Today in Labor History April 18, 1977: Native American activist Leonard Peltier was found guilty of murdering two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation. However, he was actually framed by undercover FBI agents who were conducting counterintelligence on the reservation. During the trial, some of the government’s own witnesses testified that Peltier wasn’t even present at the scene of the killings. In 2017, President Obama denied Peltier's application for clemency. He was still in prison in 2025 and his health had deteriorated. On June 7, 2022, The UN Human Rights Council's Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that Peltier’s imprisonment violates the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. President Biden, as one of his final acts as president, commuted his sentence to indefinite house arrest. In February 2025, he was released and transferred to the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in Belcourt, North Dakota.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #leonardpeltier #fbi #obama #AmericanIndianMovement #indigenous #prison #racism #nativeamerican #politicalprisoner #pineridge #biden

Black Panther Park opens in Seattle. It has been in the works for 8 years now. TL:dR version: Its all about building community

https://southseattleemerald.org/community/2026/03/16/murals-and-memories-new-black-panther-park-opens-in-skyway

#Seattle #Skyway #BlackPanther #BlackPanthers #AIM #AmericanIndianMovement #Justice #Community

Today in Labor History February 27, 1973: 300 Oglala Sioux activists from the American Indian Movement (AIM) liberated and occupied Wounded Knee, South Dakota. This was the site of the infamous Massacre at Wounded Knee (1890). They occupied the site to protest a campaign of terror against them by the FBI, and corrupt tribal officials, and the tribal thugs knowns as GOONs (Guardians of Oglala Nation). The occupation lasted over 2 months, before being quashed by the U.S. government. 3 Native activists were killed. Dennis Banks and Russell Means were indicted for their roll, but charges were later dropped due to prosecutorial misconduct.

#aim #indigenous #WoundedKnee #massacre #genocide #occupation #fbi #oglala #sioux #workingclass #LaborHistory #native #terrorism #AmericanIndianMovement

Indigenous-Led Collectives Are Keeping Minnesotan Communities Safe From ICE

https://murica.website/2026/02/indigenous-led-collectives-are-keeping-minnesotan-communities-safe-from-ice/

Leonard Peltier Speaks Out While Living Under House Arrest

https://murica.website/2026/01/leonard-peltier-speaks-out-while-living-under-house-arrest/

Today in Labor History November 26, 1970: Indigenous activists from the American Indian Movement (AIM) occupied Plymouth Rock in a National Day of Mourning. The protest was sparked when officials from the state of Massachusetts censored a speech to be given by Frank James (Wamsutta), an Aquinnah Wampanoag, on the 350th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims. Their rationale was that “anything inflammatory would have been out of place” on this “celebration of brotherhood.” In his speech, James talked about atrocities like the loss of native languages, culture, land, and life.

“Our spirit refuses to die. . . We stand tall and proud, and before too many moons pass we’ll right the wrongs we have allowed to happen to us. We forfeited our country. Our lands have fallen into the hands of the aggressor. We have allowed the white man to keep us on our knees. What has happened cannot be changed, but today we must work towards a more humane America, a more Indian America, where men and nature once again are important; where the Indian values of honor, truth, and brotherhood prevail. You the white man are celebrating an anniversary. We, the Wampanoags, will help you celebrate in the concept of a beginning. It was the beginning of a new life for the Pilgrims. Now, 350 years later it is a beginning of a new determination for the original American: the American Indian.”

Indigenous people have continued to commemorate the National Day of Mourning in Plymouth every year since 1970. In 1997, police attacked the peaceful demonstration with pepper spray and arrested 25 protestors.

You can read the James’s full speech here: http://www.blackcommentator.com/207/207_day_of_mourning_wampsutta_pf.html

#workingclass #LaborHistory #indigenous #AmericanIndianMovement #AIM #genocide #racism #freespeech #censorship

The Case for Returning U.S. #PublicLands to #IndigenousPeople

by Joe Whittle, Mar 6, 2025

"Since the start of Trump’s second term, his administration has fired thousands of federal workers across multiple public lands agencies, including the National Park Service, the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The effects of this are vast: It’s going to have a profoundly negative impact on the environment and the way millions of Americans enjoy public lands, cause immeasurable harm to America’s wildest places, and devastate the economies built around them.

"After serving 12 years as a backcountry wilderness ranger for the U.S. Forest Service, I'm convinced there is an alternative: the U.S. needs to return its public lands to Native Americans. In fact, I believe that might be the only way to save our parks and forests from corporate privatization and destruction, as well as preserve public access to them. If the U.S. won’t properly care for its public lands, why not return them to their original caretakers?

"This isn’t a new idea. #NativeAmericans argued that treaty law required
'abandoned' federal land to be returned to tribes during the occupation of #Alcatraz Island by the #AmericanIndianMovement in the 1960s. In more recent years, the #LandbackMovement has given rise to increased calls for the return of territorial land to #IndigenousNations, and the return of land management based in #TraditionalEcologicalKnowledge—expertise gathered from thousands of years of having deep relationships with specific environments. There’s a strong legal argument that land return is constitutionally required as damages due for hundreds of treaty violations. However, there’s also a lot of data showing Indigenous land management is more ecologically sound than government or industrially managed land. For instance, #ProjectDrawdown, a global leader in science-based #ClimateChange solutions, estimates that returning 1,000 million hectares of land to Indigenous tenureship by 2050 would sequester over 12 gigatons of carbon dioxide."

Read more:
https://time.com/7262838/us-public-lands-return-indigenous-people/

Archived version:
https://archive.ph/QnF32

#LandBack #AIM #StolenLand #StolenLands #NationalParks #TEK #ClimateCrisis #ClimateSolutions #IndigenousPeoples #IndigenousPeoplesMonth #GiveItBack #Stewardship #LandIsLife #WaterIsLife #AlcatrazIsland #Resistance #USPol #TrumpSucks #RespectTheTreaties