Echoes of Freedom
"I Walk In Beauty"
In 1990, as a junior and painting major at the Kansas City Art Institute, I hosted a group art exhibition supporting the release of Native American political prisoner Leonard Peltier.
In 1977, Leonard Peltier was convicted of two counts of murder in the deaths of two FBI agents during a shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. While I will let readers do their own research on Peltier's case starting Here, it's worth mentioning that Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa, the 14th Dalai Lama, the United Nations High Commission of Human Rights, Amnesty International, the Top Prosecutor in Peltier’s case, an ex-FBI agent, and several European Parliaments have all advocated for Peltier's clemency. Even the police officer who apprehended Peltier is convinced that he did not receive a fair trial. However, despite all this support, Peltier remains incarcerated in a US State Penitentiary in Florida to this day.
Several months before the exhibition, I met Leonard Peltier’s sister and his daughter at the Anarchist/Radical Underground bookstore in Kansas City, Missouri. They were there with literature about Leonard, and we started to talk. I expressed my interest in bringing more attention to his story at the college. Whenever they visited the bookstore I would stop by and show support, and eventually, we exchanged numbers. When I reached out to discuss plans for the exhibition, I was invited to Leavenworth, Kansas to further discuss my ideas with other family members, a tribal elder, and friends. During that time, Leonard was at the US State Penitentiary in Leavenworth and the Free Peltier Movement was quite prominent in the state and Kansas City area.
For a kid who grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, being invited to sit at a table with Leonard Peltier’s family, the tribal elder, and various others, was a surreal moment. I was awkwardly aware of my whiteness. Long before white privilege became a term, this was my first realization of it and I knew I was being looked at with suspicious eyes. Despite this, I shared my plans for hosting an exhibition and explained my interest in spreading the word about Peltier's case. With everyone's support, I organized the event, students hung their art, and flyers were distributed around the school and in the Anarchist/Radical Underground bookstore. I invited Peltier’s relatives and those involved with the Free Peltier campaign. I also wrote to Amnesty International and informed them of the show. The exhibition was a success and a message from Leonard was shared via his relatives. Many who attended learned about Peltier’s case and left, having added their signatures to the long list of others demanding Leonard’s immediate release.
What transpired on the Pine Ridge Reservation on June 26, 1975, was born from centuries of violence, cultural genocide, oppression, poverty, frustration, and a growing sense of self-identity and empowerment. Inspired by the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement (AIM) focused on advocating for treaty rights, speaking out against high unemployment on reservations, the miseducation of Native history taught in schools, police brutality on reservations, lack of resources, and the preservation of Indigenous cultures. AIM’s most audacious and memorable action was when they took control of the unoccupied federal land of Alcatraz Island from late 1969 to the summer of 1971. Evidence of their occupation can still be seen today on graffiti that adorns the crumbling exterior walls of Alcatraz.
As popular music had become increasingly outspoken against the Vietnam War, racial oppression, and the urban decay within black neighborhoods; Native American musicians found inspiration to embrace their Indigenous culture and advocate for their rights.
While Link Wray’s ‘Rumble’ made waves as the guitar chord "heard ‘round the world," Jesse Ed Davis & Buffy Sainte-Marie and many other Indigenous bands and artists were also joining the movement.
In 1970, Albuquerque’s Lincoln Street Exit, released a heavy psychedelic rock album on the Mainstream Records label that proudly boasted on its liner notes:
“Their music is influenced greatly by the American Indian cultures of New Mexico. This is evident in the hard-driving beat and hypnotic rhythm patterns that is maintained throughout the album.”
Lincoln Street Exit had previously recorded a handful of swirling, psychedelic, garage rock singles and an unreleased album for Canyon Records (eventually released in 1974 as Entrance). In 1970, the band took a new direction playing heavier rock and embracing their Native roots and identity. Their official album, Drive It, is a bruising, bone-crushing debut with heavy Native-inspired drumming, explosive guitar, and lyrics that vividly speak of war, sex, drug addiction, and being viewed as society’s outcast.
