Biden Commutes Sentence of Indigenous Political Prisoner Leonard Peltier

Moments before he left office and as one of his final acts as president, Joe Biden commuted the life sentence of Leonard Peltier, an 80-year-old Native American activist and political prisoner who has been incarcerated for nearly half a century for a crime he maintains he did not commit.

At the time of his conviction, Peltier was a member of the American Indian Movement, a grassroots movement that was founded in 1968 to advocate for Indigenous rights and sovereignty in the United States. He was charged under dubious circumstances for the killing of two FBI agents in a 1975 shootout at Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. After being charged, he fled to Canada; he was extradited and sent back to the U.S. to face trial in 1977.

Indigenous advocates and human rights organizations have long maintained that Peltier was not given a fair trial. Evidence that could have exonerated him — including ballistics showing that the bullets that killed the two agents were not fired from Peltier’s weapon — was withheld from his lawyers. Testimony that led to the Canadian government agreeing to his extradition was also perjured.

In 2017, the former chief prosecutor who was part of the trial made an extraordinary request for then-President Barack Obama to grant Peltier clemency. That request was ultimately not granted. With Biden exiting the White House, several human rights organizations made those requests yet again, asserting that the unfair trial warranted a lessening of Peltier’s sentence.

Biden’s commutation is not a full pardon — Peltier will remain under house confinement, likely for the rest of his life. Still, human rights advocates and Indigenous activists who have campaigned for decades for Peltier to be granted clemency celebrated the action.

“President Biden was right to commute the life sentence of Indigenous elder and activist Leonard Peltier given the serious human rights concerns about the fairness of his trial,” said Paul O’Brien, executive director of Amnesty International USA.

“This is a huge win for grassroots Indigenous movements who kept his campaign alive and a moral indictment on the system and people who kept him unjustly imprisoned for half a century,” Indigenous organizer and journalist Nick Estes wrote in a post on X.

“Leonard Peltier’s liberation is our liberation – we will honor him by bringing him back to his homelands to live out the rest of his days surrounded by loved ones, healing, and reconnecting with his land and culture,” said NDN Collective founder and CEO Nick Tilsen. “Let Leonard’s freedom be a reminder that the entire so-called United States is built on the stolen lands of Indigenous people — and that Indigenous people have successfully resisted every attempt to oppress, silence, and colonize us.”

Peltier also celebrated his commutation.

“It’s finally over — I’m going home,” he said, adding that he planned to do acts of good work following his release.

“I want to show the world I’m a good person with a good heart. I want to help the people, just like my grandmother taught me,” Peltier said.