Receipt for Distracting Biden to Release Peltier
In Staubs and Ditchwater, H. Byron Ballard introduces the reader to one of the Appalachia Hillfolks’ word for the written structure of a spell as a “receipt” and linking it etymologically with the word “recipe”, suggesting a spell offers us a special dish or a meal. Here’s a receipt I spun over breakfast during a conversation with my wife about her recent reading of Lord of the Rings, and the story’s climax centering a movement’s strategy for distraction. This is a receipt for distracting the human tools of the FBI and the Executive Branch from the consequences for the U.S. government should they release Leonard Peltier. May this be an offering plate for the spirits who co-create the spell and the ancestors of Wounded Knee.
Leonard Peltier, age 77, is an Anishinabe Lakota artist organizer of the American Indian Movement (AIM) and a Sun Dancer who has been in prison for 46 years with a double life sentence for “aiding and abetting” in the murder of two FBI agents. Richard Wilson, Oglala Tribal Chair elected in 1972, had been using tribal funds to form a militia which violently repressed political opposition and cooperated with the FBI to give corporate access to reservation property. AIM organizers were invited by the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to alleviate internal political tensions, to coordinate community gardens, initiate addiction recovery programs and reignite Lakota cultural ways into the day-to-day life of their tribe.
After two years, tensions broke out into a shootout in which two FBI agents and Joe Stuntz, an AIM activist, were killed. On June 26th, 1975, two FBI agents (Jack R. Coler and Ronald A. Williams) entered private reservation property, Jumping Bull Ranch, in plain clothes and a new-looking unmarked car. They followed a red truck which they believed to be related to Jimmy Eagle, whom they were planning to arrest for stealing cowboy boots. After being followed down miles of dirt roads, AIM men in the truck parked and got out to confront the agents. Shots were fired at AIM, and they shot back. AIM members tried to discourage the agents with indirect shots, one of whom was Peltier.
Decades later, one of the men in the truck (X) anonymously described how X killed the agents to Peltier’s cousin Bob Robideu and AIM supporters. Peltier was nowhere near, according to X’s account, when X attempted to take the agents hostage, a last resort before they were surrounded by FBI back up. X proposed turning himself in, but Robideu and Peltier’s closest companions agreed this wouldn’t help Peltier’s charge of aiding and abetting, only put another person committed to AIM in prison.
One man to whom X told their story is Peter Matthiessen, a wilderness writer, White Plum Asanga Bhuddist priest, and former CIA officer who wrote In the Spirit of Crazy Horse: The Story of Leonard Peltier and the FBI’s War on the American Indian Movement, in 1983. The publisher Viking Press and three South Dakota booksellers were taken to court by then FBI agent David Price and the South Dakota Governor Bill Janklow over alleged libel.
AIM leader Denis Banks made statements about Janklow which were published in the book; Matthiessen believes Price who’d been interviewed for the book was pushed and sponsored by the FBI to file the state and federal libel suits, bolstering Janklow’s allegation (Peltier, 1994, Matthiessen). The trials were dismissed by all strata of courts citing “freedom of speech” and the book was republished by 1992.
In the book, Matthiessen suggests the FBI staged this firefight to distract the Lakota people and the masses from negotiations with Chairman Richard Wilson, where custody of 1/6th of the Pine Ridge Reservation (a Northwestern section) was given to the U.S. for oil, gas and uranium extraction (In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, 1984, Matthiessen). But I feel there is a deeper purpose behind Peltier’s subsequent imprisonment to the U.S. government.
[Wilson and the FBI] had no idea of the determination that my people had to not to be oppressed anymore, to not to be neglected anymore, to not to be taken advantage of anymore, to not allow white men to come on reservations and rape the women and kill them…. [Wilson and the FBI] conjured up some mess and blamed it on the Indians. Leonard Peltier at the time was one of the most outspoken Indians… But because of Leonard Peltier's passion for the people, that he could not let go of, they decided to make an example out of this "damn" Indian. And that's why Leonard Peltier is in prison now. He's been in prison longer than any other political prisoner than America's ever had in prison… They refuse to let him go because that would be a mockery unto their beliefs to allow an Indian to walk free that has the nerve and the backbone to stand up against their evilness. (Jay Winter Nightwolf)
In my perspective, Nightwolf is correct. Peltier is serving as a scape-goat, a stand-in if you will, for any movement of indigenous empowerment.
The United States, I believe, is a part of a longer narrative of empires and colonization, upheld as a social energy riddled with mental and emotional threads of generations of humans and cut forests in debt-oriented punitive societies. It has no soul, no real purpose, no spirit, I feel it's only a collective thought-form, an egregore, fed by the masses, by shells of what once filled us — our symbol, ritual, liturgies, mutual-aid, coordination, collaboration. As one considers this thought-form’s control of the native populations, we may see it as having a relentless goal to assimilate and scatter anything of authentic animist meaning.
