Among Joe Biden’s final actions as his presidential term wound to a close was the commutation of Leonard Peltier, an 80-year-old Indigenous activist who had been federally imprisoned for almost 50 years. Peltier was the longest imprisoned Native American political prisoner in U.S. history and one of the oldest people held in federal detention.
The announcement of Peltier’s release marks the culmination of a decadeslong campaign led by Indigenous activists. In addition to advocating for Peltier’s freedom, these efforts also illuminate both the struggles of aging political prisoners and the impact of the U.S. criminal legal system on Indigenous communities—crucial issues that often go under-acknowledged.
In 1977, Peltier was sentenced to two consecutive life terms for the 1975 murder of two FBI agents. Peltier has always maintained his innocence, and prosecutors—including some who were initially involved in Peltier’s trial—have voiced skepticism about the merits of the case.
“Indigenous people and oppressed people everywhere see a little bit of themselves in Leonard Peltier’s struggle. It’s like his liberation is our liberation,” said Nick Tilsen, founder of NDN Collective, a national organization dedicated to building Indigenous power and self-determination. “It has been such a stark reminder of what this country and other colonial countries around the world have done to Indigenous people and oppressed people. In spanning decades, his struggle continued to illuminate the reality of what was happening to Indian people everywhere.”
Biden’s announcement is not a pardon but a commutation, meaning that Peltier will have to serve the rest of his sentence in home confinement. Tilsen said that he will know more about the rules and restrictions around Peltier’s home confinement in the coming weeks.
Other advocacy groups also welcomed the news. Edgar Villanueva, CEO and principal of Decolonizing Wealth Project and Liberated Capital, described Peltier and his case in a press release as representing “both the deep wounds and the possibility of healing in the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the United States government.”
The campaign to free Peltier through either a pardon or commutation was led for decades by Indigenous rights groups, particularly those within the American Indian Movement (AIM), which was most active in the 1960s and 1970s, and in recent years, the NDN Collective. Coalitions on behalf of Peltier have petitioned every U.S. president since Jimmy Carter for his release; his latest bid for parole was denied as recently as last July.
Biden’s order is set to go into effect Feb. 18, though organizers with NDN Collective and other groups are pushing the Federal Bureau of Prisons to release Peltier earlier due to concerns around his deteriorating health and the inadequacy of health care at Coleman 1, the Florida facility where he is incarcerated. Over the decades, Peltier has suffered from kidney disease, diabetes, and eye conditions that have led to near blindness; in January 2016, he was diagnosed with an abdominal aortic aneurysm.
These health complications both added urgency to his liberation campaign and also reflected some of the unique plights of elderly incarcerated people, a population that has only been growing across the U.S. According to the Prison Policy Initiative (PPI), between 1991 to 2021, the elderly prison population has increased fivefold. This growth has been even more profound for people serving life sentences like Peltier. In 2020, 30% of people serving life sentences were at least 55 years old, according to PPI.
Not only do life sentences saddle incarcerated people with the immense grief of knowing they will die in confinement, but research has shown that people in prison face more chronic and life-threatening illnesses and see the onset of symptoms earlier than their counterparts on the outside.
The decadeslong campaign seeking Peltier’s freedom also highlights how the U.S. government has historically targeted Indigenous communities both through the criminal legal system and through other avenues of surveillance and detention, advocates say.
In addition to surviving federal incarceration, Peltier is also a survivor of Native American boarding schools. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to residential schools as a part of federal assimilation policies. The schools were rife with physical, emotional, and psychological abuse, inflicting violence upon Indigenous children and families that continues to reverberate and that the broader American public is only fully beginning to understand.
Between 1952 and 1955, Peltier attended the Wahpeton Indian School in North Dakota. In a letter sent to Native News Online in 2022, Peltier wrote of being forced to attend the school from the age of 9 after U.S. government officials ordered his grandmother to hand over custody of him and his sisters, threatening her with jail if she did not comply.
In recalling the moment when he was torn from his grandmother’s home, Peltier wrote, “Maybe that day was my introduction to this destiny I did not choose. … I found out in boarding school I had no rights. So I guess I am not surprised that at 77 and still locked up, it is the same for me now.”
Tilsen of NDN Collective noted the importance of highlighting the long arc of Peltier’s story and understanding what it represents to the Indigenous communities that have long organized on his behalf.
“Peltier survived when the United States government was trying to terminate all federally recognized tribes. He grew up there and then he was taken away at the age of 9 to a federally funded Indian boarding school where he experienced atrocities,” Tilsen said. “Then when he came out of that, Indian people were living in poverty and being over-incarcerated across the whole United States, and that struggle birthed the American Indian Movement.”
The movements that Peltier organized within helped not only secure pivotal civil rights legislation, such as the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, but also inspired a sense of cultural pride that continues today.
Over the decades, Peltier has gained support from dignitaries and celebrities, including South African anti-apartheid leader Desmond Tutu and American actor Robert Redford. In 2022, AIM and NDN Collective members staged a massive public action, walking from Minneapolis to Washington, D.C., to raise public awareness about Peltier. Earlier this month, a coalition of 120 former and current tribal leaders signed a letter to Biden urging him to release Peltier immediately.
The steadfastness with which generations of organizers have managed Peltier’s clemency campaign is evidenced by Tilsen’s own family: His grandfather was a lawyer who helped Peltier, and his father was a volunteer for his medical team defense committee.
Now, organizers are preparing for the next phase of supporting Peltier once he returns home. Last year, NDN Collective purchased a home for Peltier in Belcourt, North Dakota. The move was strategic as it strengthened Peltier’s release plan by ensuring that he had a safe place to return to, and it also provided a source of hope and aspiration for Peltier while still inside. Tilsen said that when Peltier called him from prison, reading the announcement from Biden there was a “lightness” in his voice and a sense of elation that he had never heard before. When returning home, Peltier has expressed wanting to make art, specifically portraits, support young people in his community, and share his story.
“I think that’s going to be important because they didn’t give him a pardon, they just commuted the sentence,” Tilsen said. “So part of the strategy has always been ‘commute the sentence, and when we get out, the truth-telling can clear your name.’”
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