Joe Biden is Leonard Peltier’s last hope | Rose Styron and Alex Matthiessen

The imprisoned Native American is long overdue for clemency. Joe Biden is probably the last president who can give it to him

As Joe Biden prepares to leave office, he has a chance to do something singularly honorable in the name of American justice and basic human rights. With a grant of clemency to Leonard Peltier, Biden could ameliorate a half-century-old injustice not just against Peltier but, in effect, against Native peoples everywhere, many of whom consider Peltier an enduring symbol of racism and state-sponsored oppression in the US.

For those Americans who may not have heard of him, Leonard Peltier is known around the world as the US government's number one political prisoner. A member of the Chippewa and Lakota Nations, Peltier was convicted in 1976 for the deaths, the year before, of two FBI agents killed during a shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. While he was in the area at the time of the shootout, Peltier, who maintains his innocence, has served nearly 50 years and counting for a murder he was never proved to have committed - or even to have aided and abetted.

Rose Styron is a poet and longtime human rights activist with Amnesty International. Alex Matthiessen is an environmental advocate and former Clinton administration political appointee. His father, Peter Matthiessen, wrote the definitive account of the Peltier case, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse