On September 12, 2015 AIM activist Leonard Peltier will have
been held in prison for 14,246 days. The man spent 39 years, 7 months and 4
days in captivity for defending the land air and water of his people from the
uranium mining companies. Leonard has been in jail for more than twice as much
time as most NYM members have been alive. He went from being a young person to
being an elder while serving time in a federal prison. Native Youth Movement, Tucson, would like to
extend a challenge to all progressive thinkers to spend the month of September
engaged in activism in support of Leonard Peltier, America’s longest held
political prisoner.
We are a decentralized movement of independent warrior
cells. Our weapons are knowledge, courage and vision. We’re calling on all
indigenous peoples who share a common history of a 523 year struggle against
Colonialism, slavery, genocide and forced acculturation to come together to
educate, agitate and spread the wisdom of the elders of the political movements
that came before us. Leonard Peltier and the American Indian Movement taught
our parents and grandparents that a true warrior understands that in order for
a people to be free, warriors must sacrifice to protect, women, children, the sick
and the elderly as well as the land air and water that gives the people
life. We are asking those who know of
Leonard Peltier and support his struggle to live free, to learn more about his
story and to take courageous and creative action this September to make the
world aware of his struggles and stop his memory from fading in the public
mind.
The motto of the Native Youth Movement is: Learn from the
past, prepare for the present to defend the future. It is important to see through the lies we
are told about the liberation movements of the 1960s, 70s and 80s. We are led
to believe that these movements just faded out of existence, but the truth is
that the US government targeted the land defenders and freedom fighters of our
parent’s and grandparent’s generation for assassination and false imprisonment.
The liberation movements did not just end, the US government actively tried to
rub them out with illegal campaigns to discredit and destroy that generation’s
warriors. The history of our relatives belongs to the youth. The government had
no right to steal it from us. It is up to the youth to uncover and claim the
stories of our elder’s struggles to maintain our language, culture and land
against the constant attacks from the settlers.
LEARN FROM THE PAST
Learning from the past is an important first step because we
need to know the truth of the past before we can commit to changing the future.
Indigenous youth need to realize that the “generation gap” is a lie created in
the settler’s mind to divide us. We need to reclaim our right to learn who we
are from our elders and we need to become warriors who can really listen to our
elders when they tell us of their struggles. We must reject the settler’s way
of thinking and work to always respect our elders, because they hold our
history in their minds and hearts.
LEONARD’S STORY
Leonard is an elder. He represents a generation of AIM
elders who did not have the identity or the opportunities that young people
today have. He had to struggle to find their way back to the old ways and they
did it by seeking out the elders and listening hard to what they had to
say. Indigenous youth need to learn and
re-tell Leonard Peltier’s story because it is relevant to our lives today. It
is relevant to our lives today because so little has change. Conditions on the
reservations and in the city are just as bad for indigenous people. We still
face suicide, gangs, poverty, hopelessness, isolation. Learning from the
struggles of the past can help us to realize the Leonard’s freedom is our
freedom. Leonard’s justice is our justice because we are all connected through our
inter-generation pain of trying to live under colonial occupation.
Indigenous youth from all nations need to learn about the
BIA takeover, the take-over of Alcatraz Island and the occupation of Wounded
Knee by the American Indian Movement. Back in the day, when AIM was first
becoming a movement, there was an indigenous man named Wesley Bad Heart Bull who
was stabbed to death by a Whiteman. The prosecutor refused to charge him with
murder. We see the same forces at play today when Native and Black men are
murdered by white police officers and the settler system of justice refused to
acknowledge their humanity or charge white men with their crimes. AIM followers
rioted when the prosecutor ignored Wesley Bad Heart Bull’s humanity, the same
way that so many black and brown murder victims have been ignored by today's prosecutors and police chiefs.
When the FBI armed the mixed-blood sell outs and created a
death squads to threaten and assassinate AIM members who were standing up
against the sale of Indian land to Uranium mining. The government sought out
the most confused and lost of the mix bloods and used them against their own
people. On February 29, 1973, AIM
captured the town of Wounded Knee and led a stand-off against combat trained
federal marshals and FBI trained vigilantes.
They demanded the removal of the corrupt tribal chairman, Dick Wilson and
the return of the Black Hills to the Lakota people.
After the Wounded Knee
takeover, Leonard and a small band of young AIM members set up a spiritual camp
on the Jumping Bull ranch. They were asked by the traditionals to protect the
Jumping Bulls and oher The FBI were looking for an excuse to kill as many AIM
supporters as possible. Two agents showed up at the ranch in an unmarked car
and murdered AIM member Joe Stuntz for no reason. A gun fight ensued and the
two agents ended up dead. There are still many rumors that the two agents were
sacrificed by the FBI to find a reason to destroy AIM. The FBI even admits that they do not know who
killed the two agents. 200 FBI agents
engaged in the largest man hunt in FBI history, but they never found Leonard.
He escaped to Canada because he knew he could not obtain a fair trial. AIM protested that the government was
interested in Leonard only for his involvement in defending the traditional
elders from Dickie Wilson’s FBI backed goons and for his politics, not for his
guilt in the death of the two agents. The judge was a known racist who wouldn’t
allow any evidence about the political violence on the Pine Ridge reservation.
