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The Case of The Wrongful Conviction of Leonard Peltier - Part 1
📻 Episode #527
🎙️ Hosted by Jason Flom
📅 May 29, 2025
About This Episode
Ben Bowlin, new co-host of Wrongful Conviction and host of the long-standing podcast Stuff the Don’t Want You to Know and Jason Flom from the Wrongful Conviction podcast had the honor of sitting down for many hours to speak with Leonard Peltier about his personal life, the historical context of the resistance movement and events…
The Case
Ben Bowlin, new co-host of Wrongful Conviction and host of the long-standing podcast Stuff the Don’t Want You to Know and Jason Flom from the Wrongful Conviction podcast had the honor of sitting down for many hours to speak with Leonard Peltier about his personal life, the historical context of the resistance movement and events that led to the attack on Jumping Bull Ranch in ‘75, as well as his near 50 year fight for justice that led to his sentence commutation in the final minutes of the Biden Administration.
In part one of this three-part series, Leonard discusses his early life and experiences with American injustice before joining the American Indian Movement (AIM). He goes on to explain how the FBI targeted AIM with the same counterintelligence apparatus that was used against Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and the Black Panthers.
When American businesses were interested in mining uranium in South Dakota, the FBI funded a paramilitary group that sought to neutralize any resistance on the Pine Ridge Reservation. To support the resistance effort, AIM set up camp at Jumping Bull Ranch. Leonard and his co-defendant Dino Butler tell us about their harrowing experience on June 26th, 1975, when tensions broke out into a deadly firefight.
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In Their Own Words — transcript excerpts
Short excerpts from the episode's official published transcript, with timestamps — listen from these moments, or read the full transcript via the podcast's own platforms.
00:06:22“Speaker 2: each other and our prayers and stuff like this. I Speaker 2: was there from nineteen fifty three to nineteen fifty six. Speaker 2: I happened to go in there at a time when Speaker 2: I hit it. Lucky the people were lobbying, and the Speaker 2: soldiers were lobbying the President of the United States Eisenhower,”
00:23:56“Speaker 5: that the economics, they always say that what are war's about, Speaker 5: They're about lane and or resources. Well, this one was Speaker 5: kind of government had already seized the land, not officially, Speaker 5: not legally, it's still unseated territory, but they did want Speaker 5: to go after those resources. At that time, there were”
00:40:13“Speaker 2: it in there because I had just taken it down Speaker 2: to Ogla to get something fixed on it. So that Speaker 2: was another lie. But we come in and parked in Speaker 2: front of the Jumping Bowl house and we were talking Speaker 2: to some of the people there about something. These guys”
Listen to the Episode
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← #526 Ben Bowlin with Sonny Bharadia #528 The Wrongful Conviction of Leonard Peltier - Part 2 →
Also on the podcast: #321 Barry Beach - Part 1 · #322 Barry Beach - Part 2 · #458 Alan Beaman - Part 1