Stewart Huntington
ICT
Nick Tilsen and Holly Cook Macarro sat in a rental car outside the Coleman Federal Corrections Complex in Florida, trying to stay calm.
“We were listening to Sundance music and we were smudging and we were praying,” Tilsen, Oglala Lakota, the founder and chief executive of the NDN Collective advocacy organization, told ICT.
But time was running out on Monday, Jan. 20, as they watched the White House Briefing Room website for any word that outgoing President Joe Biden would grant clemency to Native activist Leonard Peltier, who has been behind bars for nearly 50 years.
“I think I have PTSD from hitting refresh over and over,” said Cook Macarro, Red Lake Band of Ojibwe, who oversees government affairs for NDN Collective. “It was really very long, maybe the longest day of my life.”
On Monday at noon Eastern Time, Donald Trump would be sworn in again as president and the opportunity for Biden to act would evaporate.
“We started getting worried because all of a sudden it’s like, one hour left of this administration, and then 40 minutes, and then 30 minutes,” Tilsen said. “We felt like the window was closing.”
And then?
“Pure joy,” said Macarro.
“I just remember bursting into tears and kind of freezing for a minute,” Tilsen said. “This day has actually come for Leonard and for our movement and for our people.”
The notice arrived with just a few minutes to spare that Biden had commuted Peltier’s two life sentences, allowing the 80-year-old American Indian Movement activist to return home to live out his remaining years at the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians reservation in North Dakota.
Peltier, who was convicted of aiding and abetting in the 1975 killings of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, was denied parole as recently as July and wasn’t eligible for parole again until 2026.
His commutation comes after decades of grassroots organizing in Indian Country and the presentation of evidence of misconduct and constitutional violations during the prosecution of Peltier’s case. NDN Collective has led the effort for years to win Peltier’s freedom.
“It was surreal,” said Tilsen, who remembered organizing rallies to free Peltier as a teenager in Rapid City, South Dakota. “To get to this point where this could happen … It’s hard to believe. … I immediately imagined Leonard coming back to his homelands because that’s the same thing that any Indian person has ever wanted to do — is to go home.”
But Peltier was still behind the walls of the Florida prison, unaware of the news. It was a federal holiday and there was no opportunity for visitations.
And then the phone rang.
“He called at 12:46,” Macarro said. “Which was almost exactly one hour after the grant of clemency had been announced on the White House website. So he had no idea … He said he’d been awake all night awaiting news. And so he said, ‘Well, you know, did it happen?’”
He was nervous, but he’d been through this before, without success.
“We were able to tell him that, yes, President Biden had commuted his sentence and he would serve out the remainder of his sentence under home confinement at the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation,” she said.
“He said, ‘So it’s real?.. It’s real?’” said Macarro, “He asked us that a couple of times. We said, ‘No, it’s real.’ … It is pure joy and love and celebration today for us. And I know we share that with so much of Indian Country.”
Macarro said that Peltier asked her and Tilsen to accompany him on his journey home to North Dakota, though he likely will not be able to leave the prison for several more weeks.
“We’re both very honored and humbled that we get to play this role after so many decades,” she said. “There are thousands of people and voices who joined in this fight to gain justice and liberation for Leonard Peltier. And so to be able to walk with him as he leaves those prison walls, it’s a very emotional thing for me, too, to think about.”
For Tilsen, the day was bigger than any one person or one organization.
“This is emotional to think about him coming home,” he said. “But also it’s an acknowledgment that what was done to him was wrong.”
He continued, “It’s an acknowledgment of what was done to Indian people and how we were treated throughout history was also wrong. How he was treated in his incarceration and prosecution is consistent with how the United States government has treated Indian people … treated us that we’re less than, that we’re not human, that we don’t deserve the same human rights that other people do, that we don’t deserve the same civil rights that other people do, that our sovereignty doesn’t matter, that our self-determination doesn’t matter.
“And so, when you look at Leonard Peltier, one of the realities is every Indigenous person sees a little bit about themselves in Leonard Peltier and Leonard Peltier’s struggle,” Tilsen said. “Because all of us have experienced injustices at the hands of the United States government. That’s why the context of this moment is so huge.”
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