Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights

May 13, 2024

UN Permanent Forum Urges Clemency for Peltier in Report to United Nations



United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues Urges Clemency to Peltier

By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, May 13, 2025

NEW YORK -- The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues urges clemency for Leonard Peltier, in its report now being finalized for the United Nations  Economic and Social Council.

"The Permanent Forum reiterates the recommendation it made to the United States of America at its twenty-second session to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier," states the advanced unedited report to the U.N. Economic and Social Council.


Nathan Phillips, Omaha, Deer Clan, told the U.N. Permanent Forum during the session in April that it is time for Leonard Peltier to come home.

"Leonard Peltier should come home and be with his great grandson and teach him songs, and what he has left of his life should be spent at home.

"Leonard Peltier stood up for the people," Phillips said, and asked the U.N. Permanent Forum to write a letter to Coleman Prison and ask for a compassionate release for Peltier. Phillips said Peltier is sick, is 79 years old, and has spent more than 40 years in prison.

"They really don't know who committed the crime that he's in there for, and now his eyesight is really bad. He might die in there, and that would be death by incarceration," Phillips said.

"The FBI admitted that they didn't know who did that, so they should let him go," he said, adding "the FBIs didn't have no business up there."

The 25-page advanced report from the Permanent Forum session reveals the devastation globally as Indigenous Peoples battle mining, fake green energy projects, assassinations, theft of their lands, poisoning of their waters, hate crimes, false imprisonments and censorship.

"Extractive industries and green energy projects often lead to the dispossession and militarization of Indigenous Peoples' land, territories and resources. Indigenous leaders and human rights defenders opposing such initiatives become targets of reprisals, with Indigenous women at risk of sexual assault, gender-based killings and trafficking," the report states.

Read more in Censored News original series from the U.N. Permanent Forum, April 15 -- 25, 2024:

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