Speaker 1: Before and after seventeen seventy six, European colonizers traveled to
Speaker 1: the Americas, slowly eroding indigenous land as they went. When
Speaker 1: uranium was discovered in the Black Hills of South Dakota,
Speaker 1: the US government sought to take land from the Oglala
Speaker 1: Sioux and deliver it to private enterprise. Thus began a
Speaker 1: reign of terror in nineteen seventy two that led to
Speaker 1: over sixty unsolved murders on the Pine Ridge Reservation and
Speaker 1: came to a climax in a nineteen seventy five firefight
Speaker 1: that left one Native man and two federal agent instead.
Speaker 1: Now by FBI estimates, forty two Native people were engaged
Speaker 1: in the firefight with swatims from all around the country
Speaker 1: that had been lying in wait, but the chaos and
Speaker 1: crossfire made it very difficult to pinpoint who was responsible
Speaker 1: for the deaths. Two Native men were tried and acquitted
Speaker 1: on the grounds of self defense, so and evidence changed
Speaker 1: when they then tried one of the leaders of the
Speaker 1: American Indian Movement, Leonard Peltier, sending him away for two
Speaker 1: consecutive life sentences. This is wrongful conviction. You're listening to
Speaker 1: wrongful conviction. You can listen to this and all the
Speaker 1: Lava for Good podcasts one week early n AD free
Speaker 1: by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction. I mean, I have a
Speaker 1: lot of heroes, and I've had the chance to meet
Speaker 1: and interview many of them, but none greater than the
Speaker 1: man that we're interviewing today. He's very humble, so he
Speaker 1: probably hates the sound of that, but I got to
Speaker 1: say it like it is. Leonard Peltier is an American
Speaker 1: legend of civil rights who survived countless assassination attend dodged hundreds,
Speaker 1: if not thousands, of bullets, escaped from federal prisons, from
Speaker 1: manhunts from the country. I mean, I feel like Johnny
Speaker 1: Depp needs to play you, Leonard in a movie someday.
Speaker 1: I hope he will.
Speaker 2: Johnny and I are okay perfect.
Speaker 1: Then we're going to produce this movie. And I'm joined
Speaker 1: today by Ben Bolin, one of my favorite podcasters, who's
Speaker 1: going to be co hosting this episode and this season
Speaker 1: of Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 3: Yes, sir, on stuff they don't want you to do.
Speaker 3: My colleagues and I intensely studied aim the American Indian
Speaker 3: Movement your story as well. We are overjoyed to be
Speaker 3: speaking with you today when you have emerged from what
Speaker 3: I would call a gross miscarriage of American justice.
Speaker 1: And later on we're going to be joined by one
Speaker 1: of Leonard's co defendants, Darryl Dino Butler, who was acquitted
Speaker 1: in a separate trial. We will also speak with a
Speaker 1: member of Leonard's original defense, Bruce Allison, who has remained
Speaker 1: steadfast two and four Leonard for the last fifty years,
Speaker 1: as well as legal legend Ron Kobe and Holly maccaro,
Speaker 1: a tribal advocate who was instrumental in winning Leonard's clemency,
Speaker 1: but before Leonard's ronful incarceration, prosecution, or even his political activism.
Speaker 1: Leonard or Tate Wikowa was born in nineteen forty four
Speaker 1: in North Dakota.
Speaker 2: My English name is Leonard Peltier. I'm a nation Abbi
Speaker 2: were called Chipwa and many different places, and were called
Speaker 2: Sue's also Lakota in a number of different places, but
Speaker 2: those are our real names. I'm eighty years old. I've
Speaker 2: just got out of prison after spending forty nine point
Speaker 2: juniors in federal prisons across the country. I have been
Speaker 2: an activist since I was nine years old when I
Speaker 2: was first taken from my home and forcibly put into
Speaker 2: a boarding school. How it happened was my grandmother and
Speaker 2: grand father basically adopted us and was raising myself and
Speaker 2: my sister Betty, and my cousin Pauline. And then Grandpa,
Speaker 2: who was a provider for the family, died in fifty two.
Speaker 2: Grandma was by herself, so she thought, well, I got
Speaker 2: to have some help to feed these kids. So she
Speaker 2: went to the BIA agency and asked for help.
Speaker 3: And BIA is the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Speaker 2: Yes, and they found an excuse to take us and
Speaker 2: put us in a boarding school in Watson, North Dakota,
Speaker 2: and they were trying to beat the Native language and
Speaker 2: religion and culture out of us.
Speaker 3: Today, the BIA is part of the Federal Department of
Speaker 3: the Interior and now manages about fifty six million acres
Speaker 3: of land held in trust with Native nations, and they
Speaker 3: implement federal laws and policy regarding policing, resources, agricul infrastructure,
Speaker 3: economic issues. But back in the fifties, the federal government
Speaker 3: was on a mission to assimilate Native people into Anglo
Speaker 3: American culture. It's a mission that began even before the
Speaker 3: eighteen eighty three Code of Indian Offenses. That code outlawed
Speaker 3: various Indigenous religious practices for the comfort of their new
Speaker 3: European neighbors, we could call them. And so, even in
Speaker 3: the aftermath of World War Two, in which so many
Speaker 3: Native men served, fought, and died, for Leonard and his siblings,
Speaker 3: getting food assistants meant being ripped away from their families,
Speaker 3: robbed of their language and religion, in a boarding school
Speaker 3: system where abuse ran rampant.
Speaker 2: I myself almost died when I was ten years old
Speaker 2: escaping from there. But I wasn't the only child, and
Speaker 2: this was not the only school. I was just one
Speaker 2: of thousands of kids that were facing this type of brutality.
Speaker 2: That's when my political activism started. When I got there,
Speaker 2: there was already a group of older kids that had
Speaker 2: started a group called Resistors, and we would go behind
Speaker 2: the gymnasm and sing our songs and talk native to
Speaker 2: each other and our prayers and stuff like this. I
Speaker 2: was there from nineteen fifty three to nineteen fifty six.
