Prison writings : my life is my sun dance / Leonard Peltier ; edited by Harvey Arden ; introduction by Arvol Looking Horse ; preface by Ramsey Clark.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Peltier, Leonard.

Contributor:

Arden, Harvey.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Peltier, Leonard--Imprisonment.

Peltier, Leonard.

Oglala Indians--Biography.

Oglala Indians.

Prisoners' writings, American.

Indian prisoners.

Imprisonment.

Kansas--Leavenworth.

Indian prisoners--Kansas--Leavenworth--Biography.

Prisoners' writings, American--Kansas--Leavenworth.

American Indian Movement.

Genre:

Biographies.

Autobiographies.

Physical Description:

xxvi, 243 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : St. Martin's Press, 1999.

Summary:

Leonard Peltier, now in his twenty-fourth year of confinement, was wrongly convicted of the murder of two FBI agents and has been doing hard time ever since. Immortalized in Peter Matthiessen's bestselling In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, Peltier remains in prison as his appeals for clemency languish on the president's desk, despite calls for his freedom from the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, the Europeart Parliament, and other prominent international figures.

Prison Writings, compiled by Peltier over the years, tells the extraordinary story of his life - his impoverished upbringing in the Dakotas, his gradual development as an American Indian leader during the political upheavals of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the tense battles with the government that culminated with the "Incident at Oglala." This last event is one of the darker moments of American history, when FBI agents raided an Indian reservation on the slimmest of pretenses, setting off a firefight in which two agents were killed.

Correctly anticipating an unfair judicial process, Peltier escaped to Canada following the shootout. Using false information gained by intimidating a young Indian woman into providing untrue testimony, the FBI illegally extradited Peltier from Canada and then withheld exonerating information at his trial. Since his conviction, a government lawyer has admitted that the prosecution had no idea who killed the two FBI agents, yet Peltier is still locked up at Leavenworth penitentiary in Kansas.

Whether writing about his childhood, his involvement with the American Indian Movement (AIM), the events at Oglala, or the infamous trial that resulted, Peltier is remarkably philosophical, and even forgiving, his voice a blanket of mercy and compassion. Looking beyond himself, he places his experience in the context of the long history of America's betrayals of and injustices to its Indian peoples. Prison Writings is thus a major political memoir, and it echoes the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and, especially, Martin Luther King, Jr.

Contents:

A Prayer xi

Part I In My Own Voice 1

Aboriginal Sin 16

My Life Is a Prayer for My People 22

The Heart of the World 26

In the Shadowed Night 27

The Knife of my Mind 33

I Am Everyone 39

Part II Who I Am 41

An Eagle's Cry 48

Part III Growing Up Indian 59

My Crime's Being an Indian 65

Part IV Becoming Political 87

Part V That Day at Oglala: June 26, 1975 121

Part VI A Life in Hell 137

Part VII A Message to Humanity 199

We Are Not Separate 213

Forgiveness 214

Difference 215

The Message 216.

ISBN:

0312203543

OCLC:

40862180