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When the Native peoples of the U.S. are shown to possess something that government or big business wants, long-standing treaties and trust arrangements going back for centuries pose no obstacle; the Indians must go. That was as true in 1975 on the Pine Ridge Reservation as it was in the early 19th century, when the discovery of gold in the Appalachians resulted in the displacement of the Cherokee and other tribes from North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina. In 1975, the object of the second land-grab in less than a century directed against the Oglala Sioux was once again mineral wealth. The U.S. government grew alarmed at efforts by members of the American Indian Movement (A.I.M.) to protest the sale of tribal lands to corporations and instituted a number of subversive actions using the government-controlled tribal government as its proxy. During the resulting conflicts, two F.B.I. agents were killed, quite possibly by gangs funded by the government. However, these killings supplied the pretext that it had long sought for the government to arrest many of A.I.M.’s leaders. Leonard Peltier was one of those leaders, and he was convicted on what even the government prosecutors later admitted were trumped-up charges. Despite that incredible fact, he remains in prison serving two consecutive life sentences. This documentary tells his story and includes interviews with Peltier himself, as well as author Peter Mathiessen and others either involved with or knowledgeable about America’s best-known political prisoner. It differs from the other well-known documentary covering many of these same issues Incident at Oglala by providing a more wide-ranging overview.
0 votes and 0 Reviews
When the Native peoples of the U.S. are shown to possess something that government or big business wants, long-standing treaties and trust arrangements going back for centuries pose no obstacle; the Indians must go. That was as true in 1975 on the Pine Ridge Reservation as it was in the early 19th century, when the discovery of gold in the Appalachians resulted in the displacement of the Cherokee and other tribes from North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina. In 1975, the object of the second land-grab in less than a century directed against the Oglala Sioux was once again mineral wealth. The U.S. government grew alarmed at efforts by members of the American Indian Movement (A.I.M.) to protest the sale of tribal lands to corporations and instituted a number of subversive actions using the government-controlled tribal government as its proxy. During the resulting conflicts, two F.B.I. agents were killed, quite possibly by gangs funded by the government. However, these killings supplied the pretext that it had long sought for the government to arrest many of A.I.M.’s leaders. Leonard Peltier was one of those leaders, and he was convicted on what even the government prosecutors later admitted were trumped-up charges. Despite that incredible fact, he remains in prison serving two consecutive life sentences. This documentary tells his story and includes interviews with Peltier himself, as well as author Peter Mathiessen and others either involved with or knowledgeable about America’s best-known political prisoner. It differs from the other well-known documentary covering many of these same issues Incident at Oglala by providing a more wide-ranging overview.
When the Native peoples of the U.S. are shown to possess something that government or big business wants, long-standing treaties and trust arrangements going back for centuries pose no obstacle; the Indians must go.