Speaker 2: I happened to go in there at a time when
Speaker 2: I hit it. Lucky the people were lobbying, and the
Speaker 2: soldiers were lobbying the President of the United States Eisenhower,
Speaker 2: and so Eisenhower put out a presidential order no more
Speaker 2: maltreatment of the Indian kids and the schools, because there
Speaker 2: was so many kids that were literally becoming lost. They
Speaker 2: call them and they don't know what happened to them.
Speaker 3: You may have seen the news articles in the last
Speaker 3: decade or so about the discovery of mass graves near
Speaker 3: old Native boarding schools. So while Eisenhower's intervention was a
Speaker 3: welcome public change in tone in the nineteen fifties, we
Speaker 3: have to remember a nefarious agenda was still afoot. It's
Speaker 3: an agenda that began even before the first iteration of
Speaker 3: the BIA, way back when it was called the Committee
Speaker 3: on Indian Affairs under Ben Franklin. This committee oversaw trade
Speaker 3: and treaty relations. The authority was transferred to the Secretary
Speaker 3: of War in seventeen eighty nine, and this led to
Speaker 3: a century of wars, treaties, broken treaties, and above all,
Speaker 3: the slow erosion of indigenous land.
Speaker 2: When they first got here, the first lands they took
Speaker 2: with our agricultural land, all of the vegetables and stuff
Speaker 2: you see on the table came from us. Our farmers
Speaker 2: domesticated a while vegetable into a domesticated one, and we
Speaker 2: had some of the best agricultural land in the world.
Speaker 2: So they took us off of that and put us
Speaker 2: on barren land that they didn't take we would ever
Speaker 2: exist then, I mean, you can find writings where they
Speaker 2: said this, they should not be able to live through
Speaker 2: somebody's lands that they put us on. But we did
Speaker 2: because we knew how to develop barn land into productive land.
Speaker 3: But as more Europeans arrived, the transgressions continued, like the
Speaker 3: Indian Removal Act of eighteen thirty signed by then President
Speaker 3: Andrew Jackson, which meant for the Natives who would not assimilate,
Speaker 3: they would be moved west of the Mississippi River into
Speaker 3: what was at that time called Indian Territory. Yet in
Speaker 3: the eighteen thirty four Worcester v. Georgia Supreme Court decision,
Speaker 3: the court ruled in favor of previous treaties and the
Speaker 3: sovereignty of the Cherokee Nation.
Speaker 1: Jackson notoriously infamously remarked, let's see them enforce it, and
Speaker 1: in one of the first times in American history, a
Speaker 1: sitting President ignored the Supreme Court and began the deadly
Speaker 1: trail of tears, marching the Cherokees from their rightful place
Speaker 1: in Georgia to present day Oklahoma.
Speaker 3: And over the following half century, many more wars were
Speaker 3: fought and new treaties were signed, only spoiler to later
Speaker 3: be broken again. Probably the most egregious land grab occurs
Speaker 3: in eighteen eighty seven, when the US Congress passes the
Speaker 3: DAWs Act under the guise of assimilation. This act divides
Speaker 3: land that was collectively held by various Native nations into
Speaker 3: what they called individual land allotments, like the ones settled
Speaker 3: by their European counterparts, and then once settled. This leaves
Speaker 3: one hundred and thirty eight million surplus acres of Native nations.
Speaker 1: Land, which was then made available for purchase by non natives,
Speaker 1: and by nineteen thirty four, only forty eight million of
Speaker 1: those acres remained, at which point the Indian Reorganization Act
Speaker 1: sought to drastically change the relationship by ending assimilation mandates,
Speaker 1: encouraging tribal self governance and constitutions, elections in corporation for
Speaker 1: resource management, and that tribal land would be protected by
Speaker 1: the federal government, and any federal lands that were unused
Speaker 1: would be returned to native control. But of the ninety
Speaker 1: out of one hundred and thirty eight million acres to
Speaker 1: be returned by twenty ten, only about eight percent of
Speaker 1: them had been restored. Unsurprisingly, it appears that economic interests
Speaker 1: caused a change of course.
Speaker 2: As time went by, they start to find out that
Speaker 2: the Baron lands they put us on was rich in
Speaker 2: minerals uranium, uranium, gold, silver, I mean copper. They wanted
Speaker 2: this land for themselves, so they started again a system
Speaker 2: of termination for us. In nineteen fifty six, they were
Speaker 2: starting to write American Termination Act, which was supposed to
Speaker 2: be completed by nineteen eighty five, and that was to
Speaker 2: terminate all Indian reservations in this country. They were going
Speaker 2: to supposedly buy our lands. But the first reservation to
Speaker 2: be terminated was the Monominee of Wisconsin. Then they came
Speaker 2: here to the Turtle Mountain, chip Or Cree Nation and
Speaker 2: told us that we had to leave, we had to relocate.
Speaker 2: But my father that his generation fought back. I was
Speaker 2: only thirteen years old and I was able to participate.
Speaker 2: We fought back here and literally drove them away. From
Speaker 2: terminating this nation. And it wasn't just Turtle Mountains, it
Speaker 2: was Pine Ridge. All of us was in that danger.
Speaker 3: And part of that termination policy was the Indian Relocation Program,
Speaker 3: through which the BA promised economic opportunity in urban areas,
Speaker 3: offering vocational training and relocation assistance. Yet the Native people
Speaker 3: who were willing to believe in this promise often found
Speaker 3: nothing but low wage opportunities, racial discrimination, poverty, homelessness. Yet Leonard,
Speaker 3: at this point is still young. It's nineteen fifty eight.
Speaker 3: After being sure that there were no reports of abuse,
Speaker 3: he enrolls in a boarding school in Land Crew, South Dakota.
Speaker 3: Upon arrival, he's called to a meeting by other Native teens.
