Nick Estes: Leonard Peltier's Continued Imprisonment Is an "Open Wound for Indian Country"

Calls are growing for President Biden to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier, the 77-year-old imprisoned Native American activist who has spent 46 years behind bars for a crime he says he did not commit. Amnesty International considers Peltier a political prisoner, and numerous legal observers say his 1977 conviction for alleged involvement in killing two FBI agents in a shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation was riddled with irregularities and prosecutorial misconduct. At this point, there's no reason other than vindictive revenge for him to be in prison," says writer and activist Nick Estes, co-founder of the Indigenous resistance group The Red Nation. He survived COVID, he's in poor health, and the man deserves to be with his people," says Estes, who calls for a full congressional investigation into the deaths of Indigenous activists on Pine Ridge Reservation, where the shootout that led to Peltier's arrest occurred.