{"id":38498,"date":"2025-03-01T10:11:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-01T15:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/hello-everybody-leonard-peltier-gets-a-warriors-welcome\/"},"modified":"2025-03-01T10:11:04","modified_gmt":"2025-03-01T15:11:04","slug":"hello-everybody-leonard-peltier-gets-a-warriors-welcome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/hello-everybody-leonard-peltier-gets-a-warriors-welcome\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Hello, everybody\u2019: Leonard Peltier gets a warrior\u2019s welcome"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Longtime activist Leonard Peltier, center, raises his fist while facing the hundreds of people gathered for a welcome home celebration on Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2025, for the 80-year-old Turtle Mountain Chippewa activist, who was released from federal prison the day before after 49 years in prison. (Photo by Kevin Abourezk\/ICT)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

BELCOURT, N.D. \u2013 An event 49 years in the making erupted inside a casino event center Wednesday on the Turtle Mountain Reservation.
\nAs drummers sang, 80-year-old Chippewa and Lakota activist Leonard Peltier walked into a room full of nearly 500 supporters and family members during a welcome home celebration.
\nLed by Native dancers in regalia, he walked past banners that read \u201cRise up. Free Leonard Peltier,\u201d \u201cEnough is enough. Free Leonard Peltier,\u201d and \u201cLeonard\u2019s liberation is our liberation.\u201d
\nAnd past a teepee draped with a banner that read \u201cWelcome home Leonard Peltier.\u201d
\nNick Tilsen, the founder and chief executive of NDN Collective\u00a0\u2014\u00a0a Native nonprofit that worked to secure Peltier\u2019s release\u00a0\u2014\u00a0led Peltier through the crowd as supporters let loose war whoops and held cell phones high in the air to capture the moment.
\nThe children of late American Indian Movement activists like Clyde Bellecourt\u00a0\u2014\u00a0whose son Little Crow Bellecourt sang at a drum\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and Peltier\u2019s own children paid homage to the nearly five-decade imprisonment of a man whose plight became synonymous with the fight for Indigenous justice worldwide.
\nTilsen\u2019s own grandfather, Ken Tilsen, defended many of AIM\u2019s members who were arrested and jailed following the 1973 siege at Wounded Knee.
\nPeltier was released from federal prison in Sumterville, Florida, on Tuesday, Feb. 18, to make the journey home. Outgoing President Joe Biden issued an order as he was leaving office Jan. 20 to grant clemency to Peltier, who suffered from serious health problems, including diabetes, vision loss, heart problems, an aortic aneurysm and the lingering effects of COVID-19.
\nUntil Biden\u2019s last-minute action, Peltier had repeatedly been denied parole, pardon, clemency and compassionate release and had seen eight presidents leave office without pardoning him or commuting his sentence.
\nHis release came after decades of grassroots organizing in Indian Country and the presentation of evidence of misconduct and constitutional violations during the prosecution of Peltier\u2019s case.
\nFighting for Indigenous rights
\nAfter listening to several honoring songs Wednesday, Peltier sat down at a long table facing the crowd, and Tilsen thanked the many Native leaders who fought for Indigenous rights during the tumultuous 1970s.
\n\u201cThat generation stood up against the most powerful government in the world and they instilled that pride back into our people,\u201d he said. \u201cThey instilled that fight back into our people. This effort was successful because we walked on prayer, because we walked in our ceremonies. That was the foundation of this effort.\u201d<\/p>\n

He promised to continue the work of those Indigenous civil rights leaders who came before him.
\n\u201cWe are on a continuum of 500 years of Indigenous resistance, but today, today is a victory day,\u201d he said.
\nPeltier then stood and took the microphone. Wearing a sheep-skin denim coat and a ribbon shirt, the soft-spoken elder\u2019s voice struggled to fill the large room, but in the nearly complete silence he managed to tell his story.
\n\u201cHello, everybody,\u201d he said. Shouts of \u201cwe love you!\u201d came back.
\n\u201cI spent 49 years straight in prison for something I didn\u2019t do and was not legally convicted of,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He said Robert Robideau and Darrelle \u201cDino\u201d Butler \u2014the other two men arrested in the shooting deaths of FBI agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams \u2014 were exonerated as having simply defended themselves during the shootout on June 26, 1975.<\/p>\n

Peltier was not convicted of killing the agents, but he served 49 years after being convicted of aiding and abetting in their murder.
\nHe said the federal government felt compelled to put its \u201cfull weight\u201d into ensuring his conviction by whatever means necessary.
\n\u201cI was no more guilty than my co-defendants,\u201d he said.
\nHe said his time in prison was difficult and he wasn\u2019t sure he would survive. Not long after he was first imprisoned, he was placed in a sensory deprivation cell in which he experienced total darkness and had only a blanket.
\n\u201cWhen I first went into prison, they treated me like shit, man,\u201d he said.
\nA parole commission\u2019s decision on June 10, 2024, to deny him parole for another 15 more years was like a \u201cdeath sentence,\u201d he said.
\nPeltier will face home confinement for his final days, but, he said, \u201cIt\u2019s a lot better than living in a cell.\u201d
\n\u201cThey tried all kinds of different things, but I beat them. I beat the bastards,\u201d he said to thunderous applause.<\/p>\n

The post \u2018Hello, everybody\u2019: Leonard Peltier gets a warrior\u2019s welcome<\/a> first appeared on Native Sun News Today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Longtime activist Leonard Peltier, center, raises his fist while facing the hundreds of people gathered for a welcome home celebration on Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2025, for the 80-year-old Turtle Mountain Chippewa activist, who was released from federal prison the day before after 49 years in prison. (Photo by Kevin Abourezk\/ICT) <\/p>\n

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