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LISTENING: to celebratory ululations 🪶
FEELING: cold from my recent walk outside 🧊
SEEING: my cat's little paws under my office door 🐈

On Tuesday morning, Leonard Peltier made his way back home.

The 80-year-old American Indian Movement (AIM) activist and enrolled citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians stood before relatives Wednesday afternoon in his tribal homelands in North Dakota, fighting back tears.

He expressed a sense of overwhelm by the support he's received since his release from a federal prison in Florida. He also shared the struggles he's faced during his 49 years behind bars, including years in solitary confinement that he described as "inhuman."

"They tried all kinds of different things, but I beat 'em," said Peltier, who wore a black, green, and purple beaded necklace displaying a flower and leaves. "I beat the bastards." Cheers followed.

In 1975, a shootout broke out between a group of AIM activists and FBI agents. Two agents died. Peltier took the heat, but he maintained his innocence throughout his incarceration. The U.S. legal system — including federal judges and former FBI Director Christopher Wray — has stood behind its 1977 conviction of Peltier.

After decades of pressure, Indigenous movement leaders finally convinced former President Joe Biden to commute Peltier's sentence so he could spend his final years with his people and on his land.

I saw his homecoming on a live stream from Indigenous rights group NDN Collective. Hearing Peltier discuss his time behind bars reminded me of the work the Appalachian Rekindling Project is leading to stop the construction of a prison in Kentucky and, instead, bring bison back to the land. His liberation underscored the importance of history, especially the testaments of the colonized and oppressed. Right now, the right-wing under Donald Trump is attempting to suppress such stories and erase them entirely.

In many ways, AIM created the foundation for the modern Indigenous rights movement, a pillar among today's climate and environmental groups. While AIM was founded in 1968 to protest police brutality, it went on to advocate for much more, such as Indigenous sovereignty, treaty rights, and land restoration.

NDN Collective Founder and CEO Nick Tilsen spoke of this connection during the Wednesday ceremony. He stood next to Peltier as he spoke:

"I just want to acknowledge the generation before us... I want to show appreciation because, at the time that Leonard was incarcerated and prosecuted, the United States government did everything possible to try to eradicate our people, to take our language from us, to take our land from us, to take our spirituality, outlawing our ways of life.

"That generation stood up against the most powerful government in the world. They instilled that fight back into our people... We remember the people that organized for decades before most of us were alive. And we just continued it on — because it was our responsibility."

I've been thinking a lot lately about the history of this country, about the blood spilled then and the blood spilled now. I've been sitting with my privilege as a person who lives in relative comfort. I have a warm home in the dead of winter. I have internet. I have health insurance and a doctor I can drive to. I have a fridge full of food. That's not the case for many: U.S. Indigenous peoples face double, sometimes triple, the levels of food insecurity that white folks in this country do.

I've been doing a lot of reporting on Alaska Native peoples for a story I hope will be out in a few weeks. Arctic communities are struggling. To heat their homes. To catch their salmon. To breathe clean air. To access federal dollars that would help them adapt to a melting tundra. Colonizers forced this way of life onto Alaska Natives, who were historically migratory peoples, and now the Trump administration wants to punish them further by cutting off public funding.

Sigh. This nation owes a whole lot to the land's first peoples. Peltier spent his life behind bars for speaking out on that truth and defending himself. I hope more warriors won't see such fates as climate chaos descends and the authoritarian Trump administration continues its attack on our civil liberties. I hope people can continue to exercise their First Amendment rights safely, but that feels unlikely.

I think of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's fight against the Dakota Access oil pipeline in 2016. Water protector Red Fawn Fallis was incarcerated for allegedly shooting a firearm during a conflict with local law enforcement. The details of her case were fucked up, but she completed her sentence in 2020.

Like Peltier, many advocates saw her as yet another political prisoner.

How many others will we see targeted as they stand up in defense of water and air and land? We know the oceans are rising and the droughts are coming. We know food costs will go up and our homes may not withstand the floods and fires to come. We're already living through this, yet the worst remains to be seen.

Lately, I'm finding comfort and inspiration in the elders of communities that have known survival and rebellion. And I'm talking about true revolution. I don't know what's coming, but I know what peoples across the world have withstood. I hold onto their shared knowledge and history and pray that it's enough. I cherish the good — like the release of Peltier — because I know plenty of bad is headed our way. That's how we wake up and fight again: We savor the wins.

"We will continue to rise up no matter what faces our people," Tilsen said during the ceremony. "This is a continuum. We're on a continuum of 500 years of Indigenous resistance, but today — today is a victory day." 🌀

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Rest in Power

While we can't say for certain that climate change led to these specific weather events (we need attribution studies for that), we do know that the Earth's rising temperatures are already creating more disasters like these.