Dear
Supporters:
Before
U.S.P. Coleman inmate #89637-132 gets too excited and giddy that his name was
mentioned in a Huffington blog, let’s examine what the author, Jack Healy,
didn’t say and why he’s selected the wrong person to promote his cause. (Footnote
#1)
With all due
respect to Mr. Healy’s lifelong quest for human rights, and notwithstanding his
apparent disdain and bias towards the U.S. government, he has fallen prey,
become a victim himself, to the perpetual mountain of myths, folklore, lies and
fabrications that have festered around Peltier for the past four decades. His
energy and intellect are woefully misplaced and promoting the myth, not the
reality.
Most, and
certainly not this writer, would argue against or fail to recognize the
crippling history against First Americans. We can neither deny nor ignore what
happened and that, as Mr. Healy points out (excluding the casino-rich tribes),
the majority of Native Americans need and deserve our respect and support, not
just for the injustices of the past but the condition many still find
themselves in today. Pine Ridge being a glaring and shameful example. (Fn. 2)
But Mr.
Healy calls for clemency for Peltier as if that would somehow heal the wounds
and correct those historic wrongs. He could be no further from the truth and
the heart of the matter as he shamefully references the deaths of FBI Agents
Coler and Williams.
Mr. Healy
alludes to Peltier’s trial and “…many legal flaws…” At least Mr. Healy didn’t
pander the usual Peltier tripe of “Constitutional violations.” This case has
been scrutinized perhaps to a greater extent than death-row inmates. “Legal
flaws” may be a euphemistic pretense for Mr. Healy but he cannot ignore the
scores of attorneys who have torn apart every crevice of his conviction, and
except for one (ballistics) hearing (for which Peltier’s attorneys offered no
contrary evidence, even though they had their own expert in the courtroom),
Peltier’s conviction and sentence has withstood the legal test of time and
never altered. Perhaps, Mr. Healey should invest the time and energy to
understand the details of this case and not the mythology pandered by Peltier
and his sycophants. (Fn. 3)
Without an
ongoing dialogue—that this writer would welcome—there is no way of knowing
exactly how much of the Peltier fables Mr. Healy has accepted as fact, but for
illustration sake let’s assume he has accepted at least a good portion and
provide just a handful of explicit examples to keep the record straight.
For example,
Mr. Healy wrongly states “…even his extradition to the United States from
Canada was based on premises that were actively manipulated by the federal authorities.”
There were challenges and questions regarding the use of the Myrtle Poor Bear
affidavits, however, that was not the only justification for Peltier’s
extradition. Perhaps simply reading the crucial October 12, 1999 letter (a full
twenty-four years--after--the murder of the agents) from the Minister of Justice
to U.S. Attorney General, Janet Reno where it states, “As I indicated above, I
have concluded that Mr. Peltier was lawfully extradited to the united States”
will clarify the misinformation from the Peltier camp and spouted by Mr. Healy.
(Fn. 4)
Sophomorically
referencing the American Indian Movement (AIM) and the Black Panther Party
(BPP) as “…dissident groups in the United States,” as Mr. Healy does, is to
ignore the reality of the destruction and chaos these groups caused. They were
never simply social protesters but gangland style thugs who left a wake of
social disruption and sometimes murder in their wake. Ask the widows of the
police officers that fell victim to the BPP and research the destruction, under
the guise of Native Rights, that AIM befell on Wounded Knee II, destroying a
village and terrifying the innocent residents. Ask too, the family of Perry Ray
Robinson, an AIM victim, whether AIM was just a “dissident group.” Dig further
as well into the other AIM related bodies still hidden and buried in the hills
surrounding that leveled hamlet (Fn. 5)
Mr. Healy
does not comprehend that a truly innocent person need not offer a list of
alibis, contradictory at their core, to push his feigned innocence on the
non-believers. His fabrications have been as transparent as glass, starting with
the twenty-year-lie that someone they all knew, Mr. X., killed the agents. So
pervasive was this falsehood that his biographer (Matthiessen; who admittedly
didn’t really believe it from the beginning but ran with it anyway), to Redford
who bought into it but didn’t have the courage to admit he was duped, but
finally even his own attorney publicly admitted it. This cannot be brushed
aside because it is a glaring example of the fissure, a widening crack, in
Peltier’s “I did it for my people,” vacant character.
The list is
endless but focusing on the recent admissions of guilt, how can anyone be
accommodating to, or ignore someone who says, “And really, if necessary, I’d do
it all over again, because it was the right thing to do. (February 6, 2010),”
and “I don’t regret any of it for one minute. (September 12, 2014).”
Mr. Healy
frames the Incident at Oglala as “…a shooting left two federal agents
dead.” Really, a shooting? Check
the facts…Agents Coler and Williams were wantonly attacked, ambushed would be a
better word, by a superior and violent force of AIM thugs. Outgunned and
outnumbered they were first mortally wounded. There’s no doubt about how the
incident started, we have Ron Williams’ own voice overheard by several people
describing what was about to happen. That was the first part, but this is the scene
within which Mr. Healy must frame his call for using Peltier in “a new era of
peace.”
“I seen Joe
when he pulled it out of the trunk and I look at him when he put it on, and he
gave me a smile.” (Fn. 6)
So here’s
Peltier, with two dead and mutilated federal agents at his feet as he accepts a
smile from one of the other AIM shooters who’s stealing Jack Coler’s FBI
jacket.
This is Mr.
Healy’s cause célèbre for peace and healing and his way to “honor the memory of
Agents Williams and Coler?”
Mr. Healy
rhetorically asks “What does it mean for the families of FBI Agents Williams
and Coler who died on the Pine Ridge Reservation?”
To accept
Mr. Healy’s premise, to free Peltier, would be to dishonor their memory, their
bravery and in a greater sense suggest—in real terms—that they died in vain.
Peltier is a
panderer of his own heritage, he has adulterated and stolen all that is good
about Native American history and culture and hides behind it like a thief in
the night, or in this case a coward of Jumping Bull. Peltier is the last person
to represent even a hint of reconciliation, for past wrongs against Native
Americans, or the slightest hint of repentance for his own murderous actions
that day at Pine Ridge.
Mr. Healy
asks “What might we undo?” Perhaps we can undo a lot, but we cannot undo June
26, 1975.
The term
“redskin” may be offensive but mascots are a whole other issue, and this isn’t
about mascots. It’s about cold-blooded murder and an unrepentant sociopath who
must continue to serve his sentence and pay his debt to society, no matter how
that end may come.
“In the
Spirit of Coler and Williams”
Ed Woods
Footnotes:
1) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jack-healey/without-reservations-supp_b_5835422.html
(last accessed 9/23/14)
4) http://noparolepeltier.com/canadaletter.html
Further, “In my opinion, given the test for committal for extradition referred
to above, the circumstantial evidence presented at the extradition hearing,
taken alone, constituted sufficient evidence to justify Mr. Peltier’s committal
on the two murder charges.” (Please read the entire letter.)
6) Peter Matthiessen, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse; The story
of Leonard Peltier and the FBI’s war on the American Indian Movement. (Penguin
Books, 1992) 552.
