Testimony as Resistance: Leonard Peltier, Indigenous Storywork and Intergenerational Trauma

“Testimony as Resistance: Leonard Peltier, Indigenous Storywork and Intergenerational Trauma” investigates how oral testimonies of Indigenous activists transmit collective memory and intergenerational trauma, with Leonard Peltier serving as a central case study. Unlike many Indigenous elders whose trauma was shaped by boarding schools, Peltier’s life story is marked by state repression, political imprisonment and the criminalization of Native activism. His nearly fifty years of incarceration, during which he has consistently maintained his innocence for the 1975 killing of two FBI agents, make him one of the longest-held political prisoners in the United States. Now 81 and serving his sentences under house arrest with the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Nation, Peltier embodies both the deeply personal costs of state violence and the resilience of Indigenous resistance. His testimony is a distinctive site to examine how long-term incarceration shapes individual identity and the collective memory of Native communities. Rooted in respect, reciprocity, and relationality, Peltier’s testimony is situated as an intellectual contribution that transmits trauma and resilience and serves as cultural survival and political resistance.

The study will employ in-depth interviews analyzed through Indigenous Storywork (Archibald, 2008), Indigenous Standpoint Theory (Moreton-Robinson, 2013), and narrative analysis (Riessman, 2008). These frameworks ensure that Peltier’s testimony is understood not as extractable data but as knowledge-making in its own right (Smith, 2021; Wilson, 2008). Outcomes will include an archive-quality recording of Peltier’s testimony, a preliminary scholarly analysis, and a proof of concept for a comparative oral history archive and documentary film. Scholarly outputs will be paired with community outcomes, including returning findings to Native nations, co-creating educational toolkits, and building a digital archive accessible to Indigenous communities.