Kevin Abourezk
ICT
The story of one of the most famous prisoners in the United States – Leonard Peltier – is coming to Netflix, the largest streaming platform, on Oct. 12.
“Free Leonard Peltier” documents the famed Turtle Mountain Chippewa activist’s 49-year struggle for freedom, which culminated on Jan. 20, 2025, when former President Joe Biden granted him clemency, meaning he will have to serve out the remainder of his sentence at his home in Belcourt, North Dakota.
“It’s going to go worldwide, worldwide,” said Jhane Myers, one of the film’s producers. “You can’t get better than that. So we’re really excited that the film will get that platform.”
Myers, Comanche and Blackfeet, said the film’s origins began when the film’s co-director, David France, saw graffiti on a bridge that read “Free Leonard Peltier” and he began to wonder what happened to Peltier.
France later tracked Peltier to a federal prison in Florida where he was serving two consecutive life sentences after being convicted of aiding and abetting in the killing two FBI agents in 1975 at the Jumping Bull Ranch on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Peltier has maintained his innocence for more than half a century.
“This is a story that the world needs to see, as they will be seeing soon, just to educate them on the injustice that we know exists in Indian Country,” Myers told ICT.
Holly Cook Macarro, whose work as a lobbyist for Indigenous-led nonprofit NDN Collective trying to free Peltier is documented in the film, said Peltier’s story was an international one. In fact, she said, foreigners tended to support Peltier more so than people in the United States.
“The story of Leonard Peltier is far better known abroad than it has been in the United States, which I think is another part of the suppression of this story and the work of the federal government in terms of their treatment of Leonard Peltier,” she told ICT. “But the joy around the world that we’ve been able to see that was just reverberated around the globe on the day that he was granted clemency and then released a month later has been really terrific to see.”
She said she was able to watch the film with Peltier following his release from prison. It was the first time he was able to see it, and he was visibly moved by it, said Cook Macarro, a Red Lake Band of Ojibwe citizen.
“It was … emotional for all of us that were watching him watch it because he has poor sight so he was sitting very close to the television and he was mesmerized and at one point, I asked him, ‘Well, what do you think Leonard?’ And he said, ‘It’s bringing it all back,’” she said.
The film has had three different endings. The first was prior to Biden granting him clemency. The second – which Cook Macarro was able to view with Peltier – included his release from prison. And the third and final ending includes a scene in which Peltier watched the film in his home for the first time.
Cook Macarro said she had hoped Peltier could attend an Oct. 4 art exhibit featuring his paintings in New York but he was denied a furlough to do so.
So what’s next for the film?
“At the beginning of the month in October, we’ll start an Oscar campaign,” Myers said. “It’s important that this film gets recognized. It’s important that Leonard gets recognized and all the people that put in the hard work because it’s just not us as filmmakers, all of us as Native people, as activists, as filmmakers, all of us, we stand on the shoulders of generations of people that went on before us that always dreamed and hoped for some kind of ending to this story.”
Holly Cook Macarro is a board of director on IndiJ Public Media, the parent company of ICT.