Secret FBI documents later revealed that Peltier’s gun did not fire the shots
that killed the two agents. Evidence that could have exonerated Leonard was
withheld from the jury by a racist judge and he was eventually convicted of
aiding and abetting and given 2 consecutive life sentences even though the
prosecutor never proved that he ever hurt anyone. He was framed by the FBI so
that the American Indian Movement could be discredited. Today, the Lakota
people are still fighting to save the Black Hills from the same energy
corporations, uranium mining and the KeystoneXL pipeline. Leonard Peltier has
become a symbol of the resistance and spirit of Crazy Horse.
PREPARE FOR THE PRESENT
To prepare for the present, we must rid our minds of the settler’s
idea of political power and freedom as always being a “power over” and “freedom
from”. We must reclaim our indigenous concepts of power and freedom, the way the
original AIM members did. We must
prepare ourselves to become warriors who have the courage to tell people the
truth about what has to be done in the face of the dangers they confront. Just
telling the truth is not sufficient. Truth telling must be complemented with
empowering people to actively help in overcoming the dangers themselves.
We’re calling on all indigenous youth and all supporters to
share his story face to face with your family, friends and co-workers and even
with strangers. Share the stories of indigenous resistance using every form of
technology you have available to you. Find allies, unite on common ground and
create movement solidarity .Work to maintain your existing communities by
exposing rumors, gossip and lies about each other quickly. Learn about the
illegal COINTELPRO program and their dishonorable tactics to discredit AIM and
other liberation movements such as the Black Panthers. Learn about snitch
jacketing, divide and conquer, agent provocateurs and all means that the
colonizer uses to destroy our liberation movements from within. Do not submit
to a climate of fear. Learn tactics to fight the colonizer’s dishonorable ways.
We must teach each other to distinguish between real indigenous lifeways and
culture and petit-bourgeois liberalism, Capitalist ideology and New Age cultural genocide.
Know your enemy well. Know his tactics so you can expose them. Understand by
the settlers try to make us “settle” for their limited worldview and their “reforms”
that only keep us oppressed and keep them on top of an unjust racial hierarchy.
We must break with the settler’s conceptions of politics as hierarchy and
anarchy. Where there is conformity and obedience
to the settler’s limited and twisted ways of thinking, there cannot be truth
and genuine freedom. Today’s indigenous youth are a new generation that must hold the vision forthe
return of the land and the old, sustainable ways.
DEFEND THE FUTURE
The one thing that all indigenous nations share is the value
that all decisions should be made with the best interests of the seventh
generation in mind. For this planet to survive globalism and the capitalist
greed that is poisoning it, we need to forge alliances and create a communal
vision that we can all commit to work towards. We need to see the earth as a
living breathing entity that we are the guardians of, not the masters.
True warriors, like Leonard Peltier, understand that in
order for a people to be free, they must sacrifice to protect the people and
the land. Peltier was a true warrior because he stood up to protect the people
of Pine Ridge who could not protect themselves. He told us that to be a
warrior, first chop wood, carry water, plant gardens. In other words, do what
is necessary for the people to live. We
need to continue the struggles that were started in the 1970s against uranium
mining by fighting for indigenous sovereignty over our own lands and culture. We
must find the best ways to protect the things our grandfather’s fought to keep
intact: language, ceremony, culture, land.
There are movements today that are struggling for the same
things that Peltier and AIM were struggling for. Some of them are Idle No More,
Save Oak Flat, Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, Mexica Movement, MMIW
(Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women) Cop Watch, Anonymous, Grassy Narrows,
Save the Peaks, Secwepmc Sunpeaks resistance and so many others. Listen to each other’s stories. Imagine ways to
work for true power and true freedom.
In order to defend the future, a redefinition of power and
freedom is necessary. We must learn to recognize true spiritual authority and strive
towards self-governance. The planet cannot survive without being innovated
along these lines of indigenous world views. We must take up the battle to
reconnect with our indigenous elders and youth, men and women, traditionals and
urban activists, professionals, politicians and regular people in order to
rebuild mutual trust in each other's political, creative and spiritual capacities.
What you can do to take action:
Form you own NYM chapter. Hold meeting at coffee houses and
in each other’s homes. Show films, conduct letter writing campaigns to free
political prisoners like Leonard Peltier and stop the Keystone XL pipeline.
Hold events where those who create art, poetry and music of liberation can share
it with their communities. Record it and put it out on the internet on Facebook
and on YouTube.
On Friday September 11, 2015 there will be a twitterstorm in
memory of our sister Joanie Rodriquez and our brother Wambli who worked so hard
for Leonard’s freedom.
Use the #LeonardPeltier to tweet to:
@POTUS
@WhiteHouse
@LorettaLynch
@BarackObama
@CivilRights
@TheJusticeDept
@BarackObama
@Michelle
Obama
CALL:
the White House Comments Line
Monday through Friday
Between 9:00 am - 5:00 pm EDT
Get together with friends and allies and do letter writing events to ask
President Obama for executive clemency
WRITE TO:
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Don’t limit
your actions to just a few days. Do something every day. Keep up the calls,
tweets and letters throughout the entire month of September 2015.
And most importantly, please write Leonard to let him know that he is not
forgotten, and he is still in our minds and hearts! Let him know what a symbol
of resistance he is.
Write to :
Leonard
Peltier:
Prisoner #89637-132
USP Coleman I
P.O. Box 1033
Coleman, FL 33521
Learn from the
past, prepare for the present to defend the future.
In struggle,
Native Youth
Movement, Tucson
