THE INDYPENDENT<\/strong>: Leonard, to introduce yourself, tell us about yourself and your upbringing. <\/em><\/p>\n LEONARD PELTIER: My English name is Leonard Peltier. My family name is Tate WiWikuwa, Wind Chases the Sun. I\u2019m Lakota native and Anishinaabe or Chippewa native from North Dakota. Talk about your upbringing, and what brought you to the American Indian Movement? We\u2019ve been killed by the millions \u2013 and that type of genocide continues. When I was a young boy, in 1953, I was taken from my home and put in a [American Indian] boarding school, which was quite a horrid experience in itself. The schools were so bad that [President] Eisenhower put out an order that there be no more maltreatment of Native children in boarding schools. So those conditions, and as I said, the attempts to annihilate us, was the reason I became a young activist. <\/p>\n Turning to after the shootout at the Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota and your framing by the FBI, what was your time in prison like? What brought you solace? <\/em><\/p>\n Well, it wasn\u2019t a pleasant experience. I\u2019ll tell you that much. I mean, at times it was pretty brutal. Times were very dangerous, very stressful. There were a few good moments when family were able to come down to visit, or my wife, or somebody with the kids. You had an international movement supporting you as well. Yes, I did. I had the United Nations that put out an enormous investigation and demanded my freedom, and said, \u201cWe demand his freedom and for him to be paid.\u201d I\u2019ve had many, many Congressmen and senators struggling to get me out of prison, and to expose what happened to me. Now, to my amazement, I can\u2019t go anywhere without Native and even non-Native people coming up to me and want to shake my hand, want to take pictures with me, and telling me they\u2019ve heard about me in schools, in colleges and documentaries. <\/p>\n So those conditions, and as I said, the attempts to annihilate us, was the reason I became a young activist. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Was painting something that you spent time doing in prison, something that allowed you to be creative?<\/em><\/p>\n One of the things people have to understand is that I was not living in no country club. We did not get to paint in our cells. We only got certain hours a day to go to the art room, our recreation department, and we had to buy our own supplies. There were very strict restrictions on what you could paint and what you couldn\u2019t paint. But I hung in there. The majority of my paintings, all of them, are from historical records, photographs of my people \u2014 a lot done by Edward Curtis, who did a lot of photographs back in the 1800. A lot of people sent me current pictures of powwows of young people, elders, stuff like that, and I painted those. <\/p>\n In some of the paintings your family has shared with us, images of buffalo appear. Please talk about the importance of the buffaloes, and did painting them help you maintain a sense of connection to the land that you were separated from? <\/em><\/p>\n The buffalo were nearly exterminated, like they intended to do to us, as well as the eagle and the wolf. They attempted to exterminate the buffalo because that was our food source and they wanted to take our food source away from us. So there\u2019s still a very sacred and alive issue in Native culture. What\u2019s so unique about Turtle Mountains, is that before I got out, we didn\u2019t have one. Now we have seven white buffalo here. They\u2019re a symbol of peace, a symbol of keeping law and order in our culture. It plays a big part in our historical culture. <\/p>\n What has being out been like? <\/em><\/p>\n My home was bought by the American Indian Movement and our supporters. They all pitched in, donated, and bought me this home that I\u2019m living in now. And of course, we fixed it up quite a bit. We\u2019re cleaning up the yards. We\u2019re doing a lot of maintenance to it, and it\u2019s very comfortable. Very comfortable, of course, especially compared to living in a cell. <\/p>\n\n
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