Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance

by Leonard Peltier, Harvey Arden (Editor), Chief Arvol Looking Horse (Introduction), Ramsey Clark (Preface by)

Overview

In September of 2022, twenty-five years after Leonard Peltier received a life sentence for the murder of two FBI agents, the DNC unanimously passed a resolution urging President Joe Biden to release him. Peltier has affirmed his innocence ever since his sentencing in 1977—his case was made fully and famously in Peter Matthiessen's bestselling In the Spirit of Crazy Horse—and many remain convinced he was wrongly convicted.

Prison Writings is a wise and unsettling book, both memoir and manifesto, chronicling his life in Leavenworth Prison in Kansas. Invoking the Sun Dance, in which pain leads one to a transcendent reality, Peltier explores his suffering and the insights it has borne him. He also locates his experience within the history of the American Indian peoples and their struggles to overcome the federal government's injustices.

Edited by Harvey Arden, with an Introduction by Chief Arvol Looking Horse, and a Preface by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312263805
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/16/2000
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	137,351
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Leonard Peltier emerged as a Native American leader in the 1960s, was arrested in 1976 in Canada and extradited. He has been in prison ever since and is now confined at Leavenworth. Prison Writings is his first book.

Harvey Arden is the author and co-author of several books, including Wisdomkeepers and Travels in a Stone Canoe (both with Steve Wall) and Noble Red Man. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1

10:00 P.M. Time for the nightly lockdown and head count. The heavy metal door to my cell lets out an ominous grinding sound, then slides abruptly shut with a loud clang. I hear other doors clanging almost simultaneously down the cellblock. The walls reverberate, as do my nerves. Even though I know it's about to happen, at the sudden noise my skin jumps. I'm always on edge in here, always nervous, always apprehensive. I'd be a fool not to be. You never let your guard down when you live in hell. Every sudden sound has its own terror. Every silence, too. One of those sounds -- or one of those silences -- could well be my last, I know. But which one? My body twitches slightly at each unexpected footfall, each slamming metal door. Will my death announce itself with a scream or do its work in silence? Will it come slowly or quickly? Does it matter? Wouldn't quick be better than slow, anyway?

A guard's shadow passes by the little rectangular window on the cell door. I hear his keys jangle, and the mindless squawking of his two-way radio. He's peering in, observing, observing. He sees me sitting here cross-legged in the half-light, hunched over on my bed, writing on this pad. I don't look up at him. I can feel his gaze passing over me, pausing, then moving on, pausing again at the sleeping form of my cellmate snoring softly in the bunk above. Now he goes by. The back of my neck creeps.

Another day ends. That's good. But now another night is beginning. And that's bad. The nights are worse. The days just happen to you. The nights you've got to imagine, to conjure up, all by yourself. They're the stuff of your own nightmares. The lights go down but they never quite go out in here. Shadows lurk everywhere. Shadows within shadows. I'm one of those shadows myself. I, Leonard Peltier. Also known in my native country of Great Turtle Island as Gwarth-ee-lass --``He Leads the People.'' Also known among my Sioux brethren as Tate Wikuwa -- ``Wind Chases the Sun.'' Also known as U.S. Prisoner #89637-132.

I fold my pillow against the cinderblock wall behind me and lean back, half sitting, knees drawn up, here on my prison cot. I've put on my gray prison sweatpants and long-sleeved sweatshirt. They'll do for PJs. It's cool in here this late winter night. There's a shiver in the air. The metal and cinderblock walls and tile floors radiate a perpetual chill this time of year.

Old-timers will tell you how they used to get thrown, buck naked in winter, into the steel-walled, steel-floored Hole without even so much as a cot or a blanket to keep them warm; they had to crouch on their knees and elbows to minimize contact with the warmth-draining steel floor. Today you generally get clothes and a cot and blanket--though not much else. The Hole--with which I've become well acquainted at several federal institutions these past twenty-three years, having become something of an old-timer myself -- remains, in my experience, one of the most inhuman of tortures. A psychological hell. Thankfully, I'm out of there right now.

I'm also out of the heat that used to afflict us until they finally installed air-conditioning in the cellblock about ten years back. Before that Leavenworth was in-famous as the Hot House, because there was no air-conditioning here, just big wall-mounted fans that, during the mind-numbing heat of a Kansas hundred-degree summer day, blew the heavy, sluggish, un-breathable air at you like a welding torch, at times literally drying the sweat on your forehead before it could form, particularly on the stifling upper tiers of the five-tier cellblock.

