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A STRUGGLE WITH CONVICTION
Supporters fight for Leonard Peltier's freedom as the "political prisoner's" health continues to fail.
Several of Leonard Peltier's paintings hang in the international office of the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, 745 New Hampshire St.
Clockwise from left:
"Protector of the Woods," "Grandma Jumping Bull" and "Big Mountain Lady."
Photos by Jason Benavides
By Pallavi Agarwal Special to the Kansan
A large black-and-white photograph from Leonard Peltier's younger days dominates one wall of the international office of the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee in downtown Lawrence.
His eyes crinkle in a smile. Teeth flash under a bushy mustache, and shoulder-length hair frames a face that falls into a slight double chin.
It is not the same face that an international human rights activist would find today if she visited the Leavenworth prison to examine the Native American, probably the best known American "political prisoner" in the world.
Peltier is serving two consecutive life sentences for the death of two FBI agents killed in 1975.
Twenty-three years spent behind bars has left Peltier fighting depression and bitterness. He has aged in the face and body.
Now 54 years old, he has lockjaw due to tetanus. It prevents him from chewing food properly and is creating concern among his supporters for his life.
Gina Chiala, legal assistant at the Peltier Defense Committee, said Peltier could not open his mouth beyond 13 millimeters and was forced to eat his food by pushing the morsels through a gap in his front teeth and then mashing them against the teeth with his tongue.
Peltier, who twice has undergone operation by prison doctors, has refused a third operation, saying that only specialists at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn., have the expertise to treat him without endangering his life.
His insistence at being treated at the Mayo Clinic and the refusal of the Bureau of Prisons to grant his request have sparked publicity campaigns by the Pelitzer Defense Committee. It also has prompted today's visit of activist Dannielle Mitterrand, former first lady of France and president of the France Libertes Foundation, a nongovernment organization.
Mitterrand will address the Lawrence public at 6:30 tonight at the Haskell Indian Nations University auditorium.
Peltier, in a telephone interview from Leavenworth, said he could only hope for his plight to improve.
"I need to keep trying. Although new evidence emerged, it has not helped me. It's been 25 years. In 1985, the government admitted that they didn't know who killed the agents. And yet nothing has changed."
"Prisoners have no rights. We deem this cruel and unusual punishment and a medical malpractice."
Gina Chiala
Legal assistant at the
Pellet Defense Committee
His spirit to survive holds together a three-decade campaign to free him that has made his name synonymous with the struggle of indigenous people.
Back in Lawrence, a few volunteers refuse to give up their efforts for his eventual freedom.
"He is always very cheerful," said Lisa Faruolo, who once worked with the Peltier Defense Committee.
Today, supporters like her will hear Mitterrand talk about Peltier, a man many consider to be the most famous Native American rebel since Crazy Horse and who, some add, is better known outside the country than in the land of his birth and imprisonment.
The committee operates an international campaign from Lawrence, which Faruolo helped coordinate until last year.
At that time, he was associated with the American Indian Movement, which emerged in the 1960s as a radical, activist and sometimes armed group of Native Americans who fought for the sovereignty of their tribes.
The man behind the bars
Peltier was indicted for the deaths of two FBI agents who were killed on June 26, 1975 at Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.
Pine Ridge had been the scene of shootouts and protests since 1973, and tensions ran high between the AIM and the Lakota Sioux, who ran Pine Ridge's tribal government. Some on the reservation accused the tribal superintendent of selling off the uranium-rich land — land the AIM was trying to protect.
On June 26, two FBI agents went looking for a man accused of stealing a pair of cowboy boots. The search lead to a car chase and a shootout. The agents never returned alive.
The government has maintained that
Four people, including Peltier, were charged in the deaths. Peltier, who had escaped to Canada, was later extradited and indicted. Charges were dropped against the third defendant. The other two were acquitted.
the agents were killed in cold blood. In the crossfire, one Native American also lost his life.
Peltier, who has maintained his innocence, was found guilty and sentenced to two consecutive life terms.
In 1985, a federal prosecutor admitted to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals that the FBI did not know who killed the agents. The appeals court upheld the sentence, however, calling Peltier an "aider and abetter."
Jean Bordeaux-Roach, Rapid City, S.D., resident and Peltier Defense Committee spokeswoman, said Peltier was made a scapegoat in a fight between the United States government and the Native Americans that has spanned centuries.
Hillary Robinette, communications director with the Society of Former FBI agents, said that Peltier was only being tried for a crime he committed.
She said that if the other defendants were acquitted on the basis of self-defense, then the same argument applied to Peltier.
Peltier has thrice appealed unsuccessfully for a retrial. His 1993 plea for clementy still awaits a reply from President Clinton or his successor. In 1996, the U.S. Parole Commission rejected his appeal for parole, saying he was not eligible until 2008.
Peltier's lockjaw problem started from childhood when he stepped on a nail and developed tetanus.
Peltier's disease
He said that the problem worsened after the two operations conducted by Springfield, Mo. doctors in 1996. He said the lockjaw also was causing constant earaches and headaches on his right side.
