Leonard Peltier’s message to Day of Mourning: ‘We remain a free people’

The following statement from political prisoner Leonard Peliter was read at the 55th annual National Day of Mourning held in Plymouth, Mass., on Nov. 28, 2024. 

Greetings my relatives, friends, loved ones and supporters. I am honored that you still hold me in your thoughts, believe in me, pray for me and want to hear my words.

It has been over 400 years since the settlers set out to “civilize” us. They began by taking our blood, our children, to Spain. We were the first slaves in this “great nation,” built on stolen land, with stolen lives and stolen labor.

The king and queen of Spain fell in love with our children and tried to end the slavery of American Indians. The colonizers used every loophole they could find.

They did not want to give up the stolen labor of our people. They moved on to the stolen lives of our Black brothers and sisters, torn from their homelands. Our blood, our sweat and our pain will forever bind us.

The intent of the colonizers has always been total domination. When they could not control us, they killed us. They began with diseased blankets, bibles, bullets and lies they called treaties.

Words are sacred. Our people know this, just as we know that Mother Earth herself lives and breathes through us.

The words of the colonizers mean nothing, and their sacred pieces of paper mean less. Their 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty promised us an end to their wars against us and gave us the womb of Mother Earth, the Black Hills.

They took our sacred land, and the genocidal fervor of the imperialists continues to this day. Their tactics have changed, but they want to see us annihilated as a People and steal what remains of our traditional land.

Sitting Bull said, “Possessions are a disease with these people.” They take. They ravish Mother Earth. It will never be enough, because they are hollow. They have an insatiable thirst for possessions and vengeance. I ask myself why they hate us so. Perhaps they know we do not need possessions. 

Our spirit cannot be broken, because we are all one. We are born of Mother Earth, woven with love, dignity and a freedom they cannot comprehend.

Though they have entombed me in concrete and steel, I am a free man. They rounded up our people and put us in concentration camps they call reservations,

We remain a free people.

The true shackles are those caging the souls of those who oppress us. Perhaps they know. Their pitiful attempts to crush us turn back on them and take their humanity.

With every attempted “conquest,” they lose more of their spirit. Those who seek to oppress believe they are winning something. I ask them to open their eyes and look hard at what they think they have won.

We. Will. Endure. They cannot take the sacred fire we carry. Do not let them take our children. They started with boarding schools. Now, it is the insanity they call government.

They want to govern us out of existence. Give your children tradition, education, artwork, something to turn to besides the disease of drugs and alcohol that infects our reservations. Prayer is action, my friends.

Tell your children who we are with every word you speak and every move you make. We are the First People. Mother Earth births us, fires the blood that runs through our veins and then takes us back into her womb. They can never take that from us.

I have been warning for five decades now of the threat we face from the oppressors. Fascism has spread through those who have taken power and is staining the earth blood-red.

What I stated in 1982 stands true. The forces of liberation must and shall come together to fight as a united front in unity of the four colors.

I am proud of my heritage. I take pride in our people. Even when they believe they have stripped us of everything, we know the ground beneath us is ours to stand on, holding the blood and bones of our ancestors. We are rich in tradition in a way the settlers cannot perceive.

Perhaps they know. Perhaps they hate us because we exist within the forces of nature. They have no dominion over the wind. We must not alienate those who stand on the right side of history. We all bleed red.

We must stand together in solidarity to defeat the forces that would see all of us in shackles. And — I am still in prison. Again, I send my love and blood as a prisoner of war within the belly of the beast to those who continue the struggle.

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse.

Doksha,Leonard Peltier