A series about Leonard Peltier, America’s longest-serving political prisoner. Leonard Peltier has spent the last 44 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. This is the story of how he ended up behind bars, and the people who’ve been working for decades to set him free.

Introducing LEONARD: Political Prisoner

On the morning of June 26, 1975, a firefight broke out on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and members of the American Indian Movement. By noon, three people lay dead: AIM member Joe Stuntz, and special agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams. But why was the FBI shooting at AIM activists on sovereign Lakota land in the first place? 

(Season One, Episode One)

Episode 1: June 26, 1975

To commemorate July 4, 2020, President Trump is traveling to the Black Hills of South Dakota to give a speech in front of Mount Rushmore. But for the Lakota, the Black Hills are sacred. And the carvings of the four Presidents represent a desecration of their history and culture. As Edgar Bear Runner, a Lakota tribal historian, puts it: “Mount Rushmore is a shrine to racism. A shrine to genocide.”

Episode 2: Mr. Bear Runner Goes to Rushmore

In the early 1970s, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota was a banana republic ruled by a puppet government and policed by death squads.

The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation—full of gold, uranium, and oil—contains some of the most valuable land on the planet. But the Federal Government didn’t know that when they originally granted the territory to the Lakota in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. So for the next 100 years, the U.S. secretly took back the land piece by piece: ultimately with the help of Dick Wilson, the dictatorial Tribal Chairman of Pine Ridge, and his private militia, the GOON squad.

Episode 3: Treaties, Goons, and G-Men (Part 1)

On the morning of June 26, 1975, Edgar Bear Runner walked into the middle of the Pine Ridge shootout armed only with a Sacred Pipe.

Edgar Bear Runner, the newly elected President of the Porcupine District of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, was just 25 on the morning of June 26, 1975. When shots rang out on the Jumping Bull ranch between the FBI and members of the American Indian Movement, Edgar visited a Lakota medicine man, said a prayer, and went in to help negotiate a truce. But he also had an ulterior motive: to help buy time for the AIMsters to escape.

Listen to Ep4 "Treaties, Goons, and G-Men (Part 2)!

Episode 4: Treaties, Goons, and G-Men (Part 2)

When NPR reporter Kevin McKiernan traveled out to Pine Ridge in June, 1975, he never thought he’d find himself in the middle of a shootout.

In June, 1975, reporter Kevin McKiernan traveled to South Dakota to cover the trial of AIM leader Dennis Banks who was standing trial for his role in the 1973 Custer Courthouse Riot. But as the hearing got underway on June 26, word spread that shots had been fired 100 miles away on the Pine Ridge Reservation between Federal agents and members of AIM. So McKiernan jumped in his truck and raced into the center of the firefight. 

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Episode 5: Coincidental Witness

Leonard Peltier has spent the last 44 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. This is the story of how he ended up behind bars, and the people who’ve been working for decades to set him free.

LEONARD: Political Prisoner

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