{"id":626339,"date":"2026-10-10T11:36:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T11:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/626339\/"},"modified":"2026-10-10T11:36:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T11:36:10","slug":"i-just-wasnt-going-to-give-up-the-fight-to-free-the-longest-serving-political-prisoner-in-the-us-documentary-films","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/626339\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I just wasn\u2019t going to give up\u2019: the fight to free the longest-serving political prisoner in the US | Documentary films"},"content":{"rendered":"

On 20 January 2025, with 14 minutes remaining in his term as president, Joe Biden commuted<\/a> the life sentence of Leonard Peltier<\/a>, after years of pressure to release a figure seen by many as the longest-serving political prisoner in the US. The Indigenous activist, a leader within the American Indian Movement (Aim) and an icon of Native American resistance, served nearly 50 years in prison for allegedly killing two FBI agents during a shootout on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, in 1975 \u2013 killings he has always denied, prosecuted in a railroaded trial widely seen as corrupt.<\/p>\n

Outside the Florida prison where Peltier was being held that morning were several of the many activists and lawyers who fought for his release, as well as film-makers David France and Jesse Short Bull. The two directors\u2019 long-gestating documentary on Peltier\u2019s fight for justice was set to premiere<\/a> just a week later at the Sundance film festival with a very different ending, the octogenarian still awaiting a chance to return home to the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa reservation in North Dakota. That morning, there was \u201ca sinking feeling that it wasn\u2019t going to happen\u201d, France said.<\/p>\n

When it did, while the cameras rolled, the line of supporters erupted in joy for a commutation that allowed Peltier to serve the rest of his consecutive life sentences on house arrest, though it did not pardon him \u2013 not quite justice, but a victory so uncertain and so hard-fought, over more than half a lifetime, that I have cried every time I\u2019ve rewatched it.<\/p>\n

Free Leonard Peltier, out on Netflix for Indigenous Peoples\u2019 Day in the US, makes clear why, as Peltier put it to me over Zoom from his new home, \u201cI just wasn\u2019t going to give up.\u201d Over 110 minutes, Short Bull and France retrace not only what happened that day at Pine Ridge, but the long arc of Indigenous activism in the US, from Peltier\u2019s childhood resisting Native boarding schools<\/a>, the government-run institutions used to forcibly separate Native families and force assimilation, to Aim\u2019s occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) in 1972 and the many decades of work to free Peltier. For years, as more evidence of railroaded justice emerged, Peltier\u2019s name became synonymous with Indigenous resistance, another abuse in a long chain of abuses by the US federal government. \u201cHis name was definitely said on the daily,\u201d Short Bull, who is Oglala Lakota, told me. \u201cIt was just like, the sky is blue.\u201d Still, \u201cit wasn\u2019t until I started gaining access to the history where I started to understand that this was a bad deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much of the first half of the film relies on archival material and interviews with the now-elderly former members of Aim, introducing a new audience to the movement\u2019s origins, in response to the crisis of boarding schools, forced evictions and the steady encroachment on tribal territory. Peltier joined the movement in the 1960s, after experiencing anti-Native police brutality while working at a power plant on the Navajo Nation, and participated on Aim\u2019s \u201ctrail of broken treaties\u201d caravan to Washington. He served as a security guard when Aim members occupied the BIA building, where things devolved after the discovery of paperwork confirming future plans to use tribal lands for mining.<\/p>\n

Such tribal lands included Pine Ridge, which held some of the richest uranium deposits in the United States. Peltier arrived on the reservation during a tense and dangerous time, as a corrupt tribal government, led by Dick Wilson and enforced by his BIA-backed private \u201cgoons\u201d (Guardians of the Oglala Nation), clashed with tribal members and Aim, sent to help defend residents from routine violence; one former resident recalls in the film that there were 68 murders in Pine Ridge during that time, and no arrests. The day of the shootout, in which a militarized FBI \u2013 archival footage shows dozens of tanks and military-style assault weapons \u2013 traded fire with a handful of Aim security members, Wilson unilaterally ceded one-eighth of the reservation to the federal government.<\/p>\n

Leonard Peltier and Holly Cook Macarro in Free Leonard Peltier. Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix<\/p>\n

