Prison Writings: My Life is My Sundance 1999.

• Author: Clemens, Byron
• Position: Review

Leonard Peltier's (US Prisoner #89637-132) Prison Writings: My Life is My Sundance (edited by Harvey Arden), 1999. 221 pages, 20 photographs, St. Martin's Press, $23.95.

Leonard Peltier is an American Indian activist for whom overwhelming evidence and testimony shows was unjustly convicted for the murder of two FBI agents in the infamous "Incident at Oglala" in the 1970's. Leonard Peltier has become a symbol for Native Americans for what is wrong with the United States Government; he is the twenty-first century equivalent of Crazy Horse. Recognized world figures from the Dalai Lama to Desmond Tutu have called for Peltier's release.

Written from his prison cell in Leavenworth, Kansas, Peltier's memoir details his childhood, his involvement with the American Indian Movement and the human toll of 24 years of confinement and hard time for a crime he clearly did not commit. "Prison Memoirs" places Peltier's struggle for justice in the context of the history of the US government's relationship with...