The "Bring Peltier Home" Spring Tour, featuring Dennis Banks of the American
Indian Movement, will be coming to the University of Richmond, Sunday, April
20, 7-10 PM. Accompanied by several Native musicians and other entertainers,
Banks is headlining a road tour that stops in several Eastern Seaboard cities
this spring, educating the public about the Leonard Peltier case, and
supporting the national drive for President Clinton to grant executive
clemency.
Peltier was wrongly convicted of the shooting deaths of two U.S. government
agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1975, and sentenced
to two life sentences. Seventeen years after his conviction, the government
admitted it "really doesn't know" who shot their agents.
Locally sponsored by the University of Richmond's ITTOYHA: Interest in
Native American Cultures, and by the Gottwald Speakers' Board, the Richmond
tour stop will be held at the Camp Concert Hall in the Modlin Center for the
Arts on the University of Richmond campus.
Local entertainers, including the Soy Hero group, and local Native drummers
and dancers will open the show, followed by tour entertainers Bernard
Peoples, Geraldine Harte, Heath St. John, and Star Nayea. Dennis Banks, an
AIM contemporary of Peltier and a Native activist since the 1970's, will
outline Peltier's case history and cite federal documents pointing to
Peltier's innocence.
For more information about the University of Richmond tour stop, contact
local coordinator Bryan Small at 804-662-3016.
For more information about the Peltier case, read "In the Spirit of Crazy
Horse" by Peter Matthiessen, rent the Robert Redford video documentary
"Incident at Oglala", visit the Peltier web site at
http://www.unicom.net/peltier/index.html, and contact the Leonard Peltier
Defense Committee at 913-842-5774. For additional information about the
"Bring Peltier Home" Spring Clemency Tour, contact the Tour office at
606-431-2346.