left. And when it left, we called everybody
out of the culvert and we sent the women up
the hill.
Speaker 5 (44:53):
First.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
We had some young fourteen fifteen year old kids with us,
and my responsibility is to make sure that they safe,
and I believe in the Great Spirit helped us get
out of there. How did we find that hole? What?
Why did those cops leave that area? I mean it
was what three cars I believe it, it's maybe even
been four took off from that area where we went
(45:16):
under this culvert. I swear on my Shinoopa, I swear
to my God. If we hadn't fought back, we probably
all got chilled. This was a war.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
And this is where we'll stop in the first of
three episodes covering the absolutely insane, wrongful conviction story of
Leonard Peltier. And there's so much left to come.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
I sent them ahead of me. I told them, go,
I'll take.
Speaker 5 (45:47):
Up the rear.
Speaker 6 (45:47):
I could just feel the bullets buzzing around me.
Speaker 5 (45:50):
They even included at one point every Native man who
had ever been in combat in Indo, China on their
suspect list.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Wow, they also included a four year old and we
didn't know why we were the ones being accused.
Speaker 6 (46:05):
My little brother, he said, when he woke up an
Fbis was pointing a pistol in his head and says,
worre's your fucking brother.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
At Marlon Brando gave us a mobile home. I went
to Canada of Astra asylum and they were supposed to
produce any evidence that they had against me, and very
conservative judge said, there is no evidence.
Speaker 5 (46:23):
In the Dino Butler trial, we were able to present
members of the community who helped the jury understand what
was regarded as the reign of terror.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
If they did that to a white community, they would
have been shot too.
Speaker 6 (46:36):
That Leonard Woods to try with us there and see
the rapids who would have never been convicted.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
Because Dino and Robert were acquitted, they changed the whole story.
Speaker 5 (46:46):
And the testimony becomes much more definitive.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
I never met her in my life, but she was
claiming she was my girlfriend, and that was the beginning
of the type of trial I was going to receive.
Speaker 6 (46:58):
There was a kangaroo court all the way.
Speaker 1 (47:01):
Don't forget to tune in for episode two of our
coverage of Leonard Peltier's Wrongful Conviction. Thank you for listening
to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this and all
the Lava for Good podcasts one week early and ad
free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
(47:22):
I want to thank our production team, Connor Hall and
Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler,
Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Kliber The music in this production
was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Be sure to follow us across all social media platforms
at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can
also follow me on Instagram at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful
(47:43):
Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and
association with Signal Company Number One.
Speaker 7 (47:48):
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported
in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed
by the individuals featured in this show are their own
and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.
Speaker 2 (48:05):
Sh
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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