The cost of incarceration

Every August for the past six years, members of Leonard Peltier’s family have held a reunion. This year, they hoped he might be able to finally join them.

But on July 2, their hopes were shattered when the imprisoned Native American activist was once again denied parole, after 47 years behind bars.

Peltier, 79, is serving two consecutive life sentences for his role in a 1975 shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota that resulted in the deaths of two federal agents.

To this day, he maintains his innocence. His freedom has become a cause célèbre among civil rights and Indigenous advocates, who accuse law enforcement of suppressing evidence and coercing witnesses in order to secure a conviction on first-degree murder charges.

Some of his supporters even consider him the longest-serving political prisoner in the United States.

But Peltier’s relatives say his lengthy incarceration has exacted its own punishment on the family, which has struggled to scrape together funds and fend off blowback from the high-profile case.

Chauncey Peltier, his oldest son, remembers Peltier advising him to take his distance from the decades-long legal fight and “live [his] life”.

“I tried that,” Chauncey said. “But being Leonard's son, it's like a little cloud over you.”

Chauncey was only 10 years old when his father was convicted of the murders of Jack Coler and Ronald Williams, two agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The time they have spent apart has taken its toll.

“My father doesn't know me, and I don't know him,” Chauncey, now 58, told Al Jazeera.

But Chauncey has nevertheless dedicated decades of his life fighting for Peltier’s release.

Before his incarceration, Peltier — a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians — served as a leader in the American Indian Movement (AIM), a civil rights organisation that emerged in the 1960s.

He was one of hundreds of activists who came to the Pine Ridge Reservation in the mid-1970s to protest discrimination, police brutality and broken treaties between the US and Indigenous peoples.

But in June 1975, Peltier and other AIM members were accused of firing upon Coler and Williams as they entered a local ranch to serve an arrest warrant. Both agents were killed in the crossfire.

It was the start of a legal odyssey for the entire Peltier family, including Chauncey and his siblings.

The last time Chauncey remembers seeing his father outside of prison was nearly a half-century ago, at an Indigenous sweat lodge ceremony.

There, sitting together in the rising steam, Chauncey remembers his father comforting him, reminding him that Mother Earth would protect them.

“I honestly believe that doing that with him, before he got incarcerated, helped me find my way back to our culture,” Chauncey said.

But his father’s imprisonment transformed Chauncey’s life. With Peltier behind bars and legal bills piling high, Chauncey said his family struggled to make ends meet.

To help out, Chauncey took jobs while growing up. His first was washing dishes at a Chinese restaurant. He was 14.

“My mom always had to have two jobs to take care of me and my brother,” Chauncey said. “I'd always have to go pick strawberries or something to get my clothes for school.”

Initially, after the shooting, Peltier fled to Canada, where he was eventually arrested. During his father’s extradition trial, Chauncey recalled selling newspapers and pamphlets with his mother to raise awareness about the case.

As they distributed papers outside the courthouse in British Columbia where his father’s trial was being held, Chauncey noticed two men, dressed in suits, watching him. He saw one of the men again inside the courthouse.

Chauncey says the man identified himself as law enforcement and aggressively searched him as he entered to attend the trial, twisting his arm.

“He tells me, 'I'm going to see that your murdering dad never gets freed,'” Chauncey recalled.

That moment, Chauncey said, made him realise that being Peltier’s son meant carrying the baggage that came with the Peltier name.

Even later in life, Chauncey remembers law enforcement taunting and harassing him.

One instance came at age 26, when Chauncey was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol. As he was transported to jail, two officers assaulted him in a lift, Chauncey said.

He remembers them asking, “How’s your cop-killing dad doing?”

Chauncey’s little sister Marquetta Shields-Peltier also experienced bullying as a result of her connection to her father.

Growing up, she used to collect and sell bumper stickers that read, “Free Leonard Peltier.” But in fifth grade, she remembers a classmate asked for a sticker but then refused to pay.

“I’m not going to pay for a murderer to get out of prison. Your dad’s a murderer,” Marquetta remembers the classmate telling her.

