Quotes from Leonard Peltier

The FBI has always supported big business and big government.

The United States government can indict you on something, and now you've got to prove your innocence. And that's not the Constitution of the United States.

What I am is a father, a grandfather, a great grandfather, and an artist. I am a man who loves his people and wants to go home.

You can't believe one thing and do another. What you believe and what you do are the same thing.

I would like to say prison life at its very best and worst infinitely sucks.

What Bill Clinton did to us was cruel. The White House gave my attorneys indications that there was a good chance for my clemency to be granted. I had to prepare myself for being released because there was no sign that my petition would be denied.

I don't know how to save the world. I don't have the answers or The Answer. I hold no secret knowledge as to how to fix the mistakes of generations past and present. I only know that without compassion and respect for all of Earth's inhabitants, none of us will survive—nor will we deserve to.

Only one thing's sadder than remembering you were once free, and that's forgetting you were once free.

Each and every Indian, man or woman, child or Elder, is a spirit-warrior.

According to court records, during the siege at Wounded Knee, more than two hundred and fifty thousand rounds were fired at our people by U.S. marshalls, FBI agents, the tribal police, the GOONs, and white vigilantes. These boys weren't kidding. And neither were we.

Doing time creates a demented darkness of my own imagination.... Doing time does this thing to you. But, of course, you don't do time. You do without it. Or rather, time does you. Time is a cannibal that devours the flesh of your years day by day, bite by bite.

It seems it's always the innocent who pay the highest price for injustice. It's seemed that way all my life.

the knife of my mind I have no present. I have only a past and, perhaps, a future. The present has been taken from me. I'm left in an empty space whose darkness I carve at with the knife of my mind. I must carve myself anew out of the razor-wire nothingness. I will know the ecstasy and the pain of freedom. I will be ordinary again. Yes, ordinary, that terrifying condition, where all is possibility, where the present exists and must be faced.

From time to time they move you around from one cell to another, and that's always a big deal in your life. Your cell is just about all you've got, your only refuge. Like an animal's cage, it's your home — a home that would make anyone envy the homeless.

I can barely make out my own handwriting in the semidarkness, but no matter. I don't know if anyone will ever read this. Maybe someone will. If so, that someone can only be you. I try to imagine who you might be and where you might be reading this. Are you comfortable? Do you feel secure? Let me write these words to you, then, personally. I greet you, my friend. Thanks for your time and attention, even your curiosity. Welcome to my world. Welcome to my iron lodge. Welcome to Leavenworth.

But ... no ... there I go, being vindictive and vengeful myself, wishing harm on others as they have wished it on me. I have to watch that in myself. I have to step on the head of that snake every time it rises. There's always someone to hate. The list of those who have earned our hatred — and spurned our hatred — is endless. Shall we draw up lists of each other's crimes? Must we hate each other for all time?

Do the stars have a meaning? Then my life has a meaning.

My crime is being Indian. What's yours?

Innocence is the weakest defense. Innocence has a single voice that can only say over and over again, I didn't do it. Guilt has a thousand voices, all of them lies.

i am everyone I am everyone who ever died without a voice or a prayer or a hope or a chance … everyone who ever suffered for being an Indian, for being human, for being indigenous, for being free, for being Other, for being committed.… I am every one of them. Every single one. Yes. Even you. I am everyone.

Yes, even we prisoners are human. I suppose every man proclaims himself innocent, whether innocent or not. But, I tell you, even the guilty are human. And, as for the innocent who are branded as guilty, theirs is a special agony beyond all comprehension.

We need to do more than just what is right. We need to join together and right what is wrong.

They still don't want to admit to the world that this isn't the best and the fairest and most equal justice system. And that they are guilty of railroading people into jail. They don't want to, or never will, admit these things.

Each and every Indian, man or woman, child or Elder, is a spirit-warrior.