INCIDENT AT OGLALA
Directed by Michael Apted
Written by Robert Redford, Norman Zigrossi, Robert Sikma
Starring Leonard Peltier
Released in 1992
Directed by Michael Apted
Written by Robert Redford, Norman Zigrossi, Robert Sikma
Starring Leonard Peltier
Released in 1992
During the winter of 1972-73, hundreds of Oglala Sioux commemorated the massacre at Wounded Knee by staging the second siege at the Pine Ridge Reservation. Adding to the pre-existing militancy of the Oglala Sioux was the behavior of a tribal leader picked for them by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. This leader, Dick Wilson, was a law and order enthusiast who was determined to keep the peace no matter who got hurt. Into this political fray marched the American Indian Movement, the members of which had a few years earlier led an occupation of the island of Alcatraz and in 1972 had initiated the takeover of the BIA offices in Washington. At Pine Ridge, the Oglala Sioux invited AIM to join them.
In retaliation, the FBI, federal marshals, state troopers, BIA police, and the U.S. military occupied the reservation, demanding that AIM surrender. The Native Americans responded that they wanted public hearings on the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, a probe of the BIA, and criminal indictments brought against Wilson. The Nixon government made a counter offer: the freedom fighters at Pine Ridge could lay down their weapons and surrender and nobody would get hurt. When this proved unacceptable, Nixon ordered his troops to withdraw, knowing that without confrontation, the media would soon depart.
Leonard Peltier, in 1977, was improperly and inexcusably convicted of the shooting deaths of two FBI agents, Ronald Williams and Jack Coler.
Peltier is not a saint, at least not yet. That is only because he is still alive, despite the United States government's best attempts in securing his ruination. He was extradited from Canada with perjured affidavits. Witnesses were bought and intimidated into testifying against him, and the Federal Bureau of Investigations has mounted an unending campaign to coerce a number of U.S. presidents into denying him clemency.
Okay. With that out of the way, we enter the 1992 documentary film Incident at Oglala: The Leonard Peltier Story, a movie in part financed and certainly narrated by Robert Redford. You know that when Bob comes to the defense of someone, that someone has to be a deserving sort of guy. I'm being sarcastic, but in this case, Redford's support could hardly hurt matters.
Except--
The most persuasive parts of this documentary come from Peltier himself during prison interviews and from attorney William Kunstler, regrettably deceased.
If someone wanted to make a persuasive case for Leonard's release--which most recently was scheduled for 2040; his next parole hearing doesn't come around until 2024--it might be good to place the incidents occurring between 1972 and 1977 in something of an historic context and then argue that even if Leonard did shoot the two agents--which no one can reasonably concede at this point, but we're just supposing here--then a fine defense of that action would be the one that was offered for the original two defendants in this investigation, Robert Ribideau and Dino Butler, that being the defense of self-protection. Peltier has admitted that he returned fire at the two agents, although he maintains that he was not responsible for the close-range head shots that actually killed the two men.
Was Nat Turner a murderer? Was John Brown? Or were they men who saw and felt the institutionalized hatred and racism against a holy people and decided to become instruments in the hands of God? If the latter, that kind of deeply held belief is one reason I'm an agnostic. But I believe Turner and Brown believed it.
Incident at Oglala: The Leonard Peltier Story is a story that deserves, at a minimum, an updating, one that places the events stipulated by both prosecution and defense into an accurate historical context. The Redford project is not that movie for the same reason that any number of documentaries have tried and failed: it does not aim high enough. It is much easier to admire a cinematic failure for being too ambitious than for not being ambitious enough.
In retaliation, the FBI, federal marshals, state troopers, BIA police, and the U.S. military occupied the reservation, demanding that AIM surrender. The Native Americans responded that they wanted public hearings on the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, a probe of the BIA, and criminal indictments brought against Wilson. The Nixon government made a counter offer: the freedom fighters at Pine Ridge could lay down their weapons and surrender and nobody would get hurt. When this proved unacceptable, Nixon ordered his troops to withdraw, knowing that without confrontation, the media would soon depart.
Leonard Peltier, in 1977, was improperly and inexcusably convicted of the shooting deaths of two FBI agents, Ronald Williams and Jack Coler.
Peltier is not a saint, at least not yet. That is only because he is still alive, despite the United States government's best attempts in securing his ruination. He was extradited from Canada with perjured affidavits. Witnesses were bought and intimidated into testifying against him, and the Federal Bureau of Investigations has mounted an unending campaign to coerce a number of U.S. presidents into denying him clemency.
Okay. With that out of the way, we enter the 1992 documentary film Incident at Oglala: The Leonard Peltier Story, a movie in part financed and certainly narrated by Robert Redford. You know that when Bob comes to the defense of someone, that someone has to be a deserving sort of guy. I'm being sarcastic, but in this case, Redford's support could hardly hurt matters.
Except--
The most persuasive parts of this documentary come from Peltier himself during prison interviews and from attorney William Kunstler, regrettably deceased.
If someone wanted to make a persuasive case for Leonard's release--which most recently was scheduled for 2040; his next parole hearing doesn't come around until 2024--it might be good to place the incidents occurring between 1972 and 1977 in something of an historic context and then argue that even if Leonard did shoot the two agents--which no one can reasonably concede at this point, but we're just supposing here--then a fine defense of that action would be the one that was offered for the original two defendants in this investigation, Robert Ribideau and Dino Butler, that being the defense of self-protection. Peltier has admitted that he returned fire at the two agents, although he maintains that he was not responsible for the close-range head shots that actually killed the two men.
Was Nat Turner a murderer? Was John Brown? Or were they men who saw and felt the institutionalized hatred and racism against a holy people and decided to become instruments in the hands of God? If the latter, that kind of deeply held belief is one reason I'm an agnostic. But I believe Turner and Brown believed it.
Incident at Oglala: The Leonard Peltier Story is a story that deserves, at a minimum, an updating, one that places the events stipulated by both prosecution and defense into an accurate historical context. The Redford project is not that movie for the same reason that any number of documentaries have tried and failed: it does not aim high enough. It is much easier to admire a cinematic failure for being too ambitious than for not being ambitious enough.
