The child
The year was around 1958. Leonard was about 14. I've already talked about termination legislation passed during the Eisenhower Administration. It was intended to "terminate" all Indian reservations and "relocate" Indians off their lands and into the cities. Indians were given two choices: relocate or starve. In the late 1950s, however, to implement that inhuman policy, the United States government cut off the reservations' already meager supply of food and commodities. Forget about yeast bread: they didn't have luxuries! Leonard still says that what hurt most was to see the look on the mother's and father's faces when there wasn't even baking-powder bread to give the kids. One day he went inside and saw this old Ojibwa woman raise up to speak with tears in her eyes, pleading for someone to help because her children were at home slowly starving to death. She asked if there were no more warriors among our men. She said if there were, why didn't they stand up and fight for their starving children? That day was very educational for him, he recalled. Leonard vowed he would help his people for the rest of his life. As he puts if, "I began to learn why my people were not employed and why we never had any food to serve at mealtimes. (Matthiessen, ibid, p. 47.)
Growing up
When the American Indian Movement actively began helping Indian people, Leonard Peltier became actively interested. By that time, he was so bitter and disillusioned by "white-man's justice" that some from different backgrounds (read: white) could label him a racist. After all, they see no problem. (Doesn't that make him a racist?) On election day in 1972, AIM staged a protest in Washington D.C. called the "Trail of Broken Treaties" to protest the illegal repudiation of the 1868 Fort Laramie treaty ceding the Black Hills to the Lakota "in perpetuity," and the continuing exploitation of Indian land. Along with a young Bad River Chipewa named Stanley Moore, Peltier was chosen (i.e., was "volunteered") to direct security in Washington. Neither the President or the Vice-President had time to meet with unruly militants. Confronted with the usual evasion and broken promises, the marchers occupied the BIA building for five days. They caused considerable damage to the premises by trying to barricade themselves against the riot squads that kept threatening them with ultimatums. (Matthiessen, ibid, p. 53.)
Thirty-two men had been listed for prosecution, but despite the seriousness of the charges not one was ever indicted in the East - where public sympathy was traditionally with the Indian. It was safer to go after AIM in South Dakota, an impoverished state where anti-Indian prejudice was epidemic. Besides, local politicians and law-enforcement officers there could be counted on for enthusiastic cooperation. Anyway, vast economic considerations were at stake: uranium leases on treaty lands in the Black Hills that were being issued quietly - if not secretly - to the huge energy consortia could be delayed by prolonged treaty hearings in the courts. To camouflage the role of the U.S. government, units of the BIA's Indian police would be trained in paramilitary tactics; at the same time, the focus of the still-secret FBI counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) was turned from the Black Panthers onto AIM, and an organized "neutralizing" of AIM leaders began. (Matthiessen, ibid, p. 56.)
The fugitive
On November 22, 1972, a few weeks after his return to Milwaukee from the "Trail of Broken Treaties," Leonard Peltier and two Indian friends were badgered in Tex's Restaurant on Fifth Street by two other customers. "These two guys at another table - we didn't know they was plainclothes cops at the time, because one of them had on a black leather jacket and the other one was in a windbreaker - anyway, they were looking over at us, pointing and laughing, you know, really cracking up. Well, one of the brothers, he's a pretty good fighter, and I guess I am, too, and he says, if they give us any more of that, we'll kick the shit out of them. So when I had paid up and was starting out, here are these two guys right in the doorway, like they were waiting for us, and they're still pointing at us and cracking up. So I say What the fuck's so funny? I knew me and this other bro could take 'em, see. Why, hell they pull guns on us, right then and there, before we could get it on; one of 'em had his piece strapped to his leg. And them .357s look pretty goddam big; when this guy in the black leather jacket put that thing to my head, it came up at me like a goddam cannon."
"When they saw them guns, my friends just split, and I don't blame 'em. As for me, I'm backing up fast into the restaurant, figuring they might not kill me in front of witnesses. Once I'm in there, I say in a loud voice, Okay, I give up! So they call a paddy wagon and handcuff me and drag me outside and shove me in, hands cuffed behind my back, and once I'm in there, this cop Hlavinka, he starts beating on me like a stepchild! And in all the skirmishing around, my coat gets ripped open and this old piece falls out - hell, it was an old busted Beretta, couldn't fire at all, I had just given a guy twenty bucks for it as a favor, figuring I might get it fixed sometime. Well, that gun just what them pigs needed; they busted me for attempted murder, and here Hlavinka is hitting me so hard that I had to jam my head under the wagon seat to keep my brains from being beat out. Finally the other one, James Eckel - the one who later admitted in court that he had kicked me 'four or five' times while I was lying handcuffed in the paddy wagon - this Eckel tells Hlavinka he'd better take it easy. By that time Hlavinka had busted all the blood vessels in his right hand, he had to take sick leave for three days - that came out in court, too."
"So after they brought me to the jail, one of the black cops says to me, We know what you're involved in: your people and mine have a real grievance in this country. How did he know what I was involved in, unless Hlavinka and his partner knew it too, before they started trouble in that restaurant?"
"Officer Hlavinka stated that Peltier had taken out a loaded gun and pulled the trigger twice in an effort to shoot him; the gun had failed, it was said, and before a third shot could be attempted, Hlavinka's partner had thrust his hand between the hammer and the firing pin. Officer Eckel received a citation for having saved Hlavinka's life, although the state crime lab would conclude that Peltier's gun was "incapable of being fired."
The young Indian's clam that he had been set up by the police was eventually supported by several witnesses who described the incident in the restaurant, and also by Hlavinka's former girl friend, Bell Anne Guild, who said that Hlavinka, in this period, had waved around one of Peltier's pictures, sent to the local police from Washington, announcing his intention of "catching a big one for the FBI." Meanwhile Peltier spent five months in jail before Milwaukee AIM could raise bail. Seeing no reason to expect justice in a trial in which the word of an AIM Indian would be pitted against the testimony of two policemen, Peltier went underground soon after he was released. In July 1973, when due to appear for a pre-trial hearing, he had already headed west for the Dakotas. Leonard Peltier was now officially a "fugitive from justice." (Matthiessen, ibid, p. 57.)