Speaker 2: So this guy comes over, I think he was sophomore,
Speaker 2: and he said, come down to the rec room. We're
Speaker 2: going to talk to all of you guys. So we
Speaker 2: go down there and this guy comes I take he
Speaker 2: was a senior, and he said, there is a group
Speaker 2: of white boys driving around the city Flinger of South Dakota,
Speaker 2: and they're picking up these young Indian girls by force,
Speaker 2: taking them out in the country. They're beating them up,
Speaker 2: they're raping them, and they're leaving them out there to die.
Speaker 2: Your job is to escort them from the boarding school
Speaker 2: grounds to the movies, and there was a soda shop
Speaker 2: right next door to it. Your job is to protect him.
Speaker 2: And I know, I was, Yeah, we'll be there, goddamn rights,
Speaker 2: we'll be there.
Speaker 1: But why did these teenagers feel responsible for public safety? Well,
Speaker 1: according to the Major Crimes Act of eighteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: the tribal police only had jurisdiction over nonviolent crimes committed
Speaker 1: by Native people, while federal authorities had jurisdiction over all
Speaker 1: violent crimes, no matter who committed them, So federal authorities
Speaker 1: were typically approached after the fact by Native crime victims,
Speaker 1: as they were. In reference to a South Dakota teenager
Speaker 1: named Bill Janklow.
Speaker 2: Bill Janquell, his family was a very rich racture and
Speaker 2: this one girl gets beat up. He raped her and everything,
Speaker 2: and they thought she was knocked out, and she got
Speaker 2: Bill Jenkuill license plate number, and that's how they caught him.
Speaker 2: He pled guilty. He was given a choice of either
Speaker 2: going to a farm school till he was twenty one
Speaker 2: or going into the military for two years. So he
Speaker 2: goes to the military, serves two years, it comes out
Speaker 2: and he goes to college on a GI bill and
Speaker 2: he gets a lawyer's degree. So he comes back to
Speaker 2: the South Dakota area and somehow he's the leader part
Speaker 2: of the agency that handles all Rosebud funding from Washington.
Speaker 2: He's married, now got two kids, and he starts doing
Speaker 2: it again.
Speaker 3: In January nineteen sixty seven, when Janklow was the director
Speaker 3: of the Rosebudsoe Legal Services Program, he allegedly raped a
Speaker 3: young woman whom he employed as a babysitter. Her name
Speaker 3: Jensita Eagle Deer.
Speaker 2: The head of the BI Police Department was telling us
Speaker 2: he takes Bill Janquell to jail, he makes a call
Speaker 2: and the FBI comes in said, you've got no jurisdiction.
Speaker 2: You've got to let him out. That's the way it
Speaker 2: was back. So Bill Jenkle was never charged for raping
Speaker 2: Genese to Eagle there or any of those other young
Speaker 2: girls they were children. He never was charged for that.
Speaker 2: He starts running for office for the Attorney General's office.
Speaker 1: And Jancy the Eagle Deer's allegations resurface.
Speaker 2: So we were demonstrating raising hell and talking about we
Speaker 2: want this son of a bitch in jail or some
Speaker 2: god damn thing. He's raped numerous of our children. We
Speaker 2: were pissed. We couldn't get nobody and listened to us.
Speaker 2: So we become an active enemy of Bill Jenkles and
Speaker 2: he becomes the Attorney General of South Dakota. God and
Speaker 2: the attorney general himself was outraged. He said, I don't
Speaker 2: believe this. You have kicked me out of office and
Speaker 2: elected a admitted rapist child molest her.
Speaker 3: Soon after that election, Jencita Eagle Deer is killed in
Speaker 3: a hit and run accident, and Bill Jinklow went on
Speaker 3: to be the twenty seventh and then thirtieth governor of
Speaker 3: South Dakota before a stint in Congress that gets cut
Speaker 3: short when Jinkler runs through a stop sign at about
Speaker 3: sixty five miles per hour and kills a motorcyclist.
Speaker 2: He hits him on his motorcycle and kills him, and
Speaker 2: his father, who was happy to be a successful rancher, himself, said,
Speaker 2: this guy ain't gonna get away with this, not this time. Well,
Speaker 2: he got found guilty in a trial, but he was
Speaker 2: sentenced to weekend in prison. So what they were having
Speaker 2: him do is coming in the morning Saturday morning and
Speaker 2: Sunday night, he would sign out to go back to
Speaker 2: his job.
Speaker 1: I don't want to sound cynical, but it's almost like
Speaker 1: the white, wealthy and well connected experience a completely different
Speaker 1: version of the legal system. Is that to an extreme,
Speaker 1: and so the righteous commitment to justice that drove their
Speaker 1: opposition to not only the protection of Janklow but also
Speaker 1: his elevated status.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: That driving force continued to guide Leonard when he moved
Speaker 1: to Seattle, Washington in nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 2: My uncle Toby he'd probably get me a job up there,
Speaker 2: so I did. I went up there. Later on I
Speaker 2: met this state of he was older than me. It's
Speaker 2: like a father to me. Howard Miller, him and I
Speaker 2: got to talking about opening a auto shop. We did.
Speaker 2: And I was staying with Howard and his wife and
Speaker 2: come home for supper and I'm watching there was a
Speaker 2: demonstration going on about the fishing and hunting, the struggles
Speaker 2: that was going on since the forties or whatever. Way
Speaker 2: back there. In nineteen fifty five, Marlon Branda got involved
Speaker 2: and even got arrested, and it just kept escalating, and
Speaker 2: they were out there tear gashing and beaten out the people,
Speaker 2: and they had this one young lady. He had about
Speaker 2: a five six year old son. They had ripped her
Speaker 2: blouse and everything, which was a common practice they did
Speaker 2: to the women. And there was beaten on her. And
Speaker 2: this little boy come running up there and they said,
Speaker 2: don't hit her, and he started beating him. So I
Speaker 2: told Howe, I said, you can have everything. I'm going
Speaker 2: on with them.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna go fight with them.
Speaker 2: I started getting involved, and I started joining different organizations,
Speaker 2: and one of the ones was the Alcatraz occupation.