We can extrapolate from occupations of empires past that the egregore will play on our fear by making an example of someone who organizes for indigenous culture. Peltier is one of many examples being used to slow the inevitable rising of organized animist cultures unifying the working-class for mutual-autonomy.
“The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement, and entombment in mine of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a preserve for the commercial hunting of black skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production… the chief factors of primitive accumulation.” (Karl Marx, 1867, Das Kapital, Vol. 1, pp 372)
People with high-reaching social capital, including Prosecuting Attorney James Reynolds, who had power over sentencing in Peltier’s case, have appealed to several presidents for his freedom. Yet, Peltier is still being held captive. Currently, Peltier is imprisoned in Florida under the direction of J.A. Keller of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Joe Biden has refused to acknowledge Peltier’s case, though he has the sole legal right to serve clemency on behalf of the country.
The 46th anniversary of Peltier’s arrest
On Monday, Feb. 7th, 2022 — the 46th anniversary of Peltier’s first full day in custody — folks around the globe engaged in actions organized in their respective localities in response to calls by international groups devoted to his freedom — including the International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, which is in touch with him daily.
Our solidarity network, Ouachita Collaborative Cultivators, went to the small town courthouse of the colonization of Caddo land, Mena, Arkansas, with the goal of hurting Biden’s reputation until he sets Peltier free, and to weave more people in our area into our movement. We contacted several media outlets to cover this action and were published only by the Polk County Pulse.
They have also agreed to publicize our May Day Picnic and Sing-along, which will center around a presentation on Peltier before a Maypole ribbon dance. To organize mass power-together for Peltier, we’re currently researching what businesses are meaningful to Biden and the FBI Director Christopher Wray. Also, what sanctions on the US may pressure the Wray and Biden to free Peltier? We want to see to it that the world didn’t just raise awareness, the world aided in Peltier’s return home to live with his family and friends.
The egregore of capital
A vampiric personality is the nature of the egregore of capital, which all stems from this primitive accumulation of stolen native land. From the perspective of the massive hoard, the egregore, in order to bind indigenous empowerment and the enchanted power of the land, sky and sea, it has to sustain the curse it cast, which includes the control of the native human body. And the egregore knows it needs the native body to dominate the land of which indigenous peoples are an intricate expression. However, the egregore knows its survival is at risk too — it fears the wooden stake of the peasant class.
This stake, I’m proposing, is a massive global boycott with demand for Peltier's release — utter sabotage to the curse. Even though it may feel overwhelming to think of the scope of what it will take to affect Biden and anyone else choosing to directly block Peltier’s health and his return home, we must remember we are part of this narrative as well, and we are powerful.
Though the egregore seems to function above individual human personalities, and though it may have frozen the inner-chalice, the heart, of some living humans in the legal temples of the owning-class, it is dependent on these easy-to-trick predictable humans. The owning-class’ juggle of swords, their mental awareness, is always crashing in on them. And then there’s the we, the people, our bodies, our labor and the land — the pentacles brought together. There’s the masses of wands, us driving energy forward in tireless pursuit, ancient fire.
I want to invite a deep breath at this point — sink into reality — touch some of the numbness you may feel, any apathy harbored in the pit of the stomach. If there is any grief, please, acknowledge this pain.
Metaphors under colonialist rule
Now I’d like to visit another landscape, where we can distance ourselves from the immediate drudge of life under colonialist rule and gather some perspective, power-from-within and metaphor. Many pagans hold dear Middle Earth and the tale of how the Ring was returned to the fires of Mt. Doom in the NW of the Backland of Mordor, causing the dissipation of Sauron. The name Sauron literally means “horror, dread,” things I’ve felt as I’ve connected into organizing with Peltier and co-supporters. The torture of imprisonment itself. A life, a disoriented experience of 46 years.
For me, participating in Peltier’s cause brings up troubling memories from when I was locked away and round the clock, on someone else’s schedule (A story I’ll tell another time). Metaphors in storytelling are able to give an image of a happy ending brought about by collaborative organizing, which can empower AIM and Peltier's supporters, perhaps as it empowers me.
Tolkien’s engagement with fairy-stories has sparked the imagination and dreamscape of humanity held captive in a modern industrial dungeon. Bringing us into a tactic of destiny, Tolkein shares how Sauron’s only chance at permanent control is missed due to his distractedness. An unlikely alliance, formed in the Fellowship of the Ring and the battles and adventures which follow, takes council with Gandalf at Minas Tirith. They choose to march with a purposefully-scant army to the Black Gate of Mordor, where Sauron will believe any small group showing up to challenge his control could only be posed by a band carrying the power of the ring.
Meanwhile, two small hobbits hold the ring, Frodo and Sam, on the other side of Mordor. It is only the distraction which allows their destiny with the ring to play out, with incredible risk, up until the ring returns to the elements and Sauron becomes a “mere spirit of malice that gnaws itself in the shadows, but cannot again grow or take shape. And so a great evil of this world [is] removed."
