Indigenous historian: Peltier commutation a victory, 50 years too late
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In 1975, two FBI agents were shot and killed in Oglala, S.D., on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Their deaths came at a time of high tensions between the U.S. government and activists for Native American civil rights. Now, the man convicted of their murder is getting out of prison.
”It’s a moral indictment on the very people and the system that kept him falsely imprisoned for five decades,” said historian Nick Estes, a member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe who teaches American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota.
Estes recapped the events that led to the trials and conviction of Leonard Peltier, whose life sentence was commuted by President Joe Biden on Monday, in a conversation with MPR News host Cathy Wurzer. He said tensions among the FBI, the Guardians of the Oglala Nation, known at the time as the GOON squad, and the American Indian Movement came to a head on June 26, 1975, in Oglala, S.D.
The below transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. Click the player above to hear the conversation.
What were the tensions about that led to the shootout?
After the American Indian Movement’s occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973, when AIM with members of the Oglala nation, took over the hamlet of Oglala, the FBI came in to crush the movement. And Leonard Peltier (who was a member of AIM), and the people that he was with in Oglala at that time, were called upon by the elders of the Oglala community to protect them against vigilante violence from the GOON squad and harassment by the FBI.
Tensions were very high at that particular moment in time. What led to the shootout was an escalation of of violence, particularly fomented by the FBI and this vigilante GOON squad. So that was the lead up to that particular confrontation.
Unfortunately, it led to bloodshed and death. Besides the two FBI agents that were killed, a young American Indian man named Joe Stuntz was also killed, and his death and murder have never been investigated.
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Two other members of AIM were acquitted. Peltier was not. How have Native peoples seen Peltier’s case in all these years?
That's an interesting point, because his two co-defendants, Bob Robideau and Dino Butler, were acquitted on grounds of self-defense. The federal appeals courts found that they had no evidence actually tying Leonard Peltier for the murder of these two agents, so they said he was aiding and abetting a murder. So Peltier was found to have aided and abetted murder for the killing of these two FBI agents, but you can’t aid and abet self-defense.
So, the legal argument that has kept him in prison is kind of false, and is pretty unprecedented, especially in 2025. Many Native people across the country, Indian country, have been steadfast in their support for five decades, despite the misinformation, despite the narrative that has been perpetrated by the FBI.
His commutation is a huge victory because he represents the disproportionate incarceration of Native people, the attempts to crush one of the more progressive movements to come out of our communities, the Red Power Movement, the American Indian Movement, and to really capture and distort that history.
This is a huge victory — a long time coming. People who have worked on this campaign have passed. There’s a new generation of people; the people who really reignited the flame weren't even alive when the shootout happened. So, it shows you that this is an intergenerational movement, intergenerational struggle that reaches across time and space.
How far do you think this goes in addressing those injustices?
It goes a long way, but this is five decades too late. It should have never happened.
In many ways, it's a moral indictment on the very people and the system that kept him falsely imprisoned for five decades. But I do think for many, especially his family, it’s a step toward healing and getting their father, their family member, their relative, their community member back.
But nothing is going to give back five decades of the incarceration and the violence and the trauma that is inflicted, not just on his family but on all of Indian country.
