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August 28, 2008

An Open Letter to Barack Obama
Symbolism Alone Will Not Bring Change
By LEONARD PELTIER

I have watched with keen interest and renewed hope as your campaign has
mobilized millions of Americans behind your message of changing a political
system that serves a small economic elite at the expense of the peoples of
the United States and the world. Your election as president of the United
States, where slaves and Indians were long considered less than human under
the law, will undoubtedly constitute a historic moment in race relations in
the United States.

Yet symbolism alone will not bring about change. Our young people, black and
Native alike, suffer from police brutality and racial profiling, underfunded
schools, and discrimination in employment and housing. I sincerely hope your
campaign will inspire some hope among our youth to struggle for a better
future. I am, however, concerned that your recent statement on the Sean Bell
verdict, in which the New York police officers who fired 50 shots at a young
man on the eve of his wedding were acquitted of criminal charges, displays a
rather myopic view of the law. Until the law is harnessed to protect the
victims of state violence and racism, it will serve as an instrument of
repression, just as the slave codes functioned to sustain and legitimize an
inhuman institution.

As I can testify from experience, the legal institutions of this nation are
far from racial and political neutrality. When judges align with the
repressive actions and policies of the executive branch, injustice is
rationalized and cloaked in judicial platitudes. As you may know, I have now
served more than three decades of my life as a political prisoner of the
federal government for a crime I did not commit. I have served more time
than the maximum sentence under the guidelines under which I was sentenced,
yet my parole is continually denied (on the rare occasions when I am
afforded a hearing) because I refuse to falsely confess. Amnesty
International, South African Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama of Tibet,
my Guatemalan sister Rigoberta Menchu, and many of your friends and
supporters have recognized me as a political prisoner and called for my
immediate release. Millions of people around the world view me as a symbol
of injustice against the indigenous peoples of this land, and I have no
doubt that I will go down in history as one of a long line of victims of
U.S. government repression, along with Sacco and Vanzetti, the Haymarket
Square martyrs, Eugene Debs, Bill Haywood, and others targeted by for their
political beliefs. But neither I nor my people can afford to wait for
history to rectify the crimes of the past.

As a member of the American Indian Movement, I came to the Pine Ridge Oglala
reservation to defend the traditional people there from human rights
violations carried out by tribal police and goon squads backed by the FBI
and the highest offices of the federal government. Our symbolic occupation
of Wounded Knee in 1973 inspired Indians across the Americas to struggle for
their freedom and treaty rights, but it was also met by a fierce federal
siege and a wave of violent repression on Pine Ridge. In 1974, AIM leader
Russell Means campaigned for tribal chairman while being tried by the
federal government for his role at Wounded Knee. Although Means was barred
from the reservation by decree of the U.S.-client regime of Richard Wilson,
he won the popular vote, only to be denied office by extensive vote fraud
and control of the electoral mechanisms. Wilson’s goons proceeded to shoot
up pro-Means villages such as Wanblee and terrorize traditional supporters
throughout the reservation, killing at least 60 people between 1973 and
1975.

It is long past time for a congressional investigation to examine the degree
of federal complicity in the violent counterinsurgency that followed the
occupation of Wounded Knee. The tragic shootout that led to the deaths of
two FBI agents and one Native man also led not only to my false conviction,
but also the termination of the Church Committee, which was investigating
abuses by federal intelligence and law enforcement agents, before it could
hold hearings on FBI infiltration of AIM. Despite decades of attempts by my
attorneys to obtain government documents related to my case, the FBI
continues to withhold thousands of documents that might tend to exonerate me
or reveal compromising evidence of judicial collusion with the prosecution.

I truly believe the truth will set me free, but it will also signify a
symbolic break from America’s undeclared war on indigenous peoples. I hope
and pray that you possess the courage and integrity to seek out the truth
and the wisdom to recognize the inherent right of all peoples to
self-determination, as acknowledged by the United Nations Declaration on the
Rights of Indigenous Peoples. While your statements on federal Indian policy
sound promising, your vision of “one America” has an ominous ring for Native
peoples struggling to define their own national visions. If freed from
colonial constraints and external intervention, indigenous nations might
well serve as functioning models of the freedom and democracy to which the
United States aspires.

Yours in the struggle.

Until freedom is won,

Leonard Peltier
# 89637-132
U.S.P. Lewisburg,
P.O. Box 1000,
Lewisburg, PA USA 17837

Special Note:

Please Help Support the LPDOC for Leonard’s Freedom

As Leonard Peltier marks his 64th birthday on Sept. 12, the LPDOC is
redoubling its efforts to win his freedom. We are planning an ambitious
organizing drive in our new Fargo office to persuade North Dakota Senator
Byron Dorgan, chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, to
investigate the federal government’s role in the violent counterinsurgency
on the Pine Ridge Reservation from 1973-1976, the FBI’s withholding of
thousands of pages of documents related to the AIM activist, and the unfair
federal trial in Fargo which led to Leonard’s conviction in 1977.

Leonard is suffering from partial blindness, diabetes, a heart condition,
high blood pressure, and prostate problems. He needs your help.

We need your help too, if we are to do the work that needs to be done to
obtain justice for one of the longest-serving political prisoners in the
world. At the moment, we are barely keeping up with our rent and phone
bills, our two full-time staff members are working without pay, and we badly
need a new photocopier. Due to the damaging actions of a former LPDC
employee, who removed valuable office equipment and contributor records, we
are rebuilding our committee virtually from scratch. We have found an
experienced volunteer editor for our Spirit of Crazy Horse newspaper, but in
order to resume publication, we will need your support.

If you are able to contribute $20 or more for this campaign, you will
receive a free subscription to the newsletter to keep abreast on
developments in Peltier’s campaign and in Indian Country generally. Please
contribute as generously as you are able, and also take the time to write
and/or call Sen. Dorgan With your help, we can win Leonard’s freedom from
the same city in which it was taken away. Even if you are unable to
contribute at this time, please send us your name and address to help us
rebuild our list of supporters at the state and national level.

Please send your donation to:

LPDOC
PO Box 7488
Fargo, ND 58106
701-235-2206

Thank You,
Betty Ann Peltier-Solano,
Executive Director
Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee