Organizing for America | Christopher Groden's Blog: Leonard Peltier, a POW of America's Energy Wars

Leonard Peltier, a POW of America's Energy Wars

By Christopher from Belfast, ME - Aug 13th, 2008 at 2:21 pm EDT

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Leonard Peltier: A POW of America's Energy Wars.

Should we humans somehow survive our "Atomic Age", and the cumulative effects of planetary pollution, it may be that future historians will look back on this era as a time of the Energy Wars, in the late Colonial period (hopefully). A time when human population increases, combined with social injustices and inequalities, spawned a series of military conflicts over control of the Earth's hydrocarbon and nuclear fuel sources. These, along with other resources, had been designated as "Strategic Materials", vital to National Security. In the early 1970s, Indian Reservations in the western United States became, once again, targets of the US Government, acting on behalf of Corporate interests, in a deliberate plan to acquire and exploit the energy resources of their lands. The Government, using the Justice Department and especially the FBI's illegal and unconstitutional "Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO)" went into action. Starting in 1973 with the 71 day siege at Wounded Knee, South Dakota (site of the 1890 massacre of Big Foot's band of over 200 Sioux by the US Army's 7th Cavalry) they employed the same tactics they had developed and deployed against the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, and Anti-War/Draft groups in the sixties and beyond. These included murder, arson, assault, drive-by shootings, false arrest and prosecution, burglaries, and the planting of informants and agents provocateur. On the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the FBI armed and colluded with tribal police GOON (Guardians Of the Oglala Nation) Squads and non-Indian vigilantes in a 3-year reign of terror ('73-'76) against traditionalists, that included a shootout on the Jumping Bull Ranch on June 26th, 1975 between FBI Agents and members of the American Indian Movement (a traditionalist self-defense group). That engagement took the lives of one Indian and two Agents, although the Indian's death was never investigated. After eighteen of the nineteen AIM defenders involved were acquitted on grounds of justifiable self-defense, the Justice Department falsified affidavits to illegally extradite from Canada the only remaining AIM defender, Leonard Peltier, and in an admittedly, deeply flawed prosecution, held in an atmosphere of fear and intimidation actively promoted by the FBI and cooperating law enforcement agencies, scapegoated him into 2 consecutive life terms for the murders of their agents.
So, now, over three decades and two energy wars later, despite numerous appeals and parole hearings, and the outcry of millions worldwide against his unjust imprisonment, Leonard Peltier is still doing hard time in a federal pen.
An important part of addressing the problems we have caused by the way we have dealt with our energy needs to date, beyond a quick technological fix to further enrich our Corporate masters, should be an effort to correct past injustices committed in the name of combined Corporate and Government greed and malfeasance (the definition of fascism according to Benito Mussolini).
We can begin by freeing Leonard Peltier, and by listening, finally, to the message of his people, of living in balance, with respect for our Mother Earth. Let's all be lead by our love, for the life of the land. Free Leonard Peltier! check out: <www.whoisleonardpeltier.info>

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