'Incident at Oglala' commemorated

Leonard Peltier

In Native American history, June 26th is a day of anguish. On that date in 1975, two FBI agents in unmarked cars drove onto a ranch on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. More than 150 agents, vigilantes and law enforcement surrounded the property and opened fire. In the resulting shoot-out, a young Native man and two FBI agents were killed.

This assault has not ended. For 31 years, Leonard Peltier, a Lakota/Anishinabe organizer of the American Indian Movement (AIM), has been in prison, falsely accused of killing the FBI agents. U.S. prosecutors have publicly admitted that they do not know who actually fired the shots that killed the agents, but they have refused to consider Peltier for parole or to turn over thousands of pages of documents that could prove his innocence.

The New York City Leonard Peltier Support Group and the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee commemorated the Pine Ridge attack with a screening of “Murder on a Reservation.” The film, which includes commentary from Peltier and witnesses to the assault, was shown at the International Action Center in New York.

An event was also held in Oglala, S.D., near where the shootout occurred. For the eighth year, people gathered to remember the more than 60 Native people who were murdered during a three-year “Reign of Terror,” which began when AIM members occupied Wounded Knee, the site of the 1890 massacre of Chief Bigfoot’s Hohwo-ju (Minneconjou) people. The elders and chiefs of the Oglala Lakota had asked AIM to lead the takeover to fight mistreatment from corrupt tribal and federal officials.

It was during this period that the people at Pine Ridge had asked members of AIM for help and protection. Peltier and a small group of AIM members set up camp on a ranch owned by the Jumping Bulls, a traditional Lakota family.

The Oglala commemoration began with a prayer ceremony at the gravesite of Joseph Stuntz, the young Native man killed during the Pine Ridge shootout. People then walked two miles to the Jumping Bull property where the incident occurred.

Peltier, recognized around the world as a political prisoner, has been honored throughout the year. In April, he was nominated for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. The recipient will be announced in mid-October. And in March the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art and Warrior Artists Productions presented the world premiere of the stage adaptation of Peltier’s book, “Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance.” (Available at Leftbooks.com.)

The Leonard Peltier Defense Committee also sent a statement to the U.S. Social Forum, which was held in Atlanta from June 27 to July 1. It included a message from Peltier: “Our work will be unfinished until not one human being is hungry, or battered, not one single person is forced to die in war, not one innocent languishes imprisoned and no one is persecuted for his or her beliefs.”