Since childhoood, Leonard has endured and witnessed human rights abuses committed by the United States Government. At the age of eight he was taken from his family and sent to a residential boarding school for Native people run by the US Government. As a teenager he lived on a reservation which was chosen as the testing ground for a new termination policy that forced Native families off their ÒlandsÓ into the cities.

Community resistance to these policies in the 1960s and 1970s inspired Leonard to join the American Indian Movement (AIM). On Pine Ridge he participated in the planning of community activities, religious ceremonies, programs for self-sufficiency, and improved living conditions. He also helped to organize security for the traditional people who were constant targets of violence by the pro-assimilation tribal chairman and his vigilantes. It was here that the tragic shoot-out at Wounded Knee on June 26, 1975 occurred, leading to his wrongful conviction.

Despite the harsh conditions of imprisonment, Leonard Peltier has continued to lead an active life. He has established himself as a talented painter, and he has written poetry and prose from behind prison walls. While incarcerated, he continues his fight for Indigenous rights and justice.