Chiha said the bureau's refusal to allow Peltier to be examined at the Mayo Clinic as a sign of the government's ill-treatment of prisoners.
"Prisoners have no rights," she said. "We deem this cruel and unusual punishment and a medical malpractice."
Meanwhile, the bureau refers all questions on Peltier's medical condition to a news release posted on their Web site.
The press release said Peltier and the
medical staff at Leavenworth and Springfield had discussed his medical condition in a recent teleconference, during which he was told that his condition was stable and that he did not require prolonged intensive treatment at the bureau medical facility.
Eugene Keller, a specialist with the Mayo Clinic, has written to prison authorities, offering to examine Peltier and provide a second opinion of his condition. But Chiala said authorities have denied the physician's request.
Barbara Fortier, Peltier supporter from Atlanta, sent her mother's food chopper to the penitentiary so that Peltier's food could be ground up, making it easier for him to eat. The packet came back.
"They thought it was a bomb," she said.
Friends in high places
Peltier's case often has attracted international attention.
On February 11, the European Parliament passed a resolution requesting that the U.S. government grant him executive clemency.
Amnesty International, a global human rights watchdog organization, considers Peltier a prisoner of conscience who received an unfair trial and sentence and is being denied proper medical treatment.
Peltier also was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Many, such as Nobel Peace prize winners Rigoberta Menchu and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have spoken in his support.
Some government officials, such as former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, have turned into supporters. Clark was for several years a part of Peltier's defense team.
Peltier's cause has been documented in films such as the Robert Redford documentary Incident at Oglala and books like Peter Matthiessen's "In the Spirit of Crazy Horse."
Peltier's paintings decorate the homes of celebrities such as Jane Fonda, Val Kilmer and Robert Redford
This February, 76 Peltier supporters went on a hunger strike around the world as an appeal to have him transferred to the Mayo Clinic. Other supporters sent e-mail and letters, Chila said.
Mittlerand's talk will be followed by presentations from three survivors of the 1975 shootout — Bordeaux-Roach, Jean Day and Edgar Bear Runner.
The New Dawn Dancers, a youth group organized by the Pelathe Indian Center, will perform. Cornel Peewardy, KU assistant professor, also will play the flute. The program is free to the public.
Through Mitterrand's visit, the Peltier Defense Committee hopes to whip up more international pressure for Peltier's release.
Roach said that the committee saw the international community as Peltier's best bet.
Harvey Arden, editor of Peltier's forthcoming book, "Prison Writings; My Life is my Sun Dance", agreed.
"Peltier is better known in Europe than in America," he said.
Peltier often has been visited by celebrities in prison, but Mitterrand's visit coincides at a time when some of his supporters say that prison authorities increasingly are isolating him against the outside world so as to kill any news about him.
"They are trying to break him," Chiaila said.
Some, like Fortier, believe that if it were not for his supporters' constant monitoring, he would have been dead by now.
Arden has visited Peltier a few times and believes that some of the fear of reprisal from Peltier supporters is unfounded.
He said that initially he was reluctant to tell anybody about the book project he had started with Peltier.
Later, I realized that if anybody was going to stop me, they would have done it much earlier," he said
Leonard Peltier
Local support rallies for Peltier
The international headquarters of the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee is a two-room office in downtown Lawrence.
Peltier's paintings and pictures, which hang on the wall, lighten the austere atmosphere.
It's an office, struggling to do more with less.
Keith McHenry, who has been at the defense Committee office since last October, is a co-founder of Food Not Bombs, an activist group that has spawned 200 branches in the U.S.
There is no plush carpeting, Stacks of papers lie piled on the floor, and the three full-time staff members slog 60 hours a week without pay.
Now he helps staff members, Gina Chirala and Pat Benabe, coordinate Peltier's campaign from a couple of computer terminals, faxes and phone lines.
This June, the committee is holding one of its biggest conferences in recent years to help pool together the efforts of the different domestic and international support groups connected with the campaign.
The conference, to take place from June 25-27, at the Haskell Indian Nations University, will feature presentations from coordinators and invited speakers on lobbying skills and grass-roots activism.
"We are expecting at least 200 people," Chiala said. "Anybody can come."
"Many of our support groups are started by one person," he said. "Some dissolve, some remain."
McHenry said that coordinating a campaign that scale was not easy. The committee often is faced with funding problems and lack of unity within its various branches.
Drawing public opinion for Pettier is a key issue with the committee, and McHenry hopes that Pettier's forthcoming book, to be released on June 26, will help increase his support base.
"It is a very philisophical book," said Harvey Arden, Washington-based writer, who is editing Peltier's first book, Prison Writings: My Life is my Sun Dance.
The project, which started two years ago, is a compilation of some Pettier's best letters, speeches and articles.
"He is a wonderful writer," said Arden. "He sees his life as unimportant. There is nothing about his marriages and children, although he talks about his grandchildren."
Harvey said that the project started slowly because of prison visitation restrictions and their struggle to find a publisher who was willing to release the book.
The book is being released by St. Martin's Press. It is priced at $22.95 and will have German, French and possible Italian editions.
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