Speaker 3: According to several treaties and the Indian Reorganization Act of
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty four, surplus federal lands were supposed to be
Speaker 3: returned to Native people. So with Alcatraz the penitentiary closed
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty three, it should have but was not
Speaker 3: returned to its rightful tribe. From November of nineteen sixty
Speaker 3: nine to July of nineteen seventy one, a collective of
Speaker 3: Native organizations, including the American Indian Movement or AIM, occupied
Speaker 3: this island Alcatraz under the following banner Indians of Old Tribes.
Speaker 3: And this was not the only action taken for land reclamation.
Speaker 2: We were doing the same thing on Fort Lawton that
Speaker 2: land was being given to the city for one dollar,
Speaker 2: and the city didn't want it. We've got too many
Speaker 2: parks now, we can't pay for them, so let dominions
Speaker 2: have it with the rich and people that were involved
Speaker 2: in it had plans on building whatever. Would you give
Speaker 2: it up. They finally gave us fifteen acres, but that
Speaker 2: was nothing compared to I think it was fifteen hunderd
Speaker 2: acres there. But those were the type of actions that
Speaker 2: we were going and we got a confrontation with the
Speaker 2: army there, and the military one of the things that
Speaker 2: they did that still stays in my mind, and I
Speaker 2: kind of believe that they would have never used them
Speaker 2: on us. But one time they got off their buses
Speaker 2: and they had flame drawers and so a lot of
Speaker 2: people left to the back trail. But they never used them,
Speaker 2: of course, but it was used as a tactic of
Speaker 2: fear against us.
Speaker 1: But the American Indian Movement wasn't deterred. In nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: they organized a caravan to Washington that picked up more
Speaker 1: numbers as it drove through other nativations along the way,
Speaker 1: until they had about two thousand people descending on the
Speaker 1: BIA building in a protest called the Trail of Broken Treaties.
Speaker 2: We went to Washington to the Burevern and Affairs, that's
Speaker 2: our White House, hoping we could get an audience with
Speaker 2: somebody that could help us, because we were not getting
Speaker 2: any help back there on the reservations and the termination
Speaker 2: was being enforced upon us, and they're supposed to be
Speaker 2: protecting us. Of course they weren't. They were fighting against
Speaker 2: us to eliminate our control of our lands and depend
Speaker 2: on the United States government for handouts. That's how they
Speaker 2: controlled us. They forced us to submit to them through
Speaker 2: these handouts, and people were tired about it. We wanted
Speaker 2: to bring our treaties back up to them and make
Speaker 2: them abide by their promises, and of course they weren't
Speaker 2: doing that. So when we got there, we all ended
Speaker 2: up in the parking lot, parked our cars and demonstrating
Speaker 2: around the Bureau of Indian Affairs building. Like I said,
Speaker 2: it's supposed to be our white house, and the superintendent,
Speaker 2: Leo Bruce, was supposed to be our president, although he
Speaker 2: was appointed but whatever party was in power at the time.
Speaker 2: So we went in and asked them. We said, look,
Speaker 2: we got all these people here, old people, some of
Speaker 2: our headsmen and chiefs and stuff like this. And we
Speaker 2: got children out there, us young people to sleep out
Speaker 2: on the ground. We don't care about that, but we
Speaker 2: want you to give these people lodging somehow. Lei Bruce UPSI,
Speaker 2: I can't do that. I ain't got to fund it,
Speaker 2: and got to well, what are you doing with the
Speaker 2: millions and millions of dollars that goes into the budget
Speaker 2: every year, Why can't you take care of our elders?
Speaker 2: We know, lion, we knew that. And Russell Mean said
Speaker 2: you're not going to let you do the Star elders,
Speaker 2: and it escalated into occupation.
Speaker 3: And during this six day occupation in November nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 3: AIM leadership rifled through the BIA's documents. Bruce Ellison, who
Speaker 3: supported AIM as an attorney throughout the standoff at Wounded Knees,
Speaker 3: South Dakota in nineteen seventy three, as well as in
Speaker 3: the aftermath of the shootout at Pine Ridge in nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy five. Well Bruce told us about some of the
Speaker 3: things that they discovered in the BIA building occupation in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy two, as well as what it meant specifically
Speaker 3: for the Oglala Sioux on the Pine Ridge Reservation there
Speaker 3: in South Dakota.
Speaker 5: When the BIA building was taken over by American Movement
Speaker 5: in nineteen seventy two, there were a whole troughs of
Speaker 5: documents that were taken and removed from that building. People
Speaker 5: who have heard of this have generally heard of the
Speaker 5: fact that it disclosed a four sterilization program for Native women.
Speaker 5: Another part of that, though, was that this area was
Speaker 5: given a priority for uranium mining. That was seventy two, right,
Speaker 5: and then you have Wounded Knee seventy three, and then
Speaker 5: you have this firefight in seventy five. You have resistance
Speaker 5: basically all over the country, and now this new goal
Speaker 5: of aim to stop destructive mining or anium mining. Most
Speaker 5: people don't realize the front end of the nuclear fuel
Speaker 5: cycle is an incredibly environmentally destructive process. It leaves the
Speaker 5: earth poisoned for eons of time, as well as a
Speaker 5: myriad about other things because not just uranium. It so
Speaker 5: they having metals that get out, arsenic that gets out
Speaker 5: during a lot of these processes. So I would say
Speaker 5: that the economics, they always say that what are war's about,
Speaker 5: They're about lane and or resources. Well, this one was
Speaker 5: kind of government had already seized the land, not officially,
Speaker 5: not legally, it's still unseated territory, but they did want
Speaker 5: to go after those resources. At that time, there were
Speaker 5: some twenty uranium mining companies which were staking out claims
Speaker 5: throughout the Black Hills, and this went on from mid
Speaker 5: seventies into the late seventies.
Speaker 1: When American business interests need Uncle Sam's help justly or not,
Speaker 1: and nations around the globe, well, they may or may
Speaker 1: not go as far as to medal in elections, and
Speaker 1: it appears the Feds had a clear favorite in South
Speaker 1: Dakota tribal politics, in which there was a deep divide
Speaker 1: between traditionalists who maintained Native culture and refused assimilation, and
Speaker 1: those like the newly elected Oglala Siu Tribal chairman of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two, Dick Wilson, a so called progressive native,
Speaker 1: the type that really took to assimilation and to the
Speaker 1: interests of the United States federal government.
