'Free Leonard Peltier' is premiering at the Sundance Film Festival. It's getting a new ending, just like its subject.

The Native American activist has been imprisoned for nearly 50 years after a trial that was criticized for its misconduct.

Leonard Peltier, center, handcuffed and wearing a Native sweater, is escorted by law enforcement officers,
Leonard Peltier, the former American Indian Movement leader, center, had his prison sentence commuted by President Joe Biden before he left office. (Getty Images)

In his final hours in office, President Joe Biden made a decision that energized Native American activists across the country: He commuted the sentence of Leonard Peltier, who has served 49 years in prison for the killings of two FBI agents in 1975.

While not a pardon, this pivotal move came just a week before the premiere of Free Leonard Peltier, a documentary about the American Indian Movement (AIM) activist, which was scheduled to debut on Jan. 27 at the Sundance Film Festival.

Now the filmmakers are busy working on a last-minute change to the documentary’s ending while celebrating Peltier’s release and hoping more audiences will get the chance to learn about the 80-year-old activist, who has been called the “longest-held Indigenous political prisoner in the United States.”

A member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa tribe whose imprisonment for many symbolized the continued oppression of Native people in the United States and whose trial raised questions of misconduct, Peltier will now serve out the rest of his life sentence in home confinement on his tribal homeland in North Dakota.

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“We're ecstatic and exhausted,” Jhane Myers, a Comanche-Blackfeet producer on Free Leonard Peltier, told Yahoo Entertainment. “This is something that people have prayed about for such a long time. … We've all prayed and hoped and wished.”

On June 26, 1975, shooting broke out between members of AIM and FBI agents who were on the Oglala Lakota tribe’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota to serve arrest warrants during a weeks-long standoff over Native treaty rights. Agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams were initially injured in the shoot-out but were later shot in the head at close range, the FBI said. AIM activist Joseph Stuntz was also killed in the confrontation.

Peltier fled to Canada before being extradited to the U.S. In 1977, he was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder, while his co-defendants — AIM members Robert Robideau and Dino Butler — were acquitted. On appeal, the charges were reduced to aiding and abetting, and Peltier was sentenced to life in prison.

Indigenous activists, Amnesty International, and the ACLU, along with notables including Sen. Brian Schatz, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Robert Redford, Pope Francis, Coretta Scott King and Nelson Mandela, have called for clemency over the years, citing trial misconduct that included key evidence being withheld, witness coercion, jury prejudice and ballistics information that was misrepresented.

Other questions have been raised as well.

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“[Robideau and Butler] were tried and they were acquitted on lack of evidence and self-defense because during that time, thousands of bullets were being shot back and forth between everyone,” Myers said. “Leonard was convicted, but then later it was turned to aiding and abetting. So who did he aid and abet if the other two defendants were acquitted?”

Calling Peltier a “remorseless killer,” former FBI Director Christopher Wray sent a private letter to Biden, saying, “Granting Peltier any relief from his conviction or sentence is wholly unjustified and would be an affront to the rule of law,” the AP reported.

Even within the Native community, reactions have been mixed, given Peltier’s rumored connection to the death of fellow AIM member Annie Mae Aquash, whose life was detailed in the 2024 Hulu documentary series Vow of Silence: The Assassination of Annie Mae. Peltier has denied any involvement in her death.

Myers said the team behind the documentary, including directors Jesse Short Bull and David France and producer Bird Runningwater, were ready to return to the editing room to make revisions.

“This is something that we always prepared for, because we had hoped that this would happen,” Myers said. “We said, ‘Oh, well, what if he gets out? What would we do? Or what do we do in this scenario?’ So we really kind of had a soft plan. We never thought that we would be using it, but it's a pleasure to use it.”

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The Free Leonard Peltier team is also requesting more screenings at Sundance since those scheduled are sold out. They are also assembling a panel for the festival’s audiences in connection with the film. That panel will include Butler, one of the acquitted AIM activists; Bruce Ellison, Peltier’s appeals attorney; and Nick Tilsen, Oglala Lakota founder and CEO of NDN Collective, a Native American rights organization that is facilitating Peltier’s travel from Coleman federal prison in Florida to his home in Belcourt, N.D.

“It feels powerful and relieving. You know, this is a result of 50 years of intergenerational organizing all mounted up to this moment in history, and it's a historic moment,” Tilsen told Yahoo Entertainment. “In his release, there's an acknowledgment that what they did to him was wrong, and what they've done to Indian people all throughout the history of this country is wrong.”

For Myers’s part, telling Peltier’s story through a Native lens was especially important.

“It needs to be told by us as Native people,” she said.

As preparations continue for Peltier’s scheduled release on Feb. 18, just weeks after the film’s debut, the imprisoned activist spoke with Tilsen after learning his fate.

“[Peltier] called [Monday night], when he actually got his clemency papers, and I can tell you that that phone call of him reading his clemency papers, I'll never forget that moment,” Tilsen said. “I'll never forget the tone in his voice, and how he said, ‘I'm coming home, it's finally over, and I'm able to come home back to my people and my grandkids.’”