Leonard Peltier to Be Freed After Half-Century in Prison: “A Day of Victory for Indigenous People”

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

Indigenous leader Leonard Peltier is coming home after nearly half a century behind bars. Just minutes before leaving office, former President Biden granted Peltier clemency, ordering his release from prison to serve the remainder of his life sentence in home confinement.

In a statement shared by the NDN Collective, Leonard Peltier responded by saying, quote, “It’s finally over — I’m going home. I want to show the world I’m a good person with a good heart. I want to help the people, just like my grandmother taught me,” Leonard said.

Biden’s historic decision came after mounting calls by tribal leaders and supporters, and a community-led campaign that fought for Peltier’s freedom for decades. Biden’s order goes into effect February 18th. Biden, however, reiterated his action was not a pardon for Peltier.

Leonard Peltier is 80 years old, has spent the majority of his life in prison. For decades, he has maintained his innocence over the 1975 killing of two FBI agents in a shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Many have said his conviction was riddled with irregularities and prosecutorial misconduct and that the federal government failed to prove its case against Leonard Peltier. Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama rejected Peltier’s clemency requests. He was also denied parole in ’93, 2009 and 2024.

For more, we go to Sumterville, Florida, where we’re joined by Nick Tilsen, founder and CEO of the NDN Collective. He just visited Leonard Peltier in prison after news of his release yesterday.

Nick, welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you share with us Leonard Peltier’s response? It was minutes before Biden left office.

NICK TILSEN: Leonard is elated. Leonard is excited. He is deeply, deeply honored. When he — like, I talked to him on the phone last night after the actual order was given to him and the papers for executive clemency were given to him, and he read it out loud, and he said, “I’m finally coming home.” And he’s excited to be coming home in this moment. And one of the biggest things of the message that he has is deep gratitude for the five decades of organizing and everybody who’s ever helped fight for his freedom. And so, he is elated. He’s excited to go back to his homelands in Belcourt, North Dakota, on the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Nick, could you talk about the movement to get Leonard Peltier released? There was a large group of congressmen, led by Raúl Grijalva, who appealed to the president. But at the same time, the FBI Director Christopher Wray on January 10th wrote to the president urging him not to do it?

NICK TILSEN: Yeah, this was an unprecedented effort of both community organizing and advocacy. You know, we had two secretaries of the administration weigh in. Secretary Deb Haaland was weighing in, and Secretary — or, HHS administrator Becerra was weighing in. Senator Schatz of the Senate — the chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, was weighing in. And there was opposition. There was opposition, led by the FBI and the Department of Justice, to try to keep Leonard Peltier in prison.

But the reality is that we had fought so hard to be able to bring this issue to light. And I think that one of the tipping points in this entire issue was the fact that Leonard Peltier was a boarding school survivor, and that this was really about righting a historical wrong. And I think all of the work that went in to bring to light what the United States government did to Indian people during the boarding schools, and all of that effort and organizing and healing work that happened, was one of the huge contributing factors, along with so much political advocacy of people championing this. And we were able to close the gap, from the frontline Indigenous communities to the decision-makers right to the president of the United States, that led to this. And so, it was a historical organizing effort and a day of victory for Indigenous people.

AMY GOODMAN: Absolutely amazing, Nick. We talked to you right after you talked to the pardon office. You were in South Dakota then, after you went to Washington, D.C. Finally, on the issue of Leonard Peltier going home, how is his health?

NICK TILSEN: He needs to see a doctor right away. We’re a little bit concerned that he’s not going home until the 18th, that the order doesn’t go into effect ’til the 18th. He needs to see a doctor immediately, and they don’t have the medical facilities at Coleman prison, federal prison, to meet his medical needs right now. So, we will be asking this current, the incoming administration for relief for medical purposes to try to get him home a little bit sooner. And they do have the ability to do that at the Bureau of Prisons level. And so, we’re going to be asking for that, so we can get him to see a doctor. But realistically, we also understand that there’s a good chance that he’s probably not coming home ’til the 18th, even though we’re trying to get him home sooner. But we really want to get him home sooner because his health is continuing to deteriorate. And he’s excited to come home, but we’ve got to make his health and his safety number one priority.

AMY GOODMAN: Nick Tilsen, you’ve also worked on climate issues for years. On Monday, Trump signed an executive order to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement again.

TRUMP AIDE: The next item here is the withdrawal from the Paris climate treaty.

TRUMP SUPPORTERS: Yeah! …

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Save over a trillion.

TRUMP AIDE: We’re going to save over a trillion dollars by withdrawing from that treaty.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you hear him signing this in the Capital One Arena with 20,000 people cheering. The significance of this, Nick?

NICK TILSEN: It’s terrible. It’s terrible for everybody around the world, because not only the Paris Climate Agreements, but the agreements to — for the most powerful countries in the world to come together to fight climate change and set bars for it, to force corporations and force countries to be able to, you know, have regulations in place, and to pull these back is to put our environment at risk and to put human rights at risk and to put — and these decisions are going to expedite climate change, and at a time when climate change is a global crisis issue affecting all of humanity.

And with Indigenous people, it means a direct threat to us and our homelands, because we are maintaining — we’re 5% of the world’s population but steward 80% of the world’s biological diversity on behalf of all of humanity. And so, that means, when — him pulling out of the Paris accords, it means that he’s going to make Indigenous communities and Indigenous homelands sacrifice zones. And we’re going to be on the frontlines having to fight these corporations, because now they’re going to end up into our territories completely deregulated.

AMY GOODMAN: Nick, there’s so much to talk to you about, but I want to quickly — I mean, it’s a firehose of executive orders. President Trump also signed an executive order Monday calling for North America’s tallest peak, Denali in Alaska, to be renamed Mount McKinley after President McKinley, he said, showing respect to Ohio and to the president. Can you talk about the significance of what Obama renamed in 2015?

NICK TILSEN: Well, renaming these — you know, we have been in this effort to rename our territories after what we called them as Indigenous people. And this effort to try to erase Indigenous people and erase our identities, that’s what this is. It is manifest destiny in its modern form. It is colonial rule, and it’s trying to control the narrative, and it’s trying to erase Indigenous people.

And so, we are going to continue to fight to hold onto our names. We’re going to continue to fight to hold onto our identity. And we’re going to use this energy that we have in Indian Country right now, that we have gotten from this victory in fighting for Leonard Peltier, to protect our homelands and to protect the names and to make sure that they won’t erase us. And you can guarantee that Indigenous people, that we’re going to be on the frontlines fighting this administration and making a way for our people and fighting for human rights everywhere.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Nick, we want to thank you for being with us. Nick Tilsen, founder and CEO of the NDN Collective. You can go to Democracy Now! to see all our coverage of Leonard Peltier, including interviews with him. Again, at the age of 80, Leonard Peltier is going home after almost half a century in prison.

That does it for our show. Democracy Now! is produced with Mike Burke, Renée Feltz, Deena Guzder, Messiah Rhodes, Nermeen Shaikh, María Taracena, Tami Woronoff, Charina Nadura, Sam Alcoff, Tey-Marie Astudillo, John Hamilton, Robby Karran, Hany Massoud, Hana Elias. Our executive director is Julie Crosby. Special thanks to Becca Staley, Jon Randolph, Paul Powell, Mike Di Filippo, Miguel Nogueira. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, for another edition of Democracy Now!