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NATIVE AMERICAN NAMES: Leonard Peltier's Comments

AMERICAN INDIAN NEWS TICKER!!!

NATIVE AMERICAN NAMES: Leonard Peltier's Comments

By Jennifer Howard

© 2000 The Washington Post Company

Sunday , August 27, 2000 ; X10

U.S. Prisoner #89637-132

The number means nothing. The name behind

it--Leonard Peltier--evokes

everything that's lousy about the American judicial

system, if you count

yourself among the many who believe that Peltier was

wrongfully convicted of

gunning down two FBI agents at the Pine Ridge

Reservation in South Dakota on

June 28, 1975.

While Peltier, American Indian Movement (AIM)

activist and martyr, serves two

consecutive life sentences at the U.S. Federal

Penitentiary in Leavenworth,

Kan., human rights activists continue to agitate for

his release. Amnesty

International considers him a political prisoner.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu and

the Dalai Lama have cast their considerable moral

weight on his side. Peter

Matthiessen wrote about the case in his book In the

Spirit of Crazy Horse:

The Story of Leonard Peltier and the FBI's War on

the American Indian

Movement. And another high-flying Peltier supporter,

former attorney general

Ramsay Clark, provides the introduction to Prison

Writings: My Life Is My Sun

Dance by Leonard Peltier (St. Martin's/Griffin,

$13.95).

A prolonged cri de coeur delivered with a political

inflection, Prison

Writings comes closer to spiritual autobiography

than to a declaration of

innocence. Not that Peltier lets you forget his

claim to freedom: Every

American, he says, rightly and repeatedly, ought to

care about his case if

they care at all about the Constitution.

(Interestingly, Peltier does not

consider himself an American, though he invokes with

respect the highest

American ideals.) Information that has come out

since his trial--tales of

testimony suborned, evidence lost or

fabricated--makes me believe that he's

very probably innocent. But he comes across as least

persuasive when he's

trying hardest to persuade.

Fortunately for the reader, Peltier has a multitude

of things to talk about:

his origins (Chippewa, Dakota Sioux, a soupcon of

French), his childhood

(poor and peripatetic), his identification with the

traditions he calls

Indian Way, his activism on behalf of his people.

"When you grow up Indian,

you quickly learn that the so-called American Dream

isn't for you. For you

that dream's a nightmare. Ask any Indian kid: you're

out just walking across

the street of some little off-reservation town, and

there's this white cop

suddenly comes up to you, grabs you by your long

hair, pushes you up against

a car, frisks you, gives you a couple good jabs in

the ribs with his

nightstick, then sends you off with a warning sneer:

'Watch yourself, Tonto!'

"

Peltier wears his names proudly: Tate Wikuwa ("Wind

Chases the Sun"),

Gwarth-ee-lass ("He Leads the People"). "In Indian

Way, names come to you in

the course of your life, not just when you're born.

. . . Each name gives you

a new sense of yourself and your own possibilities.

And each name gives you

something to live up to. It points out the direction

you're supposed to take

in this life."

What can he do with his latest moniker, Prisoner

#89637-132? "Not much

imagination, or inspiration, there." And yet he

fashions a sort of poetry out

of the humiliations and deprivations and sensory

assaults of life in the big

house. (There are real poems in the book, too.) I'd

last about a week under

the conditions he describes: capricious guards,

expert beatings, botched or

nonexistent medical care, and "the noise, always the

noise. . . . A while

back someone was crying out eerily down the corridor

in the echoing

half-darkness. 'Slur the buds!' he cried out

dementedly, repeating those

meaningless words over and over again in a ghostly

voice, softly hissing and

hollow. 'Slur the buds! Slur the buds!' . . . Doing

time does this thing to

you. But, of course, you don't do time. You do

without it. Or rather, time

does you. Time is a cannibal that devours the flesh

of your years day by day,

bite by bite. And as he finishes the last morsel,

with the juices of your

life running down his bloody chin, he smiles

wickedly, belches with

satisfaction, and hisses out in ghostly tones, 'Slur

the buds!' "

So run the thoughts of a man locked down for a

quarter-century and counting.

For updates on Peltier's situation, see the Web site

maintained by the

International Office of the Leonard Peltier Defense

Committee at

www.freepeltier.org. (You'll find the FBI's side of

the case presented at

http://www.fbi.gov/contact/fo/minn/peltier.htm.)

Jennifer Howard's e-mail address is

howardjen@washpost.com.

© 2000 The Washington Post Company

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