Unlike Chauncey, Marquetta has no memories of her father outside of prison. She was only a toddler when he was convicted in April 1977.

Only when she was eight years old does she remember meeting him for the first time at the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois. The experience was exciting but nerve-racking, and Marquetta admits she was a little scared.

“I remember asking my grandma, ‘You think he loves me, grandma?’” Marquetta recalled. “And she said, ‘Yeah, he's your dad.’”

“When I saw my dad for the first time ever, that's what I saw: love.”

Now a paramedic and a mother herself, Marquetta explained that some of her best memories are of spending time with her father inside a US penitentiary.

But Peltier’s absence for major life events — and the stress of fighting for his release — have left an enduring mark on his children’s mental health.

Chauncey said one of his brothers died by suicide at a young age. He struggled with alcohol himself, though he is now 14 years sober.

“I see a therapist still to this day, after years of holding in a lot of things,” Marquetta said. “I try to always remember the good, but there are days where I just get so mad, I just get so frustrated, and I get really resentful.”

The prolonged incarceration also strained the relationships the siblings had with each other. Marquetta said she hasn’t seen her brothers and sisters in a decade.

“Because of the situation, we grew apart from each other, not knowing each other," she explained. “It just doesn't feel like it's a family to me. That had an impact on my mental health.”

Even Peltier’s sister, Betty Ann Peltier, 77, told Al Jazeera that his imprisonment has caused her depression, leading her to be medicated for the majority of her life.

For decades, the family has pushed for Peltier’s release. But he was previously denied parole in 2009, and attempts to petition for a presidential pardon have been rejected.

Peltier’s lawyer Kevin Sharp told US media in June that he considered this month’s parole hearing to be the activist’s "last chance” to be free.

But in the lead-up to the hearing, FBI director Christopher Wray wrote a fiery letter expressing “adamant opposition” to Peltier’s release, describing him as a “remorseless killer”.

“Peltier is a ruthless murderer who has shown an utter lack of remorse for his many crimes,” Wray wrote. “His release would strike a serious blow to the rule of law.”

With the failure of Peltier’s most recent application, the parole commission scheduled an interim hearing for 2026. The next full parole hearing will be in June 2039, by which time Peltier will be 94 years old.

Sharp said he plans to appeal this month’s decision. He maintains his client may not survive the wait.

According to Peltier’s family, the activist contends with several serious health conditions, including kidney disease, Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and a heart condition.

He also suffered a stroke in 1986 that left him nearly blind in one eye. And in January 2016, he was diagnosed with a life-threatening abdominal aortic aneurysm.

“I know he won't make it to his next parole with the conditions he's living under. He won't make it that long,” said Pamela Bravo, Betty Ann’s daughter.

She remembers Peltier as her “cool uncle” who used to drive her around the Turtle Mountain Reservation in his convertible car.

Her aunt Sheila Peltier warned that, even if Peltier lived to see his next parole hearing, some of his family members might not. He has already lost his parents, a son and a few of his siblings.

“We might not even be here. I might not even be here,” Sheila, 59, said. “We're hoping that this appeal goes through.”

She explained that, by speaking out, she aims to remind the world of the good Peltier has done — and that his life did not begin and end at the shootout at Pine Ridge.

“He also did a lot for his people,” Sheila said, citing his work with the American Indian Movement.

“AIM, they got us fishing rights, our water rights and the Child Act,” she added, referencing the Indian Child Welfare Act, which passed in 1977 as a result of sustained Indigenous advocacy.

Chauncey, too, would like to see his father recognised for his activism — and for the hardships he faced as an Indigenous man in the US.

Peltier, for instance, was a survivor of the Indigenous boarding school system, a web of government- and church-run institutions designed to wipe out Native culture.

“He stands for what our people have been struggling with for 500 years,” Chauncey explained. “His release would start the healing of what Native people have gone through for 500 years.”

Ultimately, Chauncey said, his father is no threat, “just an old man”. He believes it’s past time for Peltier to be released. “He just wants to go home and paint and work on old cars.”