But we still have the noise, always the noise. I suppose the outside world is noisy most of the time, too, but in here every sound is magnified in your mind. The ventilation system roars and rumbles and hisses. Nameless clanks and creakings, flushings and gurglings sound within the walls. Buzzers and bells grate at your nerves. Disembodied, often unintelligible voices drone and squawk on loudspeakers. Steel doors are forever grinding and slamming, then grinding and slamming again. There's an ever-present background chorus of shouts and yells and calls, demented babblings, crazed screams, ghostlike laughter. Maybe one day you realize one of those voices is your own, and then you really begin to worry.

From time to time they move you around from one cell to another, and that's always a big deal in your life. Your cell is just about all you've got, your only refuge. Like an animal's cage, it's your home -- a home that would make anyone envy the homeless. Different cellblocks in this ancient penitentiary have different kinds of cells, some barred, some -- like the one I'm currently in -- a five-and-a-half-by-nine-foot cinder-block closet with a steel door. There's a toilet and sink, a double bunk bed, a couple of low wall-mounted steel cabinets that provide a makeshift and always cluttered desktop.

Right now they've put another inmate in here with me after I'd gotten used to being blissfully alone for some time. He's got the upper bunk and his inert, snoring form sags down nearly to my head as I try to half sit in here with this legal pad on my lap. At least I get the lower bunk because of the bad knee I've had for years. I presume that they put my new cellmate in here with me as a form of punishment -- a punishment for both of us, I suppose -- though for what, neither he nor I have the slightest idea.

The first thing you have to understand in here is that you never understand anything in here. For sure, they don't want you ever to get comfortable. Nor do they ever want you to have a sense of security. And, for sure, you don't. Security's the one thing you never get in a maximum-security prison.

Now, on this chilly night, I toss the rough green army blanket over my knees, and drape a hand towel over the back of my neck to keep the chill off. I keep my socks on under the sheets, at least until I finally go to sleep. On this yellow legal pad purchased at the prison commissary I scrawl as best I can with a pencil stub that somebody's been chewing on. I can barely make out my own handwriting in the semidarkness, but no matter.

I don't know if anyone will ever read this. Maybe someone will. If so, that someone can only be you. I try to imagine who you might be and where you might be reading this. Are you comfortable? Do you feel secure? Let me write these words to you, then, personally. I greet you, my friend. Thanks for your time and attention, even your curiosity. Welcome to my world. Welcome to my iron lodge. Welcome to Leavenworth.

--Copyright Crazy Horse Spirit, Inc. and Arden Editorial Services, LLC. All Rights Reserved

Table of Contents

	Introduction	ix
	A Prayer	xi
	Preface	xiii
	Author's Foreword	xxiii
Part I	In My Own Voice	1
	Aboriginal Sin	16
	My Life Is a Prayer for My People	22
	The Heart of the World	26
	In the Shadowed Night	27
	The Knife of my Mind	33
	I Am Everyone	39
Part II	Who I Am	41
	An Eagle's Cry	48
Part III	Growing Up Indian	59
	My Crime's Being an Indian	65
Part IV	Becoming Political	87
Part V	That Day at Oglala: June 26, 1975	121
Part VI	A Life in Hell	137
Part VII	A Message to Humanity	199
	We Are Not Separate	213
	Forgiveness	214
	Difference	215
	The Message	216
	Editor's Note	218
	Appendices	223

What People are Saying About This

Sherman Alexie

For too long, both Leonard's supporters and detractors have seen him as a metaphor, as a public figure worthy of political rallies and bumper stickers, but very rarely as a private man who only wants to go home. I pray this book will bring Leonard home.
—Sherman Alexie, author of Indian Killer

Desmond Tutu

A deeply moving and very disturbing story of a gross miscarriage of justice and an eloquent cri de coeur of Native Americans for redress and to be regarded as human beings with inalienable rights guaranteed under the United States Constitution as any other citizens. We pray that it does not fall on deaf ears. America owes it to herself. (From a letter of March 5, 1999 to Andrew Miller, Editor at St. Martin's Press from Nobel Peace Laureate Archbishop Desmond M.Tutu)

Joy Harjo

Leonard Peltier's words reveal a wise man who has become freer than his captors, despite his false imprisonment for a crime he did not commit. His thoughts here remind us of our true mission as Indian people, as human beings here on this humble, beautiful planet. These thoughts cannot be captured or locked behind bars, or destroyed by gunfire. They fly free.
—Joy Harjo, Muskokee poet and musician, author of The Woman Who Fell From the Sky

Howard Zinn

It would be inadequate to describe Leonard Peltier's Prison Writings as a classic of prison literature, although it is that. It is also a cry for help, an accusation against monstrous injustice, a beautiful expression of a man's soul, demanding release.
—Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States

Wilma Mankiller

This book takes the reader on an emotional and spiritual journey as Leonard Peltier's surprisingly hopeful reflections make the terrible injustice of his imprisonment for 24 years even more difficult to accept. Peltier's important journal details his trial and conviction which was based in part on admittedly false testimony and evidence so inconclusive that reasonable people everywhere have concluded that he should be granted clemency.
—Wilma Mankiller, former chief of the Cherokee Nation, and author of Mankiller

