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.”