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1976 Leonard Peltier, AIM leader, is led across Oakalla Prison to a waiting helicopter
1media/Screen Shot 2022-10-28 at 4.30.00 PM_thumb.png2022-10-28T23:31:20+00:00Gina Leonf0ac362b4453e23ee8a94b1a49fbeeafde2a0a4912Leonard Peltier, American Indian Movement leader, is led across Oakalla Prison to a waiting helicopter, on Dec. 17, 1976, in Burnaby, British Columbia. Peltier was a member of the American Indian Movement, a grassroots activist organization that began in Minneapolis in the 1960s to challenge police brutality and the oppression of Native Americans' rights. He was at Pine Ridge in 1975 in the wake of a drawn-out protest two years earlier at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, where armed American Indian Movement activists and Oglala Sioux tribal members had occupied the town and clashed with federal law enforcement officers. Two activists were killed. Dozens of people participated in the gunfight; at trial, two co-defendants were acquitted after they claimed self-defense. When Peltier was tried separately in 1977, no witnesses were presented who could identify him as the shooter, and unbeknown to his defense lawyers at the time, the federal government had withheld a ballistics report indicating the fatal bullets didn't come from his weapon, Sharp said. "My co-defendants were found not guilty in self-defense, and I'm the one doing all this time," Peltier said.plain2023-03-17T22:28:53+00:001976Gina Leonf0ac362b4453e23ee8a94b1a49fbeeafde2a0a49