Who is Leonard Peltier and what was he fighting for?

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Twenty-three years, that's a lot of time. In the past 23 years, nations rose and fell, mankind extended the limits to limitless space, peace has come to countries that have been at war for centuries, and war has come to shatter the peace and calm in a variety of communities around the globe.

And during the last 23 years, men and women, countless, faceless, forgotten human beings, served time in federal, provincial and state prisons, most of which for crimes they did commit. But for others, a rare few and for one in particular, for something they did not do. Justice gone awry. It happens.

It happened to Leonard Peltier, an Ojibway-Lakota who has languished in American federal prisons for more than two decades, a political prisoner in North America who has yet to see freedom and be exonerated for the crime his own accusers say they can't prove he is guilty of committing.

Peltier's been told his release date is 2035. He'll be 90 years old by the time the prison doors swing open for him. Far too late to start the buffalo ranch he dreams of or to enjoy his family, all of whom will likely be dead by then, even if Peltier himself lives that long.

Peltier was born and raised in South Dakota in a location that is the geographical centre of North America. It's one of thousands of Aboriginal communities that sit on a vast belt of mineral wealth.

The land where Leonard grew up has always been held in high regard by the Native people of the area. Just outside his home are the Black Hills, Paha Sapa to the Lakota. They are a special place, a holy place, because Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit, the Great Mystery, the One Above Who Oversees All, lives there. It is the place Wakan Tanka chose to make his name and his ways known to the children who He chose to be the keepers of the Earth - the red man.

The whole area belonged to the Lakota people, known as the Sioux. It had been secured to them as their own in perpetuity by the United States government when the Fort Laramie Treaty was signed in 1868. The legislation stated that the Lakota were recognized as inhabitants of the area since time immemorial and the land was recognized as part of their vast territorial holdings.

The treaty gave the Lakota nothing they didn't already have, but was a pledge of peace to allow safe passage through Sioux territory for the settlers enroute to the West and to pioneer settlements in the vast lands of the Blackfeet.

Undertaken as a means to safeguard the territorial rights of the Lakota and still allow settlement west of the Missouri River, the treaty was an ironclad nation-to-nation agreement on land use and prohibitions. The gist of the treaty allowed settlers and other travellers to safely cross through Lakota land and, in turn, no settlement could take place on the land. The first thing the U.S. Cavalry did was to construct forts along what was known as the Bozeman Trail, an east-west route established as the main entryway into the western frontier. The Sioux were pacified with gifts and allowed the forts as peacekeeping units, but the people called the trail the "Thieves Road" and the white people were given the designation "wasichu," translated as "he who takes the fat" or "the greedy ones."

The day came when wasichu found the Black Hills valuable. They wearied their nights plotting how to steal the Black Hills and the yellow gold located there. For years, all was quiet as the Western frontier was slowly settled by a trickle of pioneers. Then the trickle became a headlong rush of fortune-seekers when gold was discovered by two treaty-violating prospectors who were found murdered in the Black Hills, their deaths evidently caused by Lakota warriors who's happened upon the trespassers.

When the hapless miners' bodies were found, a note written by one of the men stating "there's gold in them thar hills" was recovered. By the next day, the stampede was on.

The Lakota were unprepared for the onslaught and after several unsuccessful attempt to curb the invaders, a delegation travelled to Washington with an appeal for the army to uphold the Fort Laramie Treaty. Washington declined and offered to buy the Black Hills for $5 million. The Lakota declined and Washington decided to take the hills anyway.

The government withheld rations and restricted the people from off-reservation hunting, slowly starving the people into submission. Anyone resisting the sale was labeled a "hostile" and subject to arrest or death. Sitting Bull, Gall and Crazy Horse were among the hostiles. Eight years after the Indians were promised the Black Hills in perpetuity, Red Cloud, Spotted Tail and other chiefs were forced to sign a document abrogating the Fort Laramie Treaty.

In a pen stroke, the Lakota lost the Black Hills, plus 22.8 million surrounding acres, in exchange for subsistence rations. The U.S. Congressional Record quotes an unnamed speaker as saying "an idle and thriftless race of savages cannot be permitted to stand guard at the treasure vaults of the nation which hold our gold and silver. The prospector and miner may enter and, by enriching himself, enrich the nation and bless the world by the results of his toil."

To this day the Lakota have never been able to regain their sacred Paha Sapa. They live in destitution while the land yields billions of dollars annually to the people who took it away.

Leonard Peltier is one of many who sought to fight for this land and suffers the consequences for his political position.