The Long Talk with Leonard Peltier: From boarding school to the good fight, and home again
By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, Sept. 19, 2025
TURTLE MOUNTAIN, North Dakota -- From boarding school to the fishing rights struggle in the Northwest, to the Trail of Broken Treaties and Wounded Knee, Leonard Peltier fought the good fight, and after 49 years and two months in prison, it brought him home again.
Speaking with Amy Goodman at Democracy Now! from his home on Turtle Mountain, Peltier shares the reality of being in prison. Even before his long imprisonment, the battle for justice propelled him forward.
Peltier thought he would die in prison.
Recounting his life, Peltier remembers the starvation in his homeland as the U.S. attempted termination and the threat of death by the U.S. military for those at Wounded Knee. Peltier remembers being arrested with Marlon Brando, the injustice that imprisoned him, and his life and his struggles today.
Listen:
“I’m Not Going to Give Up”: Leonard Peltier on Indigenous Rights, His Half-Century in Prison & Coming Home -- Democracy Now! |
Amy Goodman speaks with Leonard Peltier at his home on Turtle Mountain, on the day after his 81st birthday. Remembering the brutality of boarding school, Peltier says, the purpose of boarding schools is "to take the Indian out of the Indians." The danger continues, Peltier adds. "Look at what they’re doing in Palestine, killing women, children, babies, unborn babies. That’s what they did to us, man. And here it is still happening." |
 Takeover of BIA in Washington 1972 during Trail of Broken Treaties. |
Peltier remembers helping organize the United Tribes of All Indians, the battle for hunting and fishing rights, and Treaties, and the takeover of Fort Lawton in Washington State -- before he joined the American Indian Movement. Peltier describes the GOON Squad and the Reign of Terror on Pine Ridge and how AIM stood up to them. At Wounded Knee, Nixon was going to wipe them out. Censored News |
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| Dr. Suzanne Shoush, St'atl'imx/Sudanese, and Mskwaasin Agnew, Cree/Dene Salt River First Nation |
 Listen to her words on Twitter/X |
| https://x.com/i/status/1967991219595907237 |
https://mohawknationnews.com/blog/2025/09/12/trick-or-treaty/
MNN. TRICK OR TREATY. SEP. 12. 2025. This could be a halloween story. We all want to be diverted, scared, fooled and given a few trinkets to help us forget what was done to us. The truth is we were invaded and we have to hang on to what is ours, which is everything. The “trick or treaters” wear masks to cover up their dreadful stories and actions they did to us. They came here with a mask which was two faces and two tongues. They never removed their mask but we always knew what was under it, their deceitful murderous ways, which we are now exposing. They came from Europe with outsized ambitions and outrageous excessive wants. They believed their big mouthed rulers who told them, “Here’s a permit. Just go there, kill the Indians, bury them and then build your town or home over their bodies so no one will ever find them.