\u201cWe took this on as historians, really,\u201d said France. \u201cOur job wasn\u2019t to do a whodunnit. We weren\u2019t going to try to solve the case. It wasn\u2019t our job to figure out who pulled the trigger \u2013 we know it wasn\u2019t Leonard.\u201d What became clear through extensive archival research was that \u201cpeople knew then that this was all about land. And none of that had been brought out before in the telling of Leonard\u2019s story or the telling of the American Indian Movement. It\u2019s all about the land.\u201d<\/p>\n

Almost every film participant, as well as France, Short Bull and Peltier himself, assert that given the land deal, the FBI at minimum escalated the violence that day, which killed agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams, as well as Aim member Joe Stuntz, if not outright staged it. (No arrest was ever made in Stuntz\u2019s death.)<\/p>\n

The film\u2019s second half details the numerous miscarriages of justice after Peltier, who escaped that day and hid out for a time in an RV loaned by Marlon Brando, was arrested in Canada. The litany of dubious maneuvers used to incarcerate Peltier plays like a who\u2019s-who of prosecutorial misconduct on every level: Peltier\u2019s extradition was secured via fabricated testimony from a \u201cgirlfriend\u201d he had never met, and who later recanted, citing coercion; he was tried separately from his co-defendants Dino Butler and Bob Robideau, who were allowed to argue self-defense and acquitted, in a court presided over by a known racist judge in North Dakota; the FBI\u2019s limited evidence, claiming with certainty that Peltier shot the two agents at point-blank range, was later revealed to be unreliable. \u201cThey had no evidence to even indict us,\u201d Peltier told me. \u201cThat was not a trial.\u201d Nevertheless, Peltier was sentenced to life in prison in 1977.<\/p>\n

In 1984, at a hearing prompted by international activism toward Peltier\u2019s release, the defense presented a firing pin test conducted by the FBI demonstrating that Peltier\u2019s AR-15 was not used to shoot the agents that day. Still, the case was not overturned. By the mid-1990s, Peltier was running out of options for a verdict reversal. At times, he was presented the option to plead guilty or admit wrongdoing for clemency, but refused. \u201cI said, \u2018they\u2019ve been saying for 46 years I\u2019ve been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there\u2019s overwhelming proof against me, and now they want me to plead guilty? No, that\u2019s not going to happen,\u2019\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n

Leonard Peltier while imprisoned in 1999. Photograph: Joe Ledford\/Associated Press<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not the guilty party here,\u201d he added. \u201cWe weren\u2019t killing them. We weren\u2019t trying to exterminate them.\u201d During his half-century of prison, Peltier remained acutely engaged with politics \u2013 \u201che\u2019s the Nelson Mandela of the movement,\u201d said France. \u201cHe spent his time in prison still organizing\u201d \u2013 so he speaks with conviction: \u201cWe\u2019re still in danger right now.\u201d Just this summer, the Trump administration went ahead<\/a> with its court-contested plan to build 62 miles of its border wall through Tohono O\u2019odham Nation without the tribe\u2019s consent. \u201cThere\u2019s the same type of president in there, the fascists who are talking about doing away with our treaties,\u201d he said. \u201cIf we do away with our treaties, that means the end of us as a race of people.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd people will say, \u2018Why are people doing that?\u2019 Well, as long as we\u2019re alive, as long as we\u2019re still living as a race of people, they could never legitimately claim to be the only and true Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

The film ends on an upbeat note \u2013 Peltier, at long last, at home, surrounded by friends and family, though he is quick to note that house arrest is not freedom. \u201cI\u2019m still battling for total freedom,\u201d he said, including the ability to travel and meet many of his supporters. \u201cI would like to have my total freedom before I pass, or at least what freedom I could have in America.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Free Leonard Peltier argues that his legacy is not forgotten. \u201cI\u2019m a beneficiary of the sacrifice that that generation made,\u201d Short Bull said. \u201cLeonard reminds me of so many people here on the Pine Ridge reservation. Even today, young people that are willing to make the sacrifice \u2026 hopefully history doesn\u2019t have to ever repeat itself ever again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On 20 January 2025, with 14 minutes remaining in his term as president, Joe Biden commuted the life…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[156,409,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-626339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}