Prison Writings: My Life is My Sun Dance

"Leonard Peltier's words reveal a wise man who has become freer than his captors, despite his false imprisonment for a crime he did not commit. His thoughts here remind us of our true mission as Indian people, as human beings here on this humble, beautiful planet. These thoughts cannot be captured or locked behind bars, or destroyed by gunfire. They fly free." —Joy Harjo, Muskoke poet and musician, author of The Woman Who Fell From the Sky

In September of 2022, twenty-five years after Leonard Peltier received a life sentence for the murder of two FBI agents, the DNC unanimously passed a resolution urging President Joe Biden to release him. Peltier has affirmed his innocence ever since his sentencing in 1977—his case was made fully and famously in Peter Matthiessen's bestselling In the Spirit of Crazy Horse —and many remain convinced he was wrongly convicted. Prison Writings is a wise and unsettling book, both memoir and manifesto, chronicling his life in Leavenworth Prison in Kansas. Invoking the Sun Dance, in which pain leads one to a transcendent reality, Peltier explores his suffering and the insights it has borne him. He also locates his experience within the history of the American Indian peoples and their struggles to overcome the federal government's injustices. Edited by Harvey Arden, with an Introduction by Chief Arvol Looking Horse, and a Preface by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark.