Leonard Peltier’s home on the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa reservation is nestled among green prairie grasses at the end of a tree-lined gravel road. His small yard and 2-bedroom home sit below the big skies of North Dakota. In the driveway sits an old van that he’s determined to fix. He calls it his Indian Car.

It’s been four months since Peltier moved into his new home. It’s also the first time since Jimmy Carter was president that Peltier lived outside of a prison cell. He said the transition to a comfortable new home in Belcourt, N.D., is “awesome.”

“Coming from that cell to this is like, I guess what heaven must feel like, the Great Spirit, the happy hunting ground must feel like,” Peltier said with a soft smile.

In one of the first lengthy interviews since he was released from prison in February, Peltier described his health and the decades he spent living behind bars. He also described his life as a free man after President Joe Biden issued a last-minute commutation of Peltier’s two life sentences for his involvement in the shooting deaths of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota 50 years ago

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