Contextualizing Leonard Peltier: Institutional Oppression and Cultural Erasure

By Cayla McNally

[1] It is extremely difficult to engage with the trial of Leonard Peltier because it is still cloaked in mystery. So many details of his story remain contested, and the FBI and Peltier’s supporters offer radically different versions of what happened on the Jumping Bull Ranch. However, the most important aspect of Peltier’s defense is the way in which it is framed. Rather than portray his trial as a simple murder case, Peltier and his supporters frame the murders at Pine Ridge as a continuation of the constant violence on the reservation and as part of the long tradition of state-sanctioned mistreatment of Native Americans. Peltier makes connection between his situation and historical context abundantly clear when he insists in the film, “The only thing I’m guilty of is struggling for my people.” So while the facts of June 26, 1976, have perhaps become irrelevant, the tradition in which Peltier places his story is not.

[2] Peltier uses his position as a highly visible Native American prisoner to critique systems of justice in the United States. This sentiment is echoed by Dino Butler in Michael Apted’s film: “I still don’t really understand what justice is all about, because me, I get acquitted, a year later my brother gets convicted of the same thing. So where’s the justice?” Similarly, Peltier states that someone told him during his trial, “we knew somebody had to pay,” which he takes to mean that he is simply a fill-in, a proxy for white anxiety towards Native American subversion. Peltier’s story serves to highlight the concrete connection between historical and institutional treatment of Native Americans and the resistance that led to his involvement in the American Indian Movement and, ultimately, his incarceration.

[3] The actions at the Jumping Bull Ranch, like the preceding actions at Alcatraz in 1964 and Wounded Knee in 1973, serve to reclaim a marginalized history that has been effectively erased by the national government. Though these acts of resistance all ended in physical defeat by the state apparatus, they succeeded in drawing attention to the ways in which history is created and the ways that that creation results in the marginalization of cultural histories. This is to say that in their actions, they drew attention to the fallibility of history and shone a light on the historical bias that pervades popular American metanarratives.

[4] Peltier’s narrative serves as a metaphorical rather than physical occupation of space. Unlike the occupations of Alcatraz and Wounded Knee, which relied on Native Americans taking up physical space as a way to show their dissatisfaction with the way they were treated by the United States government, Peltier stands as a symbol for the systemic abuse of Native Americans and pervades the intangible space of the American consciousness. Both types of action challenge metanarratives of American history, but they perhaps do so in different ways. Whereas the first two served as reactions to specific US transgressions against marked Native American space -- Alcatraz was sacred land that was converted into a prison, Wounded Knee was the site of a state-sanctioned slaughter and the last instance of armed Native American resistance against the United States -- Peltier’s actions speak to a legacy of systemic brutality against Native Americans.

[5] In his collection of autobiographical essays, Peltier discusses his formative years in a government-operated reformatory school for Native Americans, stating: “I consider my years at Wahpeton my first imprisonment, and it was for the same crime as all the others: being an Indian. We had to speak English. We were beaten if we were caught speaking our own language. Still, we did. We’d sneak behind the buildings . . . and we’d talk Indian to each other. I guess that’s where I first became a ‘hardened criminal,’ as the FBI calls me. And you could say that the first infraction in my criminal career was speaking my own tongue” (78). For him, a federal prison is simply a continuation of the marginalization that began in earlier interactions with federally-run institutions, an idea that is furthered by Donna Rymhs, who notes that “For many Native Americans, the prison is not just an apparatus of detention and punishment but a metonymic structure signifying the colonization, criminalization, and containment of an entire people” (565). The image of the prison thus becomes representational of how the government chooses to deal with marginalized peoples. It is the manifestation of a systematic repression of rights, a silencing of the worst kind, and it results in a loss of subjectivity for the people involved. Towards the end of Apted’s film, Peltier reflects on his state of existence in prison in this manner: “Right now, I’m just living, being stored here as a piece of meat.”

[6] Regarding Peltier’s text, Rymhs posits that “If an apologia is to be found in this text, however, it is a justification of a collective response to unsatisfactory living conditions, expropriated land and resources, and unheard petitions for public reparations. . . . In his identification as part of a collective body, [Peltier’s] incarceration stands in for the ideological, systemic, and physical imprisonment of Native people” (568). The idea here is that marginalized people are passed through a predetermined sequence of containment areas -- schools, reservations, prisons -- with little agency over their individual and collective destinies. What resulted from the constant systemic oppression was a sense of fear and paranoia that is evident in the climate leading up to the murders at Pine Ridge. The years leading up to the shootout were marked by continuously escalating violence between the two factions of the Pine Ridge community. It is no coincidence that this kind of violence was permitted on the poorest reservation in the country. One may surmise that had the bloodbath not resulted in the death of two federal agents, the local and federal governments would have continued to turn a blind eye to the chronic, divisive violence between AIM members and supporters and federally-backed tribal leader Dick Wilson and his followers. As long as the Native Americans were policing each other, there was no need for the government to police them. In this way, the Native American community became a key player in its own erasure.

