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- By Levi Rickert Neely Bardwell
This Day in History – Feb. 6, 1976. Forty-nine years ago today, February 6, 1976, Leonard Peltier (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe) was arrested in western Canada. His arrest was based on a warrant issued by the United States for his alleged involvement in the June 26, 1975, shooting deaths of two FBI agents, Jack Coler and Ronald Williams, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
On January 19, 2025, President Joe Biden commuted his sentences to home confinement just before exiting office. Peltier will be released on February 18, 2025 from the United States Penitentiary, Coleman, a high-security prison, in Coleman, Fla., where he is serving two consecutive life sentences for the killing of the two FBI agents.
On February 6, 1976, Peltier, an activist and member of the American Indian Movement (AIM), was arrested in Hinton, Alberta, Canada by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). “Since this day of my capture by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, my life has become one unending blue of jails and prisons...Handcuffs and leg irons and strip searcher –’spread’m, Tonto’-- have become my daily routine,” Peltier wrote in “Prison Writings: My Life is a Sun Dance.”
At the time, Peltier had fled to Canada following the incident at the Jumping Bull Ranch, where a shootout had occurred between AIM members and FBI agents. The U.S. government sought his extradition, claiming he had played a key role in the deaths of the agents.
Peltier was extradited to the United States on December 18, 1976, after the U.S. government presented affidavits from Myrtle Poor Bear, a Lakota woman who claimed to have been an eyewitness to the killings.
Also, in “Prison Writings: My Life is a Sun Dance,” Peltier wrote:
“I had not the slightest idea who this woman was, having never met or even heard of her in my life. She, like me, like each and every one of us, was a pawn in the government’s illegal and malicious game.”
During Peltier’s fight for extradition from Canada, Poor Bear’s testimony was enough for the Canadian government to extradite Peltier to the United States to stand trial. However, she later recanted her statements, stating that they had been coerced by the FBI and that she never even met Peltier.
Despite significant controversy surrounding his trial, including allegations of misconduct and withheld evidence, Peltier was convicted of first-degree murder in 1977 and sentenced to two consecutive life terms.
His case has since become a focal point for human rights activists and members of Congress, who argued that he was unjustly convicted and called for his release.
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