On February 27, 1973, protesting the injustice and conditions on the reservation and bringing attention to the broken treaties, some 200 members of the American Indian Movement and their Oglala Lakota supporters occupied the town of Wounded Knee on Pine Ridge, the site of the 1890 massacre by the US 7th Cavalry which killed at least three hundred unarmed Indians - mostly women and children.
The occupation of Wounded Knee was met by a massive show of force by the FBI, US Marshals, and Tribal Police. Military armoured personnel carriers rumbled down the reservation's roads, and the occupation ended after a 71 day standoff which saw two Indians, Frank Clearwater and Buddy LaMont, killed by gunfire.
What followed was a period on the reservation referred to by those who lived through it as the "reign of terror."
Dick Wilson's tribal government funded GOON squads began a campaign of violence against anyone thought to be an AIM supporter or traditional Oglala Lakota. Entire neighborhoods were shot up, houses were burned, and at least sixty members of AIM or their supporters on the reservation had been found murdered.
The traditional people on the reservation invited AIM to play a more active role in helping protect them from Wilson's gangs. Leonard Peltier was one of those who came to Pine Ridge to help safeguard the community from the violence which engulfed them. . .
It was in this atmosphere that on June 26, 1975, two under cover agents of the FBI drove onto the private property of the Jumping Bull residence where members of AIM had a nearby camp.
Soon after a shootout erupted, with women and children fleeing in the crossfire, FBI Special Agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams were killed.
The camp was soon surrounded and came under a hail of gunfire while people continued to flee.
A third death, that of Native American Joe Stuntz, shot through the head by a sniper's bullet, has yet to be investigated.
After one of the largest manhunts in FBI history, Peltier, who was at the AIM camp on that day, was arrested in February 1976 in Canada and accused of killing the agents.
Dino Butler and Robert Robideau, arrested in the United States, were also charged with the killings. However, both of them were acquitted of these charges by a federal jury in Cedar Rapids,Iowa, on the grounds of self-defense.
The jury decided that had they been among what was reported to be up to thirty or so involved in the shoot out, and had they been the ones who fired on and killed the agents, due to the fear and violence in the community at that time, those acts would have been justified.
Soon after a shootout erupted, with women and children fleeing in the crossfire, FBI Special Agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams were killed.
The camp was soon surrounded and came under a hail of gunfire while people continued to flee.
A third death, that of Native American Joe Stuntz, shot through the head by a sniper's bullet, has yet to be investigated.
After one of the largest manhunts in FBI history, Peltier, who was at the AIM camp on that day, was arrested in February 1976 in Canada and accused of killing the agents.
Dino Butler and Robert Robideau, arrested in the United States, were also charged with the killings. However, both of them were acquitted of these charges by a federal jury in Cedar Rapids,Iowa, on the grounds of self-defense.
The jury decided that had they been among what was reported to be up to thirty or so involved in the shoot out, and had they been the ones who fired on and killed the agents, due to the fear and violence in the community at that time, those acts would have been justified.
Nevertheless, the FBI was determined to hold someone accountable for the deaths of their agents and turned their focus to Peltier.
Peltier was extradited to the United States for trial based on an affidavit signed by a young Native American woman named Myrtle Poor Bear who stated that she was Peltier's girlfriend at the time and had been a witness to the killings.
Myrtle Poor Bear, known to have been mentally unstable, later recanted, admitting that she had never met Peltier but was threatened into making the incriminating statements by the FBI.
The court in Peltier's case barred her from testifying about FBI misconduct on the grounds of her "incompetence."
The court also prohibited Peltier from using "self-defense," as Butler and Robideau did successfully in Cedar Rapids, as his own defense.
Peltier was extradited to the United States for trial based on an affidavit signed by a young Native American woman named Myrtle Poor Bear who stated that she was Peltier's girlfriend at the time and had been a witness to the killings.
Myrtle Poor Bear, known to have been mentally unstable, later recanted, admitting that she had never met Peltier but was threatened into making the incriminating statements by the FBI.
The court in Peltier's case barred her from testifying about FBI misconduct on the grounds of her "incompetence."
The court also prohibited Peltier from using "self-defense," as Butler and Robideau did successfully in Cedar Rapids, as his own defense.
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