4/27/22

Runners raise awareness of America's longest-held prisoner of war

In 1974, President Richard Nixon issued a limited presidential pardon to convicted killer William Calley of My Lai Massacre fame after he and American troops, some under his command, raped and butchered some 500 unarmed Vietnamese people in 1968. 

Prisoner of War Leonard Peltier is guilty of far, far lesser offenses. Peltier is a prisoner of the United States' longest war—waged against Indigenous Americans since 1776 and the Declaration of Independence.

After being convicted in 1977 then sentenced to two life terms for killing two enemy combatants under the fog of war on a battlefield inside the Oglala Lakota Nation in occupied South Dakota in 1975 Peltier applied for compassionate release in 2018 and again in 2020 but was always denied because Donald Trump despises American Indians. 

In a letter dated April 24, 2021 former New Mexico US Representative from the Third District Deb Haaland now Secretary of the Interior and Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ, 3rd District) asked Pres. Joe Biden for a grant of clemency and the release of Peltier, a 77-year old tribal citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians.

This interested party believes Pres. Barack Obama fears  Peltier will be murdered by white nationalists if he’s released.
With a little help from Rio Arriba County sheriff's deputies, the first-ever prayer run for imprisoned American Indian Movement (AIM) activist Leonard Peltier got underway around 9:30 a.m. last Saturday (April 16) in Velarde. Bobby Valdez, member of Laguna Pueblo and president of AIM Albuquerque GrassRoots, and Albuquerque chapter vice-president Deborah Jirón, an Isleta Pueblo member who also sits on the International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, were among the American Indian Movement members who gathered in Velarde to lead the event. [Canyon runners pray for Peltier's release]
Peltier has six surviving children and his eldest son, Chauncey is co-founder of the Indigenous Rights Center in Albuquerque but lives in Portland, Oregon. Efforts led by the Democratic National Committee's Native American Caucus to convince the Biden White House to grant clemency are ongoing.
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