80 years old! That homecoming party is going to be absolutely epic.
op, ty for the good news today.
Peltier, an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians in North Dakota, was active in the American Indian Movement, which beginning in the 1960s fought for Native American treaty rights and tribal self-determination.
The group grabbed headlines in 1969 when activists occupied the former prison island of Alcatraz in the San Francisco Bay, and again in 1972, when they presented presidential candidates with a list of demands including the restoration of tribal land. After they were ignored, they seized the headquarters of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
From then on, the group was subject to FBI surveillance and harassment under a covert program that sought to disrupt activism and was exposed in 1975.
Peltier’s conviction stemmed from a confrontation that year on the Oglala Sioux Indian Reservation in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, in which FBI agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams were killed. According to the FBI, the agents were there to serve arrest warrants for robbery and assault with a dangerous weapon.
Prosecutors maintained at trial that Peltier shot both agents in the head at point-blank range. Peltier acknowledged being present and firing a gun at a distance, but he said he fired in self-defense. A woman who claimed to have seen Peltier shoot the agents later recanted her testimony, saying it had been coerced.
He was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and given two consecutive life sentences.
A dragon slayer and a rogue fair maiden meet in the halls of justice. The beginning of a merry band of adventurers!