This tactic of distraction is familiar to fairies and to the realm of Myth. One such example is from the Irish tale Echtra Fergusa maic Léite “The Saga of Fergus mac Léti” from about the 8th century CE. In the tale Fergus, the mythical King of early Ulster, Ireland, is taken to the sea distracted in his sleep, by lúchorpáin, Old Irish for “little bodied” water-dwarfs, and awakens only when his feet touch the water. Fergus then grabs them by the neck and places them captive, because he’s been told they will grant three wishes (They correspond with the Scottish faeries of household flow called brownies or ùruisg, in Scottish Gaelic). If the faeries had managed to keep Fergus in his distracting slumber, they’d have succeeded in giving him to the sea. Indeed, in subsequent tales, they are experts at averting attention.
Ùaisgean, brownies, are water-dwarfs who hold an annual council by the Irish Sea with a hag goddess of a body of water called the Muiretach. This moist connection with a deity known for her relentless storms gives us a mytho-poetic image of sea-change, a shifting of underlying social paradigm or zeitgeist. In more recent lore, the lúchorpáin sprites come to us as shoemakers, the sole of the shoe signalling us towards pagan initiation ordeals and post coming-of-age rituals through the tearing of the ego back down to the earth. Often the lúchorpáin hold gold, maturation, which they must give if a human comes across them and keeps their gaze on them. Their foremost tactic is distraction of any human that would try to hold them captive. This, they do through trickery. As animist companions to the lúchorpáin, let us join the trickster rather than give up our treasure.
Our Spell’s Receipt
The eye of Sauron today is the invisible hand of the vampire — capital/the FBI; the ring could be viewed as control of native land through control of the native body. While this control is a deeply intricate web of policy, industry and law enforcement in the experiences of indigenous persons everywhere (and there are several other indigenous political prisoners including water protectors still facing time from Standing Rock), Leonard Peltier’s term is the longest the American egregore has held a political prisoner captive.
Peltier and AIM are actively agitating and engaging to defend native sovereignty, even from the government’s business as usual. He is targeted as a leader, a symbol of this movement.
I have asked the International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee and the General Executive Board of the Industrial Workers of the World to discuss and consider the tactic of initiating a boycott of businesses from which top officers of the FBI such as Christopher Wray (director), J.A. Keller and Joe Biden profit with the demand of Peltier’s freedom. I’m looking forward to their perspectives being shared along with the Incarcerated Worker’s Organizing Committee, whom I’ve notified as well, along with several native post-colonial activists and humanities professors who participated in Occupy. It’s difficult to map these direct financial ties, even with research databases such as LittleSis. If you have ideas, please text or call Ouachita Collaborative Cultivators at our community phone 405-357-8699 or email: occsolidarity at gmail.
So I invite the reader to consider working with this receipt during this moon. This spell is a kind of power-with spell, as Starhawk describes in Dreaming the Dark. The power comes by not ignoring the shadow of the empire, so the intention does include the opposition and their recuperative strategy by name. Blend your own tradition into it, no matter what folk-woods you’re ramblin’.
Intention: As the lúchorpáin distracts his captor, may our actions distract Joe Biden’s, Christopher Wray’s, and J.A. Keller’s attention from their role in the vampiric egregore’s binding of primitive accumulation into capital – through FREEING LEONARD PELTIER WITHOUT RECUPERATION!
1. In sacred space, trancing and dreaming and telling no one the dream. Writing it down and burying it, perhaps. This is the image, and the words and sounds, secret.
2. From the dream, receiving an unlikely non-obvious secret action; taking it without any other soul knowing what it is.
3. Joining in some obvious collective action to Free Leonard Peltier, a direct action — such as a boycott if one is launched, a march or a teach-in.
4. Share the receipt with other folk magicians and herb-workers. I’m passing this around the Reclaiming Collective as a tool during our BIRCH meeting cauldron of accountability this equinox.
Poetry & Song:
Accumulated native wealth the boss puts in our hands,
And once we’ve added value, the boss steals it back again.
With our coops and our communes, we’ll Rematriate the land,
While our union keeps us strong!
Valerian Snow Flower-Power
(ve, they, or any pronouns really) is a witch with roots of sabotaging the plans of employers and landlords. Ve loves with the land of which the Kadohadacho people have blood and passion, still whispering life in the caring tongue of the Caddo language. Ve is androgynous and encourages everyone to be who we each personally choose to be. Animists, Anarchists and autonomist Marxists, vis wife Suzanne Snow and ver are co-founding a commune called Snake Village in the Ouachita Mountains. Ve is organizing a basic-needs pantry, a community center from an old motorcycle shop, mutual-aid gardens and direct action with a year-old solidarity network called Ouachita Collaborative Cultivators. Ve is connected with the Reclaiming tradition of the craft and one can find ver at a local metaphysical apothecary giving free tarot readings and going door to door asking for pennies for the commune.