The Tragedy of Leonard Peltier vs. the US

The Tragedy of Leonard Peltier vs. the US
by Peter Matthiessen
The New York Review of Books
Volume 56, Number 18 · November 19, 2009


On July 27, 2009, I drove west from New York to the old riverside town of Lewisburg in central Pennsylvania, the site of the federal penitentiary where early the next morning I would make an appeal to the parole board on behalf of the American Indian Movement (AIM) activist Leonard Peltier in his first parole hearing in fifteen years. On this soft summer evening, a quiet gathering of Peltier supporters from all over the country [shared] a makeshift picnic... [and] were optimistic about a favorable outcome. Surely a new era of justice for minorities and poor people had begun with the Obama administration, and anyway, wasn't Leonard's freedom all but assured by the Parole Act of 2005, which mandated release for inmates who had spent thirty or more years in prison? Read More