Speaker 2: Well, you have a group of natives that we call sellouts.
Speaker 2: They accept everything that the government tells them or gives
Speaker 2: us commodities and all this says to and will do
Speaker 2: anything the government says, will fight against us. I mean,
Speaker 2: I had had some of them say I wish I
Speaker 2: wasn'tn Indian, and I used to tell them, well, what
Speaker 2: the hell are you doing here? Gold leave? Ain't nobody
Speaker 2: keep in your hair. If you don't like being an Indian,
Speaker 2: the hell out of here. But we got those types
Speaker 2: of groups that fight against US. Dick Wilson was one
Speaker 2: of them.
Speaker 3: And in the aftermath of the BIA Building occupation, Dick
Speaker 3: Wilson signs a resolution that authorizes him to create a
Speaker 3: paramilitary group called the Guardians of the Oglala Nation, giving
Speaker 3: them the acronym Goon.
Speaker 2: Well, the FBI financed them, They gave them sophisticated weapons,
Speaker 2: various calibers of ammunition intelligence. This all came out from
Speaker 2: Dwayne Brewer, who was the leader of the squad.
Speaker 1: And this mercenary force was comprised of other so called
Speaker 1: progressive Natives. While other progressives were active at FBI counter Intelligence,
Speaker 1: the same program that targeted the Black Panthers. Co Intel
Speaker 1: pro they would infiltrate, sew division, create paranoia, undermine legitimate goals,
Speaker 1: and supply information. And of course we're all familiar with
Speaker 1: how history ran its course over any successful Black leadership,
Speaker 1: while AIM was no different. It appears the FEDS were
Speaker 1: targeting AIM leadership with criminal prosecutions, like the time when
Speaker 1: Leonard was at a restaurant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the
Speaker 1: months before the standoff at Wounded Me in nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 2: They're following me out everything I was doing. They were
Speaker 2: put in this restaurant. We don't know who they are.
Speaker 2: We were all in our AIM jackets, and they start
Speaker 2: intimidating us. So we thought it was just two white
Speaker 2: races and we're going to get in a fight with them.
Speaker 2: And the next thing I know, Oh, I'm charged for
Speaker 2: attempted murder on two police officers. I went to trial
Speaker 2: there years later and I was found not guilty. I
Speaker 2: was acquitted at that bullshit charge. You know, that wasn't
Speaker 2: the only place. Other places they were trying to connect
Speaker 2: me to some kind of criminal activity. Just trying to
Speaker 2: set me up is what it was.
Speaker 3: But while he was in jail in Wisconsin on these
Speaker 3: trumped up attempted murder charges, the traditionalist natives on the
Speaker 3: Pine Ridge Reservation were seeking to impeach Dick Wilson. He
Speaker 3: was accused of corruption, voter fraud as well as violence
Speaker 3: and intimidation of his political foes.
Speaker 2: I think two hundred people were voted, had been dead
Speaker 2: for fifty hundred years or whatever else. That's how he
Speaker 2: won the election. To fraud. He was making his family rich,
Speaker 2: is what he was doing. His brother all of a
Speaker 2: sudden on a big pack of land and filled with
Speaker 2: cattle and everything like this, and prior to his election
Speaker 2: did not have that amount to land or cattle. So corruption,
Speaker 2: corruption at its best under him.
Speaker 1: Well, it seems like all of these operations, the co
Speaker 1: Intel pro operations against the Black Panthers, Malcolm X et cetera,
Speaker 1: they always involved an inside trader electic Wilson. Is that
Speaker 1: a fair word to use for him?
Speaker 2: We call them worse in that?
Speaker 1: And when legal avenues failed to oust Wilson, Aim and
Speaker 1: their allies chose the town of Wounded Knee, the site
Speaker 1: of the last large scale massacre of Natives in eighteen ninety,
Speaker 1: as their next target for occupation, and they were in
Speaker 1: a standoff with US marshalls for seventy one days.
Speaker 2: I was in jail for the first couple weeks of
Speaker 2: Wounded Knee, but as soon as I got out, I
Speaker 2: heard they needed supplies food and everything like this. So
Speaker 2: I went to work immediately gathered food and everything. In Oleft, Wisconsin.
Speaker 2: During the Wounded Kney occupation, Richard Nixon ordered the eighty
Speaker 2: second Airborne out there to put the military on a
Speaker 2: domestic issue is against the constitution United States. So the
Speaker 2: colonel that was head of the eighty second Airborne came
Speaker 2: out to the reservation and he went first to Dick Wilson.
Speaker 2: And when he came out, there was a group of
Speaker 2: our elders and they called them over to cross the
Speaker 2: road and they told we would like to show you
Speaker 2: and tell you what's really going on here. And when
Speaker 2: he went back to report to Nixon, he said that
Speaker 2: a tribal chairman, Dick Wilson, I think he's a big liar.
Speaker 2: I don't believe a word he said. So the traditionalist
Speaker 2: took me out to the reservation and I said, I've
Speaker 2: seen poverty. There's worse than Central America. And he said,
Speaker 2: I don't blame those people for fighting. I don't blame
Speaker 2: him for uprising. He said, if you send us out there,
Speaker 2: you ordered us out there, the majority of us are
Speaker 2: going to fight with the Indians. Wo oh, I heard
Speaker 2: that Nixon's mother told him, don't you hurt those Indians.
Speaker 2: Don't you hurt those people that? And his daughter was
Speaker 2: also another one.
Speaker 3: Three people were killed in total over those seventy one days.
Speaker 2: Finally, Wounded Me was over after Buddy Lamont was shot
Speaker 2: in the forehead by a sniper and Grandma Lamont wanted
Speaker 2: to end because she wanted to bury her son, who
Speaker 2: was a Vietnam War hero. So that's how wounded the
Speaker 2: end it. Actually, there's a lot of promises were made
Speaker 2: to the Native people that they were going to do this,
Speaker 2: they were going to do that, and didn't that happen? Again,
Speaker 2: most of us knew that was just some more lies.
