Curable Casualty
...hool for native people coordinated by the U.S Government. The students where prohibited to practice their cultures. Any logical person can deduct the kind of education these students where obtaining at this particular time from the whites. Leonard would later return to live with his father at the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota. This particular reservation along with two others where testing grounds for the U.S new termination policy. The policy objective was to force Native families off their reservation and into the cities. This is where Leonard was introduced to the Native resistance through activism and organizing by tribal members. Leonard was only a teenager. During one winter on the turtle Mountain Reservation the termination policy would be at its zenith that would affect the native, because the policy withdrew federal assistance until the natives relocated out their reservation and into the cities. The reason this was crucial was because the natives relied on federal assistance mainly for food. Their was a situation when it was important for the natives to hide the little food they had. Leonard was going to each household to inform all the natives to hide their food but he discovered that the natives had no food to hide. This situation let Leonard know the desperate situation the natives where in. Leonard was always trying to help his people and simultaneously help his own family. For instance, he would always help his father with farm work on different reservations. At this time he would learn more about policies of relocation, poverty and racism. Any issue that affected his people he obtained a good perspective of it. He also worked as a community counselor confronting unemployment, alcohol problems and poor housing. Leonard also commenced programs that helped people spiritually and traditionally. At the same time was able to sustain an auto body shop which he used to employ native people. Furthermore, he provided low cost automobiles repairs for people who needed it. Leonard had no interior motives to benefit himself but only to help his people who where at the time abused physically and mentally. He was a man who realized patience would save his people and violence was the only way to protect his people. That is how the world is. For example, if one scrutinizes the war situation that is momentarily going on they can perceive this perspective. George W. Bush, President of the United States is at war right now. Not for ulterior motives like for oil or other frivolous conspiracies, but for protection of the United States and other countries. At the same time he is trying to consolidate the, “No Child Left behind Act”, the social security crisis, and other programs that will benefit this country. Mr. Bush realizes that it will take patience’s to consolidate this country and violence to protect it because terrorist only respect violence. Similar with Leonard Pelier, Leonard knew how the government functioned. And he understood that violence was the only way to protect his people. On June 26, 1975 Leonard Peltier indulged in a shoot out with the Indian movement in south defense against federal agent. Here is an anecdote of the shoot out from www.aics.org/LP/index.html. On June 26,1975 two FBI agents allegedly searching for a young Indian man accused of stealing a pair of used cowboy boots, spotted several men in a red pick-up truck. They followed the truck briefly. The occupants of the truck pulled into the jumping Bull property. Shots were fired though no one knows who fired first. Soon the situation exploded into a firefight involving 30 or so Indian men, women, and children eventually over 150 FBI agents, BIA police, us Marshals and the local police known as Goons. “Some of these arriving in armored personnel carriers, and within minutes of the shots. Two agents and a young Indian activist died that day. Within hours of the shootout, according to the U.S Commission on Civil Rights, which label it “a full scale vendetta”, hundreds of paramilitary equipped, combat-clad FBI agents and US Marshals staged a dragnet through the reservation in a fever of revenge in which men, women, and children were terrified and properties and homes were ransacked. Four men were initially accused of murder in the deaths of agents Williams and Coler. One was the young Indian man who claimed they were coming to the camp to arrest for the alleged theft of a pair of used cowboy boots. Two of the men had no way of knowing that the two FBI agents- in plain cloths and driving unmarked cars were federal agents. When gunfire started , these men who were already used to reign of terror that was going on-having already lost at least 50 of their friends and relatives- killed and their deaths remain uninvestigated to this day( Not unsolved but uninvestigated)well they would return fire as anyone would. No...