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‘Free Leonard Peltier’ Review: Engaging Doc About Activist Accused of Killing Two FBI Agents in 1975 Is Timelier Than Ever
Directors Jesse Short Bull and David France have diligently assembled a potent history lesson about Leonard Peltier, whom President Biden pardoned.
“Free Leonard Peltier” has an appreciably wider focus, placing the incidents detailed here in the context of America’s long and shameful history of exploiting, betraying and even murdering Native people. Early on, we learn Peltier was brutally mistreated and forcefully assimilated in a government-run Indian residential boarding school during his youth, and later radicalized by such protests as the 1969-71 occupation of Alcatraz by Native American activists. Despite passionate support from notables ranging from Marlon Brando (seen here in a vintage clip proselytizing on “The Dick Cavett Show”) to the pope, countless public protests by Native Americans and their allies, and after-the-fact revelations of flagrant FBI misconduct, he and lawyers have been repeatedly stymied in their attempts to get a retrial or pardon.
Or read this on Variety