Speaker 1: One of Ames's objectives was reopening treaty negotiation and holding
Speaker 1: the federal government accountable for violating the eighteen sixty eight
Speaker 1: Treaty of Fort Laramie with the Oglala Sioux. That violation
Speaker 1: was the Fed stealing you've guessed it more can land,
Speaker 1: this time in the Black Hills, you know, the place
Speaker 1: where Mount Rushmore is located. A nineteen eighty Supreme Court
Speaker 1: decision later ruled in favor of the Sioux, awarding them
Speaker 1: compensation plus interest starting from when the treaty was violated
Speaker 1: back in eighteen seventy seven, but they refused to accept
Speaker 1: that compensation in favor of the return of the land
Speaker 1: and this disagreement has still not been resolved. But back
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy three, after Wounded me, the FEDS tried
Speaker 1: to prosecute the Visible AIM leadership Dennis Banks and Russell Means,
Speaker 1: with charges that held a potential fifteen hundred years in prison.
Speaker 1: What does they even mean a these numbers? But the
Speaker 1: case was dismissed based on prosecutorial misconduct, including evidence tampering,
Speaker 1: So the FEDS regrouped and plotted their next moves.
Speaker 5: In nineteen seventy four or ear least seventy five, the
Speaker 5: FBI considered aimed to be one of the most dangerous
Speaker 5: organizations to the country. When they listen their reasons for
Speaker 5: why AIM was being targeted, they specifically noted a new
Speaker 5: what they called mission statement of the American movement, which
Speaker 5: was to protect the earth from destructive mining. And the
Speaker 5: FBI starts switching from a canter intelligence operation to a
Speaker 5: counter insurgency operation.
Speaker 3: And they had help from various assets who had infiltrated AIM,
Speaker 3: including the head of security during the Wounded Knee occupation.
Speaker 3: Doug Durham. It's believed that he was the one who
Speaker 3: supplied the aim memo, the one that contained the mission
Speaker 3: statement threatening federal interest in uranium mining.
Speaker 2: Doug Durham. You got to hear this guy's story. This
Speaker 2: guy's a police officer and Omaha, Nebraska, and he's right
Speaker 2: next to Omaha's a reservation, look Quota reservation. He's grabbing
Speaker 2: these girls and forcing drugs on them, getting them hooked,
Speaker 2: and prosecuting them. That Omaha Nebraska police force fires him.
Speaker 2: He immediately goes to work for the FBI and that
Speaker 2: gets on their payroll and he infiltrated the American Indian moment.
Speaker 2: So they asked him in this hearing, they said, what
Speaker 2: about the American Indian moment? Do we have to be
Speaker 2: concerned about Russell and Dennis? And he tells him no,
Speaker 2: He said, I think the fifteen hundred years has pretty
Speaker 2: much silenced them. He said, the person you have to
Speaker 2: be concerned about is Leonard Peltier. He's a young guy.
Speaker 2: He's not afraid of the government. You won't get in
Speaker 2: the front of a camera because he just want this
Speaker 2: picture out there. But he's getting very popular among the people,
Speaker 2: and he's the person that we have to worry about.
Speaker 2: And after wounded knee, they really start coming after me.
Speaker 1: While Leonard was traveling the country to support various political
Speaker 1: actions back on the Pine Ridge Reservation, tensions with Dick
Speaker 1: Wilson and the Goon squad got even worse. So the
Speaker 1: Oglallas sup once again called upon Aime and Dennis Banks,
Speaker 1: who was in Arizona at the time with one of
Speaker 1: Leonard's co defendants, Daryl Dino Butler.
Speaker 6: My name is Dino Butler. I'm a member of the
Speaker 6: Sledge Competitive Tribes of Oregon. In nineteen seventy four, I
Speaker 6: was in Arizona. A call came in from South Dakota.
Speaker 6: They said that the goons were up there and they
Speaker 6: were throwing beer bottles and ecuting out houses and beating
Speaker 6: people up and everything. They were just getting out of control.
Speaker 6: They called Dennis to ask him if there was any
Speaker 6: warriors that were willing to come up there and stay
Speaker 6: there for a while and help them. So Leonard and
Speaker 6: me and some other brothers and sisters agreed to go
Speaker 6: up there to South Dakota at that time. We went
Speaker 6: to the housing projects there and we stayed there for
Speaker 6: a while and then we went to Ted Lange's place.
Speaker 6: Then we ended up at Jumping both plays. During all
Speaker 6: this time, the goons were still acting up and shooting
Speaker 6: up everything.
Speaker 2: The goons, they were going around the reservation and terrorizing
Speaker 2: single mothers that were strong, aim people, the elders, their
Speaker 2: homes are being shot up. We went and spent hours
Speaker 2: in the middle of the night going over there protecting
Speaker 2: those people. Anybody that affiliated themselves with the American Indian
Speaker 2: moment are traditionalists.
Speaker 3: So when Bruce said counterinsurgency earlier, you can hear how
Speaker 3: that doesn't appear to be hyperbole. There were sixty unsolved
Speaker 3: murders on Pine Ridge between seventy three and seventy five,
Speaker 3: and with a population of only twelve thousand, they had
Speaker 3: the highest murder rate in the country.
Speaker 5: Scores of people being killed, people being kept on the
Speaker 5: floors of their home, homes well, bullets swam through the walls.
Speaker 5: And we're talking about homes where families were living, where
Speaker 5: young kids were living, where elders were living.
Speaker 3: These murders would have been under FBI jurisdiction, yet for
Speaker 3: some reason, no one was ever pursued. Meanwhile, the FEDS
Speaker 3: were trying Dennis Banks for a second time, this time
Speaker 3: for the alleged assault and rioting associated with the Wounded
Speaker 3: de occupation, and they knew he was being protected at
Speaker 3: an aim stronghold called Jumping Bull Ranch. It seems they
Speaker 3: also knew Leonard was there from.
