After 50 Years, Leonard Peltier Is Finally Home

Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, who had been imprisoned since 1977 for the highly contested murders of two FBI agents at South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, received last-minute clemency this past January as President Joe Biden prepared to leave the White House. Throughout the decades, members of U.S. Congress, Marlon Brando, Pope Francis, the Dalai Lama, and dozens of Native-rights groups demanded freedom for Peltier, whose activism began as a member of the Minneapolis-launched American Indian Movement (AIM).

Now, finally, Peltier is back home on the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa reservation near Belcourt, North Dakota. “Coming from that cell to this is like, I guess what heaven must feel like, the Great Spirit, the happy hunting ground must feel like,” the 81-year-old political prisoner said in one of his first longform interviews after being released. Minnesota Public Radio's Allison Herrera observes Peltier's soft smile, quick jokes, and grandfatherly appearance, but it's clear there's surplus resentment boiling over the nearly 50 years that were taken from him.

“Goddamn right I’m bitter,” Peltier says. “Otherwise, I would have been guilty. Only the guilty would not be bitter.” 

Regrets? He doesn't have any.

“Hell no!" Peltier declares. "I would stand up for them again today, if it cost me the rest of my life. I don’t care. I believe what we were fighting for.” 

You can read Allison Herrera's full profile on Leonard Peltier at "Leonard Peltier talks freedom, future after nearly 50 years in prison" from Minnesota Public Radio's news site.