By Jorge Boccanera
An old Navajo poem talks of "the voice that beautifies the earth, the voice of the summit, the voice of the thunder that reverberates in the black cloud". The poem tells how the voice that beautifies the earth is silenced, just like that of Leonard Peltier, a leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM), imprisoned for 15 years.
At 46 years of age, Peltier, a poet and artist, calls out to all those willing to listen: "I'm innocent, I want the whole world to know, I haven't killed anyone and I didn't have a fair trial."
Last October, during the second continental meeting concerning 500 years of popular, indigenous and black resistance, 224 delegates meeting in the Guatemalan city of Quezaltenango denounced his imprisonment.
There are numerous committees in the United States and Latin America calling for his release. Fifteen million signatures have been gathered in Moscow on a petition demanding justice for Peltier.
In a recent interview, US linguist and political analyst Noam Chomsky discussed the many abuses that have taken place in his country against the indigenous population. Chomsky highlighted the paradox of former President Reagan's stance during the term of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, when he was a fervent defender of the Miskito people but was indifferent to the discrimination against indigenous people in the US.
Chomsky recommended M. Churchill's book, Agents of Repression, which documents the FBI's war against the American Indian Movement.
The Mexican weekly Proceso recently summarised the Peltier case, which began in 1973 when some 300 AIM activists peacefully occupied the town of Wounded Knee on South Dakota's Pine Ridge reservation. The occupation was in protest at attempts by corrupt tribal leaders to hand reservation land, which was found to be rich in uranium, gas and oil, back to the US government. The US government responded by intervening with tanks and helicopters. From 1973 to 1976, the clashes left 342 Indians dead.
Peltier's arrest and jailing reads like a trite Hollywood script: one night two federal agents — Ron Williams and Jack Coler — entered a ranch without a warrant in order to take away a Native American accused of stealing a pair of boots.
The police shot at the sleeping people, some of the Indians fought off the attack, and in a lightning operation 150 agents entered into action. When the attack ended and the smoke lifted, there were three dead bodies — agents Williams and Coler, and Indian Joe Stuntz.
What followed was a witch-hunt resulting in prison terms for the alleged killer of the agents, Leonard Peltier, and other activists (Stuntz's death wasn't investigated). Peltier remains imprisoned in Leavenworth, Kansas, after being sentenced in 1977 to two life pporters say he was convicted on evidence that is completely faulty, including perjured testimony and inconsistent ballistic evidence.
Demanding a new trial, Peltier says he is a "prisoner of war in my own country".
[From the Cuban news service, Prensa Latina.]