American Indian rights activist Leonard Peltier (born 1944) was convicted in the shooting deaths of two Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

Driving at top speed and unannounced into a remote community at the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota was an imprudent decision for two FBI agents to make on June 26, 1975. Yet that's exactly what agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams did that day, in pursuit of an Indian youth on a minor theft complaint. It was almost predictable that gunfire would result: the reservation--desperately poor, and home to 10,000 Lakota Sioux--was a cauldron of violence and fear. The legendary 71-day siege at Wounded Knee had happened there just two years before. By 1975, American Indian Movement (AIM) members camped out at the Jumping Bull community were engaged in a full-blown war between full-blood and mixed-blood residents of Pine Ridge.

"Traditionals...