Speaker 5: Documents we got parts of or all of. A little
Speaker 5: bit later, they had their security and their intelligence informants focusing.
Speaker 5: I mean, they were looking for Leonard all over the country.
Speaker 5: So we get to a month before the firefight and
Speaker 5: a bunch of FBI agents are brought into Pine Ridge.
Speaker 5: Most of them are SWAT Team members. They're on sixty
Speaker 5: day special assignment.
Speaker 2: Before the shoot out, we've seen a lot of activities
Speaker 2: with helicopters and stuff, and they had these machines out
Speaker 2: the windows and everything. We didn't find out un till
Speaker 2: years later, but they were surveying that whole area. And
Speaker 2: then they had these ages driving around like stormtroopers, and
Speaker 2: they would walk into people's doors. They would not knock,
Speaker 2: they would just push the doors open. That's the same
Speaker 2: thing that's kicking them over. And they terrified the community.
Speaker 2: A lot of the people were getting scared. A lot
Speaker 2: of the people were getting angry. A lot of the men.
Speaker 2: We were saying, you know, something's going to happen. They can't
Speaker 2: keep doing this to us. That's not legal.
Speaker 5: Three weeks before the firefight, the FBI issues a document
Speaker 5: in which they talk about jumping balls. They claimed that
Speaker 5: there were bunkers there, that there are probably going to
Speaker 5: have to assault these bunkers. And three weeks later there's
Speaker 5: a paramilitary assault on that particular area. And as the
Speaker 5: US Comission on stil Rights pointed out, those bunkers are
Speaker 5: really aged root sellers that you wouldn't want to stand
Speaker 5: behind if someone was throwing rocks at you less defensive position.
Speaker 5: What also is clear is that once the first shots
Speaker 5: were fired, and I got to say that, the government
Speaker 5: began to lie right away from the start of the firefight.
Speaker 5: Right away, it became a big lie for their own
Speaker 5: particular narrative.
Speaker 1: So, after a two year long federally funded terror campaign
Speaker 1: through the Goon Squad, which as you can imagine, only
Speaker 1: intensified with the arrival of SWAT teams from all over
Speaker 1: the country in that climate, the FBI claimed that they
Speaker 1: were simply carrying out just an ordinary, everyday arrest warrant
Speaker 1: for a guy named Jimmy Eagle.
Speaker 2: There was a warrant. Supposedly, that's a lie because the
Speaker 2: FBI don't have this jurisdiction. They were saying that they
Speaker 2: had a warrant out for Jimmy you go, for stealing
Speaker 2: a pair of used cowboy.
Speaker 5: Boots, used cowboy pots.
Speaker 2: They don't have. They don't have jurisdiction. There's no jurisdiction
Speaker 2: for them to do that. They can't do that, so
Speaker 2: that was a lie.
Speaker 3: If you remember, we mentioned the Major Crimes Act of
Speaker 3: eighteen eighty five. This designated all violent crimes and other
Speaker 3: offenses under federal jurisdiction. A pair of stolen cowboy boots
Speaker 3: would have been handled by tribal police. In addition, it
Speaker 3: appears that Jimmy Eagle was in Wyoming at the time,
Speaker 3: on another reservation entirely, yet he was allegedly known to
Speaker 3: drive a red pickup. So on June twenty sixth, nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy five, the FBI claimed that agents Ronald Williams and
Speaker 3: Jack Koehler, who were in plain clothes and unmarked vehicles,
Speaker 3: not identifying themselves. The FBI claims these guys were allegedly
Speaker 3: in hot pursuit of what they claimed to have thought
Speaker 3: was Jimmy Eagle's vehicle, a red van but with a
Speaker 3: white top, and as the federal narrative goes, the car
Speaker 3: would not stop until it arrived at Jumping Bull Ranch.
Speaker 2: That's not true. That's not true. They didn't follow that
Speaker 2: red and white van in there. That red and white
Speaker 2: van was there ten minutes, at least ten minutes before
Speaker 2: they showed up. I know I'm the one that drove
Speaker 2: it in there because I had just taken it down
Speaker 2: to Ogla to get something fixed on it. So that
Speaker 2: was another lie. But we come in and parked in
Speaker 2: front of the Jumping Bowl house and we were talking
Speaker 2: to some of the people there about something. These guys
Speaker 2: just come driving in like they owned the place and
Speaker 2: they've been right past us, and went down to where
Speaker 2: the shooting took place.
Speaker 1: Which was about five hundred yards off US Highway eighteen,
Speaker 1: onto this sprawling private compound. Now remember this is after
Speaker 1: a nearly three year reign of terror, when these men
Speaker 1: in plane clothes and unmarked cars which doesn't appear how
Speaker 1: to identify themselves through their weapons.
Speaker 2: We didn't start it. They started it. We were defending
Speaker 2: our homes and my responsibility it was getting the women
Speaker 2: and children out of there.
Speaker 3: Soon, every able bodied person either in the houses or
Speaker 3: campgrounds on jumping bull ranches doing their part, including Dino Butler.
Speaker 6: I just come out of our teetheet on a jumping
Speaker 6: bull property. I came out and I heard this brother
Speaker 6: come running down towards the camp call telling us that brothers,
Speaker 6: gather up your guns, gather up your weapons, and get
Speaker 6: up here. They're attacking the families up there jumping bulls.
Speaker 6: So we all gathered up our rifles and we ran
Speaker 6: up there. I didn't know who was shooting at us
Speaker 6: at first, but then I understood later on it was
Speaker 6: the FBI that were firing at it. Two FBI agents
Speaker 6: came there and they opened fired on the people, and
Speaker 6: that that I didn't understand what was going on, why
Speaker 6: why they were doing that.
Speaker 2: I helped Angie and her babies who were crying, terrified
Speaker 2: and everything. I helped them get out of there. I
Speaker 2: let him down to a trail, and you knew that,
Speaker 2: so I tore to go that way and all us
Speaker 2: hope they don't kill you. So they hope they don't
Speaker 2: shoot you, because you got these little kids here, and
Speaker 2: they did go that way and they got out.
