Second battle of Wounded Knee
Is Leonard Peltier, a Native American civil rights activist, still in prison?
On June 26, 1975, at the Pine Ridge reservation near Wounded Knee, South Dakota, two FBI agents and an American Indian died in a shoot-out.
The deaths of the agents initiated a massive manhunt, and more than 150 agents swarmed over the poverty-stricken land of the Oglala Lakota nation in South Dakota in search of the suspects.
eventually, four members of the American Indian movement (AIM) were captured and indicted on murder charges.
One was released after questioning. Bob Robideau and Dino Butler were tried and found not guilty after a vigorous defence effort by the radical lawyer William Kunstler. But Leonard Peltier was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder.
Peltier was born on September 12, 1944, on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation near Belcourt, north Dakota, one of 13 children. In 1975, he led the AIM selfdefence team of Indian warriors who sought to protect Lakota elders and their families from the assault by local tribal vigilante forces that raged out of control following the AIM occupation at Wounded Knee in 1973. (Wounded Knee was infamous as the spot where the u.S. Army slaughtered hundreds of Lakota in 1890.)
The shooting, known as the Incident at Oglala, occurred when two unmarked cars chased a red truck onto the Jumping Bull property on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
Across the field from the road where the chase occurred was the compound where the Jumping Bull family lived and where AIM members and families had set up camp. When the agents — who hadn’t identified themselves — began firing on the ranch, Peltier and others, who were defending the compound, fired back, not knowing who the men were.
FBI agents Ronald A. Williams and Jack R. Coler, and one Lakota man, Joe Killsright Stuntz, were killed in the fire fight. no one has ever been convicted of Joe Stuntz’s death.
Peltier’s conviction sparked great controversy. According to his defence attorneys, federal agents made false statements and affidavits, coerced witness statements and deliberately withheld crucial ballistics reports.
numerous appeals have been filed on his behalf, but none of the resulting rulings has been made in his favour.
He has received support from individuals and groups including nelson Mandela, the Soviet Peace Committee, Amnesty International, the un High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Dalai Lama, Mikhail Gorbachev, the european Parliament, the Kennedy Memorial Centre for Human Rights, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Rev Jesse Jackson.
There were repeated pleas for full clemency during the Clinton and Obama administrations. A 2016 petition to Barack Obama backed by Pope Francis was denied.
Peltier still refuses to admit his guilt which means he has not been paroled: ‘I didn’t do it, and I won’t say I did. I won’t betray my people like that. I won’t betray my culture,’ he has said.
Leonard Peltier is at Coleman Federal Correctional Complex in Florida.
Ed White, Warwick.
Why are country bumpkins in the U.S. referred to as ‘rubes’?
THe term ‘rube’ showed up in the latter half of the 19th century as a slur for a gullible country boy. Its origin is similar to that of hick.
Both are diminutive forms of names associated with country folk at the time: Rube for Reuben, Hick for Richard.
It used to be common, particularly in rural communities, to adopt personal names from the Bible, and in 1880 one boy in 200 was named Reuben.
An associated term is the famous circus cry: ‘Hey, Rube!’, a rallying call, or a cry for help, used by carnival folk or ‘carnies’ in a fight with outsiders.
In its September 7, 1879, edition the Cincinnati enquirer wrote: ‘“Hey! Rube!” [is the] circus man’s shout, which has been heard from Maine to Oregon and from Hudson’s Bay to Brazil. When the countrymen get too fresh and too full of fight, they generally get it.
‘The first performer attacked sends forth the thrilling war cry, and every man and boy connected with the show arm themselves with some weapon, and sally to the aid of their brother.’
Legendary circus clown Dan Rice called it ‘a terrible cry, [meaning] as no other expression in the language does, that a fierce deadly fight is on, that men who are far away from home [travelling circus workers] must band together in a struggle that means life or death to them’.
According to some sources, the origin of the expression can be traced to 1848 when a member of Dan Rice’s troupe was attacked at a new Orleans dance house.
That man yelled to his friend, named ‘Reuben’, who rushed to his aid. The more likely explanation is that the term was derived from ‘Rube’, the slang term for country folk.
Mrs J. Townsend, Reigate, Surrey.
Many screen stars had amusing names such as Nosmo King, Issy Bonn and Slim Pickens. What others were there?
Further to the earlier answer, screen star names such as Sissy Spacek, Googie Withers, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Whoopi Goldberg are certainly distinctive.
But among the lesser-known film actors and actresses are some real gems — Albert Hall, Tory Kitties, Lou Frizzell, Alan Fudge, Joy Bang, Brandy Gold, Brigitte Horney, Lone Skye, Tarah nutter, Alice Ghostly and Barry Flatman to name but a few.
Some screen stars had amusing names before they changed them, such as Archibald Leach (Cary Grant) and Marion Morrison (John Wayne).
Michael Mogan, Harlow, Essex.
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