You turn to us for voices you won't hear anywhere else.

Sign up for Democracy Now!'s Daily Digest to get our latest headlines and stories delivered to your inbox every day.

Reporter Who Witnessed Pine Ridge Shoot Out Calls for Presidential Clemency

Listen
Media Options
Listen

In Sunday’s Los Angeles Times,’ reporter Kevin McKiernan, called on President Clinton to commute the life sentence of Native American activist Leonard Peltier. McKiernan was the only reporter present during the 1975 shootings at the Pine Ridge Reservation that resulted in the deaths of two FBI agents and one Native American.

McKiernan wrote: “I don’t know which American Indian killed FBI agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams in a notorious South Dakota shoot-out 25 years ago. Nor do I know the identity of the federal lawman who shot and killed Joe Stuntz, the American Indian Movement (AIM) member, whose body I photographed afterward. But I was there on June 25, 1975, outside the Jumping Bull ranch on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, when some of the bullets were flying. A stray round hit my pickup, and my memory is still fresh of crouching low behind the truck with my portable tape deck, recording the exchange of gunfire for a National Public Radio broadcast.”

Describing a pervasive “climate of fear” on the reservation, McKiernan writes that it is time for “President Bill Clinton [to] provide closure to a difficult and divisive period.”

Guests:

  • Kevin McKiernan, covered the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for, National Public Radio from 1973-76. He was the co-producer of the PBS, Frontline program 'The Spirit of Crazy Horse.'

Contact:

  • White House Comment Line: 202-456-1111

Related Story

StoryJan 31, 2022Leonard Peltier Has COVID; His Lawyer — an Ex-Federal Judge — Calls for Native Leader to Be Freed
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top