intro by DM
Leonard Peltier, the 81-year-old Indigenous activist and longtime member of the American Indian Movement, speaks publicly for the first time since being released to home confinement after spending nearly half a century in prison. We’ve published several articles about his predicament:
Law’s Hopelessness, Part 1: Leonard Peltier’s 44-Year Ordeal – Gumshoe News
Leonard Peltier As Collateral Damage in FBI’s Task of Demoralizing Us – Gumshoe News
The “Wounded” Case of Leonard Peltier – Gumshoe News
In an emotional interview with Amy Goodman, Peltier reflects on finally returning home to the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, while noting that his freedom remains limited. Throughout the conversation he expresses deep gratitude to the generations of Indigenous leaders, human rights advocates and supporters around the world whose decades-long campaign helped secure his release.
Peltier recounts a childhood marked by government-run boarding schools, where Indigenous children were separated from their families.
His involvement with the American Indian Movement, he says, grew from a commitment to protecting treaty rights, defending Native communities and preserving Indigenous identity in the face of generations of historical injustice.
It is not surprising Peltier maintains that he was wrongfully convicted and says his trial was marred by serious injustices and wants future generations to know their history, protect their culture and never give up hope.
Now to Democracy Now (Amy Goodman):
Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman sat down with longtime political prisoner and Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier for his first extended television and radio broadcast interview since his release to home confinement in February….
Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: In a Democracy Now! global TV/radio broadcast exclusive, we spend the hour with longtime Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier…
…Peltier has always maintained his innocence.
Notable supporters of Leonard Peltier over the years included Nelson Mandela, Pope Francis and Amnesty International. Supporters of Peltier say his trial was marked by gross FBI and federal prosecutorial misconduct, including the coercion of witnesses, fabricated testimony and suppressed exculpatory evidence.
After being released in February, Leonard Peltier returned home to live on the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Reservation in Belcourt, North Dakota. September 12th was Leonard Peltier’s 81st birthday….
AMY GOODMAN: Hi. I’m Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, in the home of Leonard Peltier, just recently freed from prison after 49 years.
LEONARD PELTIER: Plus two months.
AMY GOODMAN: Plus two months.
LEONARD PELTIER: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: I’ve spoken to you so many times, Leonard, in prison, in various prisons, several of them supermax prisons. It is quite astonishing to be here with you in person. Tell us where we are. Where are we sitting?
LEONARD PELTIER: We’re sitting in my home, that was given to me by my supporters. This was not given to me by the tribe, or the government had nothing to do with it. I was released by Biden under a commutation of my sentence and home confinement. Actually, what happened was, I was — I was taken out of one prison cell and really put into another type of prison. But this is my home now. This is my home. So it’s a million times better.
AMY GOODMAN: Wait, what do you mean when you say you were taken out of your prison cell after more than 49 years, and you’re saying that you’re not completely free?
LEONARD PELTIER: No, no, I’m on very restrictive restrictions. Even to go to the post office, I got to call my — I call her my handler. I have to call her to go to the post office. Then, when I get back, I have to call her and tell her I’m back. Or if I go anything, if I go shopping or whatever, I have to do that. If I have to go a hundred miles past the nation — I don’t call my place a “reservation,” either; we’re nations of people — I have to get a pass, usually from Washington, D.C., to go to medical, usually medical, or religious ceremonies on different nations, Indian Native nations.
AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s go back to that moment when you were in that prison cell in Coleman, in Florida, and you got word that President Biden had commuted your sentence. It was just hours before he was leaving office? Can you tell us about that process, how it took place?
LEONARD PELTIER: Well, as I went through the years filing for pardons and stuff, Ronald Reagan was the first one to promise to leave me — pardon me. Somebody in Washington stopped it. There’s only one organization that could have stopped it, and didn’t have the power to stop it, but still, somehow, were in power, enough to where they can override a president of the United States, our Congress. It’s the FBI. And Reagan promised to let me go. And the FBI intervened, and that was stopped. And Bill Clinton and Obama, and, finally, we get to Biden.
And Biden, there was pressure put on him from all over the world. Almost every tribal nation here in the United States filed for my release, demanding my release. The United Nations — the United Nations did a full report on my case, and they demanded that I be released immediately and to be “paid,” quote-unquote. Hundreds of Congress and senators and millions of people —
AMY GOODMAN: And the pope.
LEONARD PELTIER: And the pope, two popes, the last pope and the current pope. And world leaders, many world leaders, demanded my release.
AMY GOODMAN: The Nobel Peace laureate, bishop — Archbishop Desmond Tutu?
LEONARD PELTIER: Yes. I was also nominated for — and nominated four times, because of my work from prisons, for a Nobel Prize. And the board and everything granted it, but somebody intervened again. So, four times, I lost that.
I think somebody was pushing Biden to stop any — any possibility of signing a pardon. So, he didn’t sign it until the last moment. And actually, a day and a half before he actually signed it and he was — his term was completed, I just took the position that, “Nah, he’s not going to do this.” And I just kind of laid back in my cell, and I thought to myself, “Well, I guess I die here, and this is the only ultimate sacrifice I can make, and I have to accept it. I have no other choice.”
TO CONTINUE… The Democracy Now article:
Yes, just another criminal injustice handed out by an evil system of psycho control freaks.
Remember Amy Goodman’s interview with General WESLEY CLARK IN ABOUT 2008 covered up by ALL THE MEDIA AND THEIR PSYCHO LYING POLITICIANS (THE PLAN 7 countries in five years- delayed a bit for 25 years but still in operation in the Middle East- just Iran and Lebanon to go!)
The world is run by psycho sick bastards.
Anyway do not give up hope.
Try ‘GENE DECODE FROM 21/6 with captain Kyle -alert’
Replayed and linked at RUMORMILLNEWS.com on 28/6 at 00.00.30.
Give it 20 mins from the start at least.
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Con off it censor, it will not work trying to censor Gene decode.
Try WEtn SITUATION UPDATE 29/6 at:
http://beforeitsnews.com – people powered old news NOW WITH SOME EPSTEIN STUFF AND THE INVOLVEMENT FLOGGING OFF URANIUM TO NTH KOREA AND IRAN VIA RUSSIA, supplied via Hilary for he nuclear war scenario. But poor Trump wants his uranium tracking not to land on him and the US so wants it back from Iran.
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So much fun for normies to distract from FIFA🙀
The video
Leonard Peltier on Indigenous Rights, His Half-Century in Prison & More
Democracy Now!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBvNsS0CeBA
Thanks Dee
Ode to a Whistleblower
https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/ode-to-a-whistleblower-video-tribute?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
“I gratefully accepted this historic opportunity to celebrate the life of a man who exemplifies the rarest kind of bravery, which Diane Perlman captures in her “theory of ‘the Courageous Personality’”:
“Veridos™ may represent less than 5% of the population. They see through deception, investigate truth and have the strength to challenge official narratives. They are truly courageous and refuse to remain silent.”
Above is the resulting video, majestically scored by my husband in response to my request for a composition that captures the nobility, heroism, sacrifice, and triumph represented by Daniel Ellsberg’s life and the many other whistleblowers who have overcome their self-preservation instincts to defend humanity from our parasitic oppressors.”
above Margaret Anna Alice Through the Looking Glass
https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/ode-to-a-whistleblower-video-tribute?t=1.8583577026616984