Speaker 5: People I talked to said they were within moments being
Speaker 5: surrounded and receiving gunfire from all directions.
Speaker 2: When I got back, we could see from the tops
Speaker 2: we were surrounded. They had swat teams from as far
Speaker 2: away as Los Angeles, from Minneapolis, and all the cities
Speaker 2: around South Dakota there within minutes. So they were housed
Speaker 2: someplace close to the reservation because they were there within
Speaker 2: ten minutes at the most.
Speaker 1: In addition, there was a small single propeller plane that
Speaker 1: had been flying around all day that was now surveilling
Speaker 1: the siege from above.
Speaker 5: And so this massive force comes in and in the
Speaker 5: processual stunts who a young Native defender within the community
Speaker 5: was shot between the eyes and two fpigands were killed.
Speaker 2: So I told everybody, all right, come on, we got
Speaker 2: to get out of here. So we went down to
Speaker 2: the camp, which was about a quarter of a mile
Speaker 2: from the house, and picked up what we could carry
Speaker 2: and everything like this, and we knew there was the
Speaker 2: highest hill that way, so I said, we got to
Speaker 2: get to that place. And as we were walking down
Speaker 2: across the creek, I had no idea who was out there.
Speaker 2: On the roads, and we knew was surrounded. So I said,
Speaker 2: we got to get out of here. We got to
Speaker 2: somehow find a hole to get out of here.
Speaker 6: Leonard wanted to get and get in a vat and
Speaker 6: run a roadblock and get out of there. And I
Speaker 6: told Leonard, I think that would be complete suicide. And
Speaker 6: so we all knelt down and we started praying.
Speaker 2: I told these guys, come on, let's just say a
Speaker 2: prayer here, asking the Great Spirit to lead us out
Speaker 2: of there. And all of a sudden, there was a
Speaker 2: shadow in the trees and there was a like something
Speaker 2: was big was flying there. And I looked up and
Speaker 2: I seen it. These eagles took off under the trees.
Speaker 2: Norman Brown says he also seen it. Everybody else didn't
Speaker 2: see it, but he heard it too, and he's seen it.
Speaker 6: So Norman said, let's follow that eagle. So we followed
Speaker 6: that eagle brought us to this calvert that ran under
Speaker 6: the road, and we all went into that culvert and
Speaker 6: Leonard went first and I went second, and there was
Speaker 6: an airplane flying around. It was there since early morning.
Speaker 6: So Leonard said, well, let's pray pray for that airplane
Speaker 6: to leave. So me and him started praying, and after
Speaker 6: we got done, that plane left. It went back to
Speaker 6: Pine Ridge to gas up. I guess I don't know what,
Speaker 6: but it left. And when it left, we called everybody
Speaker 6: out of the culvert and we sent the women up
Speaker 6: the hill.
Speaker 5: First.
Speaker 2: We had some young fourteen fifteen year old kids with us,
Speaker 2: and my responsibility is to make sure that they safe,
Speaker 2: and I believe in the Great Spirit helped us get
Speaker 2: out of there. How did we find that hole? What?
Speaker 2: Why did those cops leave that area? I mean it
Speaker 2: was what three cars I believe it, it's maybe even
Speaker 2: been four took off from that area where we went
Speaker 2: under this culvert. I swear on my Shinoopa, I swear
Speaker 2: to my God. If we hadn't fought back, we probably
Speaker 2: all got chilled. This was a war.
Speaker 1: And this is where we'll stop in the first of
Speaker 1: three episodes covering the absolutely insane, wrongful conviction story of
Speaker 1: Leonard Peltier. And there's so much left to come.
Speaker 2: I sent them ahead of me. I told them, go,
Speaker 2: I'll take.
Speaker 5: Up the rear.
Speaker 6: I could just feel the bullets buzzing around me.
Speaker 5: They even included at one point every Native man who
Speaker 5: had ever been in combat in Indo, China on their
Speaker 5: suspect list.
Speaker 2: Wow, they also included a four year old and we
Speaker 2: didn't know why we were the ones being accused.
Speaker 6: My little brother, he said, when he woke up an
Speaker 6: Fbis was pointing a pistol in his head and says,
Speaker 6: worre's your fucking brother.
Speaker 2: At Marlon Brando gave us a mobile home. I went
Speaker 2: to Canada of Astra asylum and they were supposed to
Speaker 2: produce any evidence that they had against me, and very
Speaker 2: conservative judge said, there is no evidence.
Speaker 5: In the Dino Butler trial, we were able to present
Speaker 5: members of the community who helped the jury understand what
Speaker 5: was regarded as the reign of terror.
Speaker 2: If they did that to a white community, they would
Speaker 2: have been shot too.
Speaker 6: That Leonard Woods to try with us there and see
Speaker 6: the rapids who would have never been convicted.
Speaker 1: Because Dino and Robert were acquitted, they changed the whole story.
Speaker 5: And the testimony becomes much more definitive.
Speaker 2: I never met her in my life, but she was
Speaker 2: claiming she was my girlfriend, and that was the beginning
Speaker 2: of the type of trial I was going to receive.
Speaker 6: There was a kangaroo court all the way.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to tune in for episode two of our
Speaker 1: coverage of Leonard Peltier's Wrongful Conviction. Thank you for listening
Speaker 1: to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this and all
Speaker 1: the Lava for Good podcasts one week early and ad
Speaker 1: free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1: I want to thank our production team, Connor Hall and
Speaker 1: Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler,
Speaker 1: Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Kliber The music in this production
Speaker 1: was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us across all social media platforms
Speaker 1: at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can
Speaker 1: also follow me on Instagram at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful
Speaker 1: Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and
Speaker 1: association with Signal Company Number One.
Speaker 7: We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported
Speaker 7: in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed
Speaker 7: by the individuals featured in this show are their own
Speaker 7: and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.
Speaker 2: Sh