Leonard Peltier (born September 12, 1944) is a Native American activist and member of the American Indian Movement (AIM) who was convicted of murdering two Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents in a June 26, 1975, shooting on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. He was sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment.Leonard-Peltier, Encyclopædia BritannicaLewis, Hugh M. Robidoux Chronicles. Trafford Publishing, 2004, p. 195. Peltier became eligible for parole in 1993."American Indian activist denied parole", Newsday, August 21, 2009
In his 1999 memoir Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance, Peltier admitted to participating in the shootout but said he did not kill the FBI agents. Human rights watchdogs, such as Amnesty International, and political figures including the 14th Dalai Lama, campaigned for clemency for Peltier.
At the time of the shootout, Peltier was an active member of AIM, an Indigenous rights advocacy group that worked to combat the racism and police brutality experienced by Native Americans.
On January 19, 2025, Peltier's sentence was commuted to indefinite house arrest by President Joe Biden shortly before he left office. On February 18, the date specified by the grant of clemency, Peltier was released and transferred to the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in Belcourt, North Dakota.Joseph R. Biden Jr., Executive Grant of Clemency of Leonard Peltier, dated January 19, 2025
Early life and education Peltier was born on September 12, 1944, at the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa near Belcourt, North Dakota. He is of Lakota, Dakota, and Anishinaabe descent, and was raised among the Turtle Mountain Chippewa and Fort Totten Sioux Nations of North Dakota. He was one of 13 children.Leonard Peltier biography at ELPSN.com (archived at the Wayback Machine, March 2, 2010) His parents divorced when he was four years old,Sandage, Diane, and Richard T. Schaefer. "Peltier, Leonard (1944–)." Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society. Thousand Oaks, California, USA: Sage Publications, 2008. Web. with Leonard and his sister Betty Ann living with their paternal grandparents Alex and Mary Dubois-Peltier in the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation.
In September 1953, Leonard was enrolled at the Wahpeton Indian School in Wahpeton, North Dakota, an Indian boarding school run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). The school, which was located away from his home in the Turtle Mountain Reservation, practiced forced cultural assimilation of Indigenous children into white American culture by requiring the children to use English and forbidding the inclusion of Native American culture. He graduated from Wahpeton in May 1957 and then attended the Flandreau Indian School in Flandreau, South Dakota.Glisson, Susan M. The Human Tradition in the Civil Rights Movement. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006. Web. After finishing the ninth grade, he returned to the Turtle Mountain Reservation to live with his father. Peltier later obtained a general equivalency degree (GED).
Career and activism In 1965, Peltier relocated to Seattle, Washington. Peltier worked as a welder, a construction worker, and as the co-owner of an auto shop in Seattle in his twenties. The co-owners used the upper level of the building as a stopping place, or halfway house, for American Indians who had alcohol addiction issues or had recently finished their prison sentences and were re-entering society. The halfway house took a financial toll on the shop, so they closed it.
In Seattle, Peltier became involved in a variety of causes championing Native American civil rights. In the early 1970s, he learned about the factional tensions at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota between supporters of Richard Wilson, elected tribal chairman in 1972, and traditionalist members of the Lakota tribe. It was Dennis Banks who first invited Leonard Peltier to join AIM. Consequently, Peltier became an official member of the American Indian Movement (AIM) in 1972, which was founded by urban Indians in Minneapolis in 1968, at a time of rising Indian activism for civil rights.
Wilson had created a private militia, known as the Guardians of the Oglala Nation (GOON), whose members were reputed to have assaulted political opponents. In Peltier's view, the targets of the GOON attacks were AIM supporters and traditionalists. Protests over a failed impeachment hearing of Wilson contributed to the AIM and Lakota armed takeover of Wounded Knee at the reservation in February 1973.: "There was an attempt to impeach Wilson a couple of days prior to Wounded Knee. But Wilson presided at his own impeachment and ruled in his own favor." Federal forces reacted, conducting a 71-day siege, which became known as the Wounded Knee Occupation. Protestors demanded the resignation of Wilson. Peltier, however, spent most of the occupation in a Milwaukee, Wisconsin jail charged with attempted murder related to a different protest. When Peltier secured bail at the end of April, he took part in an AIM protest outside the federal building in Milwaukee and was on his way to Wounded Knee with the group to deliver supplies when the incident ended.
In 1975, Peltier traveled as a member of AIM to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to help reduce violence among political opponents.Privitera, John J. "Toward a Remedy for International Extradition by Fraud: The Case of Leonard Peltier", Yale Law & Policy Review 2.1 (1983): 49–61. Web. At the time, he was a fugitive, with an arrest warrant having been issued in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It charged him with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution for the attempted murder of an off-duty Milwaukee police officer. (He was acquitted of the attempted murder charge in February 1978.)