[7] While awaiting his sentencing in 1977, Peltier seized on the legacy of erasure and released the following statement: “There is no doubt in my mind or my people’s minds that you are going to sentence me to two consecutive life terms. You are, and have always been, prejudiced against me and any Native Americans who have stood before you. You have openly favored the government all through this trial and you are happy to do whatever the FBI would want you to do in this case. You’re about to perform an act which will close one more chapter in the history of the failure of the United States courts and the failure of the people of the United States to do justice in the case of a Native American. After centuries of murder, could I have been wise in thinking that you would break that tradition and commit an act of justice?” Ultimately, he is saying that the only thing he has done wrong is trust the United States government, who has demonstrated time and time again how little it values the Native American populations. It is almost as if Peltier is implying that he should not even be sentenced as an American, because he is afforded none of the benefits that accompany citizenship.

[8] Regarding the coerced affidavits that were utilized to extradite Peltier from Canada, poet-activist John Trudell notes to the filmmakers, “the perjured documents aren’t what convinced the Canadian government to send him back; the perjured documents are what gave the Canadian government the rationalization to send him back. Because the Indians are as much of a threat up there; you see, the Indians don’t like the way they’re treated anywhere.” As far as Trudell is concerned, there are national interplays between regulating institutions and Native American peoples and cultures. This quotes demonstrates that the treatment by the United States government was by no means an anomaly; as far as Trudell and Peltier are concerned, all governments that exist because of the subjugation of native populations rely on national institutions to silence these groups, because there is a fear of how the “Other’s” words will affect national myth-making.

[9] However, the framing of Peltier’s defense -- as well as the film’s narrative -- falls apart with the introduction of Mr. X, the real killer who refuses to come forward and confess but secretly acknowledges his involvement. While the story that Bob Robideau provides -- that Mr. X was an acquaintance who was delivering explosives to AIM members and became unwillingly embroiled in a fight to the death with the agents -- is believable, there is something about the spectacle of Mr. X that is difficult to swallow. It is in this moment that trial and spectacle become blended, pulling the focus away from Peltier and onto the narratives about Peltier that are actively being constructed by both his demonizers and his supporters. This claim is as damaging to Peltier’s insertion into a legacy of oppression as the desire of national governments to create sweeping narratives that rely on silencing and re-remembering. By attempting to mythologize every aspect of the events of June 26, Peltier supporters succeed in making the story less grounded, less probable. Writer Scott Anderson suggests the myth-making is what has actively prevented Peltier’s freedom: “Peltier will probably never win his freedom as long as what happened in that pasture at Jumping Bull remains shrouded in myth. And as long as Leonard Peltier continues to be more important as a symbol than as a man” (5). Mr. X appears to be the creation of Peltier’s supporters, rather than Peltier himself, but it still serves to take away from Peltier’s assertion that his presence in prison is symbolic of how all Native Americans are treated by the United States government.

[10] Anderson is also willing to acknowledge the symbolic value of Peltier and that the image has a broader value than the man himself, noting, “On one level, it’s simple: Many people sincerely believe that Peltier is innocent. On another, he has come to personify one of the great lost causes of the seventies, the dramatic rise and fall of the American Indian Movement, a grassroots organization launched in the late sixties that sparked a resurgence of Indian pride on reservations and in cities throughout America. AIM, in the view of its supporters, carried the promise of a unified Indian nation, until it was brought down by the heavy-handed tactics of federal law enforcement officials, with Peltier a victim of this larger conspiracy. On this expanded stage, he assumes a much grander role: that of martyr in a complex passion play” (4). The implication of Anderson’s comment is that if one were to admit Peltier’s defeat, one must also acknowledge the total defeat of Native Americans at the hands of US institutions. Also, if Peltier’s story is forgotten, the systems of oppression prevail. The visibility of the efforts to exonerate Leonard Peltier has somehow become inextricably tied to the visibility of the Native American community in general. If Peltier is allowed to rot in prison, it becomes just another example of the federal government exerting a dominating power over a marginalized body of color.

[11] Peltier has come to see himself as a sundancer who has sacrificed his life as a free man for the greater cause of his people, perhaps to demonstrate that as a marginalized body in America, he can never be free. He tells Anderson, “At times, it would seem so easy -- you know, ‘Yes, I did it, I’m sorry.’ If I’d done that -- lied like that I’d have been out a long time ago. But then I remember that I’m doing this for my people, and that keeps me from doing it. I can’t do it. What I’m doing is not really for me, but for them.” Anderson questions this positioning of Peltier as a crusader, because his goals are largely undefined: “It’s not altogether clear just who these ‘people’ are, whether they’re the residents of Pine Ridge, who seem to have largely forgotten Peltier’s cause, or the greater Indian community that has long since turned away from AIM militancy, or that select group of people -- mostly white men and women -- who have made him their cause” (22). But if Peltier’s supporters are ultimately focusing on the myth, rather than the man, what do they hope to gain? Most of the individuals championing Peltier are white and seem to only have a superficial interest in Native American issues. One must then question whether the treatment of Leonard Peltier is nothing more than exploitation, a continuation of the voyeuristic frame applied to Native bodies. How is this interaction between white Americans and Native Americans any different than the interactions that Peltier purports he is working against? When all is said and done, both kinds of co-optations result in an abuse that is careless at best, vindictive at worst.