Editorial Reviews

Though Leonard Peltier's controversial conviction for the murder of two FBI agents was detailed in Peter Matthiessen's In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, only now, in Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance, are we given Peltier's account of his life since that fateful June day in 1975. Archbishop Desmond Tutu describes Prison Writings as "a deeply moving and very disturbing story...an eloquent cri de coeur."

bn.com

On June 26, 1975, at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, a firefight erupted between American Indian Movement defenders and FBI agents, U.S. Marshals, Bureau of Indian Affairs police and GOONs (Guardians of the Oglala Nation, the tribal council's "paramilitary hit squad"). When it was over, two FBI agents lay dead. Four Indians were indicted for their alleged role in the agents' deaths; charges were dropped due to insufficent evidence against one while two others won full acquittals. Peltier, though, was convicted on two counts of murder and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences.

Now in his twenty-fourth year of imprisonment in the "eternal iron lodge," this "houseguest in hell" has written an extraordinary book that doesn't so much argue his innocence as share his "soul thoughts" and "political musings," including his personal account of what happened at Pine Ridge. Vividly atmospheric and highly political, this first book is spiritual and deeply compassionate. It includes photos and poetry and reflects this spirit-warrior's widely varying moods, moving the reader to tears over his agony in one chapter then inspiring laughter in the next.

Ann Collette

Currently incarcerated at Leavenworth Prison in Kansas, American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier assembled these grimly powerful "journal entries, soul thoughts, political musings and personal recollections" to bolster his lawyers' request that President Clinton commute the two life sentences imposed 24 years ago at his conviction for murdering two FBI agents (plus seven years for his attempt to escape from prison). In his introduction, former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark, once Peltier's lawyer, grounds Peltier's case in the post-Vietnam era of government "paranoia against dissident groups," noting a government prosecutor's 1985 admission that "we do not know who shot the two agents." For his part, Peltier describes his stark surroundings and the uncompromising sameness of every day: "I'm always on edge here, you never let your guard down when you live in hell." Through moving recollections of a childhood spent on the South Dakota's Sioux reservations and of the Indian culture passed on by his grandparents, he connects his predicament to the "suffering of indigenous peoples around the world." Likening himself to Nelson Mandela, Peltier contends that his "crime" is that he is an Indian, and says little about the events at Jumping Bull Camp, which occurred "ninety-nine years and one day" after the battle of Little Big Horn. Instead, he finds strength in the having participated in the Sun Dance, which "sends us out into the world hardened against pain the way a charred stick is hardened against fire." Introduction by Chief Arvol Looking Horse not seen by PW. (June) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The Native American leader (see Peter Mathiessen's In the Spirit of Crazy Horse) after 24 years at Leavenworth.

Library Journal

It is likely that readers will feel their own moods gyrating as they read these moving memoirs, and through they will never share Peltier's experience, they will enter worlds they never had access to before.
— Hungry Mind Review

Quentin Miller

Part manifesto, part memoir, a standout collection by the celebrated, long-imprisoned American Indian Movement co-founder and activist. Peltier, a Sioux Indian, has been in federal prison since 1977, convicted of killing two FBI agents during the 1973 siege at Wounded Knee, S.D. Peltier asserts that he did not commit these murders, writing simply, "Innocence has a single voice that can only say over and over, ‘I didn't do it.' Guilt has a thousand voices, all of them lies." (In his preface, former attorney general Ramsey Clark makes a compelling argument for why we should believe Peltier, a case also made by Peter Matthiessen in his much-litigated book In the Spirit of Crazy Horse). In this anthology, Peltier charts the course of his activism, describing his evolution from a young man on a South Dakota reservation who wanted what other young men in his circumstances wanted—a car, a job—to a political organizer keenly aware of the injustices visited past and present on America's indigenous peoples. Although he too easily falls into sloganeering ("We are the voices of the earth. We speak for those who are not yet born. When you exclude us, you exclude your own conscience. We are your conscience!"), Peltier has much to say about American Indian politics, a dauntingly complex set of issues; among other things, he insists that the US government follow a Canadian model in offering reparations for historical wrongs. He also advances the plausible view that the siege at Wounded Knee was a sideshow meant to disguise a deal through which a uranium-rich portion of the Pine Ridge Sioux reservation was ceded to the federal government. Writing more personally, Peltier recounts theintricacies of living behind bars. "As a houseguest in hell," he writes, "you learn that the devil has many mansions, and you keep shuttling between them for no known reason." An important contribution to Native American letters, sure to stir both controversy and renewed attention for Peltier's ongoing quest for freedom.

Kirkus Reviews