During this period, Peltier had seven children from two marriages and adopted two children.
Shootout at Pine Ridge
On June 26, 1975, FBI Special Agents Ronald Arthur Williams and Jack Ross Coler returned to Pine Ridge to continue searching for a young man named Jimmy Eagle. According to FBI publications, he was wanted for questioning in connection with the recent assault of two local ranch hands and theft of a pair of cowboy boots.
Around 11:50 a.m., Williams and Coler, driving two separate unmarked cars, radioed that they were following a white and red Chevrolet Suburban Carryall, reportedly carrying Peltier, Norman Charles, and Joe Stuntz. Peltier had an outstanding federal warrant for the attempted murder of a Milwaukee police officer, although Williams and Coler were not aware of this. Charles had met with Williams and Coler the evening before, when the agents explained to Charles they were looking for Eagle. After turning off US 18 into the Jumping Bull Ranch, where the Jumping Bull family had allowed AIM to camp, the occupants of the Suburban stopped and exited the vehicle. A firefight ensued.
According to other FBI agents' recollection (of unrecorded radio transmissions), Williams radioed to a local dispatch that he and Coler had come under fire from the vehicle's occupants and would be killed if reinforcements did not arrive. He next radioed that they both had been shot. FBI Special Agent Gary Adams was the first to respond to Williams' call for assistance from away. But he and the other responding BIA officers also came under gunfire. They were unable to reach Coler and Williams in time, as both agents died within the first ten minutes of gunfire. It was not until about 4:25 p.m. that authorities recovered the bodies of Williams and Coler from Coler's vehicle. The FBI has stated that Norman Charles fired at the agents with a stolen British .308 rifle, and Peltier from an AR-15 rifle. The two agents had fired a total of five shots: two from Williams' handgun, one from Coler's handgun, one from Coler's rifle, and one from Coler's shotgun. In total, 125 bullet holes were found in the agents' vehicles, many from a .223 Remington AR-15 rifle. Coler was 28 years old and Williams was 27.
The FBI reported that Williams received a defensive wound to his right hand (as he attempted to shield his face) from a bullet that passed through his hand into his head. Williams was shot in the body and foot, before the lethal contact shot to the head. Coler, incapacitated from earlier bullet wounds, was shot twice in the head.
Williams's car was driven into the AIM camp farther south on the Jumping Bull property and stripped. The agents' guns were stolen. Allegedly, Darrelle Butler took Williams' handgun, Peltier took Coler's, and Robert Robideau took Coler's .308 and shotgun. Stuntz was found wearing Coler's FBI jacket after he was shot and killed by a BIA agent later that day.
Aftermath At least three men were arrested in connection with the shooting: Peltier, Robert Robideau, and Darrelle "Dino" Butler, all AIM members who were present at the Jumping Bull compound at the time of the shootings.
Peltier provided numerous alibis to several people about his activities on the morning of the attacks."Leonard Peltier's Different Views of June 26, 1975 ", News from Indian Country In an interview for Peter Matthiessen's 1983 book In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, Peltier described working on a car in Oglala, claiming he had driven back to the Jumping Bull Compound about an hour before the shooting started. In an interview with Lee Hill, though, he described being awakened in his tent at the ranch encampment by the sound of gunshots; but to Harvey Arden, for Prison Writings, he described enjoying the beautiful morning before he heard the firing. In his 1999 memoir Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance, Peltier admitted to participating in the shootout but said he did not kill the FBI agents.
On September 5, Butler was arrested; Agent Williams' handgun and ammunition were recovered from an automobile in the vicinity. Four days later, Peltier bought a station wagon. The following day, AIM member Robideau, Charles and Anderson were injured in the accidental explosion of ammunition from Peltier's station wagon on the Kansas Turnpike close to Wichita. Coler's .308 and an AR-15 were found in the burned vehicle. The FBI forwarded a description of a recreational vehicle (RV) and Peltier's Plymouth station wagon to law enforcement during the hunt for the suspects. The RV was stopped by an Oregon state trooper, but the driver, later discovered to be Peltier, fled on foot after a small shootout. Peltier's thumbprint and Coler's handgun were discovered under the RV's front seat.
Trial
On December 22, 1975, Peltier was named to the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. On February 6, 1976, Peltier was arrested along with Frank Blackhorse by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Hinton, Alberta, Canada at the Smallboy Camp, transported to Calgary, Alberta and taken to the Oakalla Prison Farm in Vancouver, British Columbia.