Leonard Peltier, now mostly free, navigates a new life on the outside

BELCOURT, N.D. - It’s been six months since Leonard Peltier walked out of prison, and the first family reunion he could attend in 50 years went on without him over the weekend.

Relatives expected him, and said they were disappointed the 80-year-old patriarch didn’t show. Instead, Peltier nostalgically cruised the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation, telling stories about pretty girls and fast cars. He got takeout chicken, watched CNN and called Willie Nelson’s ex-wife to catch up.

A few miles down the road, relatives from across the country shared a potluck and played games. Peltier drove past the gathering and didn’t stop. Family called him on speaker phone and delivered him plates of food.

The American Indian Movement (AIM) activist said he didn’t attend “for personal reasons.” Accusations of theft have caused a rift between him and a sibling. Peltier is also in pain from a recent fall at home and needs a walker again after regaining enough strength to ditch his cane for a time.

He is aging, partly blind and navigating a completely different world than the late 1970s, when he received consecutive life sentences for the killings of two FBI agents. Like in prison, he is learning who to trust. He sees people didn’t forget him like he feared. In fact, there’s a premium on his name, image and likeness. People want to write books, make documentaries, have him appear at events.

Peltier continues his activism, as much as an octogenarian can. He wants to rename AIM the American Indigenous Movement, and said his biggest concern in Indian Country is an epidemic of overdoses and addiction exploited by drug traffickers.

“Everybody thinks because I’m out, I’m going to be the savior and know how to stop all that stuff,” he said. “There’s only one way I can think of, and I don’t want to be a serial killer. No, I don’t want to be a killer period.”

People either think Peltier is “the epitome of evil,” as FBI Director Kash Patel called him, or a political prisoner symbolizing the injustice done to and resistance of Native Americans. Not all in Indian Country celebrated his release, namely the family of murdered AIM member Anna Mae Aquash, who remain suspicious of Peltier.

Aquash’s killing and the FBI shootout that killed agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams took place on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. Peltier has maintained his innocence, but believed he would die in prison.

“It’s like dying and going to heaven,” he said of being home. “I’m out of that hole. I’m out of that dungeon. I’m out of that, I don’t know what else to call it but hell.”

Yes, he’s free, he said, “to a certain extent.”

Rules of home confinement restrict Peltier’s travel to a 100-mile radius for errands and doctor appointments. Beyond that, he needs a furlough pass.

“It brought all that belief back to me. Restored everything,” he said. “Back to where I was before I went to prison.”

Much of his time is spent on his porch, shirtless and catching a tan.

Visitors drop by from across the country for coffee. They laugh and cry, overwhelmed that he’s out after decades of unanswered pleas for his release, from the pope to Mother Teresa.

Denied clemency and pardon requests fill dozens of boxes stacked in his garage. They contain FBI interviews and court records spanning his 49-year fight. Archivists will work to preserve the documents, said Holly Cook Macarro, a lobbyist who helped push for Peltier’s commutation and continues overseeing his media relations. She said some 400 pounds of his mail stored in prison made it to Belcourt.

Macarro of Red Lake Nation worked with NDN Collective, an Indigenous rights organization based in South Dakota, to achieve clemency.

Her husband is the president of the National Congress of American Indians. Deb Haaland, the first Indigenous Cabinet secretary to serve under Biden, was a big supporter. (Haaland’s 2026 campaign poster for New Mexico governor hangs in Peltier’s bedroom.)

“I got a beautiful home [NDN] bought me,” Peltier said. “A nice, big yard. ... Lots of visitors. They all come and always offer me something, whatever I need.”

He still has nightmares that he’s back in prison and battles paranoid thoughts. He soon will install a security fence. He wants two German shepherds. More than anything, he wants a companion. He’s always teasing and flirting with women.

“I figured the right one will come along eventually, hopefully not too long. I am 80,” he said. He turns 81 on Sept. 12.

His absence at the family reunion reopened fresh wounds for relatives who got little access when he was released.

Family say they know that Peltier doesn’t just belong to them, but the world. Still, many felt sidelined then — and now.

He told one of his daughters to not come to North Dakota for the reunion. Stubborn like her father, Marquetta Peltier, 52, hopped on a bus from Kansas anyway at the insistence of other relatives that she be there and see her dad.

“We have to forgive and move forward. We’re repairing 50 years of damage to our family,” she said. “It’s going to take time.”

She was a baby when her dad went to prison. After he was moved to the Leavenworth penitentiary in 1985, she moved to Kansas to visit often. Then he was moved to Florida, and visits were harder.

“Now I get to spend the rest of our lives together,” she said, adding that she plans to move to North Dakota to be near him. “As a daughter, all I ever wanted was my dad.”

Other relatives moved to Belcourt to care for Peltier, only to be cut off. Some say they won’t return again until Peltier’s funeral.

“He’s my uncle. I still love him. Family’s family. But I won’t come back,” said Pamela Bravo of Washington, who felt activists and documentary crews pushed family away at Peltier’s homecoming.

Cousin Bev Moronez, of Fisher, Minn., said each visit with Peltier brings more understanding of his perspective: his stolen childhood in boarding school, his stolen health while incarcerated.

“He wasn’t getting the medical care that he needed, and that’s kind of hard to see someone deteriorate,” she said.

Since his release, he’s had several eye surgeries, to no avail. He hopes the Mayo Clinic can improve his vision so he can drive again and paint.

When traveling on familiar roads with home health aides behind the wheel, he can sense when they’re approaching his childhood home or the swimming hole he played in as a kid.

“Even though I’m half blind I still recognize it,” he said.

A herd of rare white buffalo roam in Peltier’s backyard, but he can’t see them in the distance.

White buffalo, a symbol of hope and restoring spirituality, are deeply sacred in Native American culture, prophesying good things. One in every 1 million buffalo calves is white. A baker’s dozen were born on Turtle Mountain in the last few years before Peltier’s release, so many that several were given to other tribes, like Red Lake Nation.

Ask about the white buffalo and Peltier’s fading eyes twinkle.

He recently took photos with them to make prints, with plans to sell them like his paintings.

Andy Laverdure, 71, a respected elder and tribal judge whose spirit name is White Buffalo, said Peltier is his friend, but it’s a stretch to say the births foretold his return.

Turtle Mountain, he said, is the heartbeat of Turtle Island, aka North America. It’s the geographic center visible from satellite.

The Creator sees the damage done by boarding schools, the dysfunction of substance abuse, lying, stealing and “not trusting each other,” he said, “and tearing families apart.”

“It brought them here because they want to save us, and Creator wants us to live. That’s why the buffalo are here,” he said.