The album kicks off with the powerful anti-war anthem, ‘Man Machine,’ before delving into the dark and gritty ‘Dirty Mother Blues,’ a bluesy song that vividly portrays the struggles of heroin addiction. Michael Martin and R.C. Garriss’ guitars are brutally thick & dirty and Martin’s vocals viscerally capture the agony of withdrawal better than most drug songs recorded before or after.
As the album progresses, it delves into a couple of gospel-inspired songs and hard rockin' high-energy tunes that exude sexual desire while others explore themes of mortality. Finally, the album concludes with the ferocious ‘Phantom Child.’ Its opening note screeches as a guitar pick stretches the length of a guitar string, leading into a fiery guitar frenzy accompanied by thunderous bass and pulsating drums. Michael Martin's shredded lungs forcefully deliver the lyrics:
Live my life
Make them realize that I’m not on trial
Trying to be a man
But you’ll only be just a Phantom Child
R. C. Garris’ and Martin’s fuzzed-out guitars throughout the song are blistering. Lee Herrers drums and Mac Suazo’s bass are heavy, loud, and seismic in their pounding beats. It is an incredibly raw and incendiary song closing a monstrously epic record that predates many heavy rock albums of the ‘70s. Although it was recorded several years before the Pine Ridge shoot-out and Leonard Peltier’s trial & conviction, the spirit of Peltier’s resistance can be heard in Lincoln Street Exit’s ‘Phantom Child.’
After the release of Drive It, the band soon started to open for numerous well-known bands touring the Southwest. With a deeper connection to politics and activism and an uncompromising sense of proud identity, the band aligned themselves with the American Indian Movement. This led them to shorten their name to XIT (Crossing of Indian Tribes). At the same time, their manager and creative guiding force, Tom Bee, signed them to Motown’s subsidiary, Rare Earth Records, and the band started recording Bee’s conceptual masterpiece, Plight Of The Redman.
Released in 1972, Phase I of Plight Of The Redman opens with an ominous echo, wind, and a large sound of thunder, a Native drum begins to beat, bells jingle, and voices sing in the Native language. Finally, a spoken word welcomes the listener and tells us “little is known about the American Indian,” how long before the discovery of the new world, the indigenous tribes had lived there for centuries. It moves into songs that combine Native language with chanting, bells, the heavy pulsing beat of an all-leather Taos drum set, and traditional rock and roll instrumentation. Phase I narrates the story of being at peace on the land and being raised in “True Indian ways.” It closes with the magnificent ‘Nihaa Shil Hozho (I Am Happy About You),’ a sublime song about finding love within a harmonious landscape of peace and tranquility.
The serene peacefulness is shattered in Phase II with ‘The Coming Of The White Man.’ A funky guitar riff kicks in with accents of wah-wah, piercing notes on a keyboard, and loud, deep bass & drums that gets heavier and more frantic. The song erupts into chants and verses about how “we taught them to live off the land, they were so determined to take over we had to fight to save our land” and “Disease and Starvation finally made our people fall, we knew our culture was destroyed when we were forced to live a new life on a reservation to fade away.” The powerful song concludes with Martin’s repeated howls of “The Coming of the White Man! This Is Our Land!”
Blending seamlessly into the vehement call to arms and angry drums of ‘War Cry.’ Its traditional Native yells & shrieks, and painful shouts of “Had to fight because of you, had to fight what could we do, had to fight, sad but true, had to spill our blood all over you!” It is a defiant and emotional battle cry. The final tracks are more heavily orchestrated and try to find positivity within their lyricism by looking forward to someday living in peace in their land again. The album climatically ends with fiery, militant words delivered by bassist Mac Suazo that echo speeches given by Malcolm X, the Black Panther Party, Angela Davis, and Gil Scott-Heron’s spoken word pieces.
Plight Of The Redman is a monumental album that effortlessly blends rock and roll with traditional Native rhythms, chants, and songs. It’s also a conceptual record with a powerful message and history lesson told through the lens of Native Americans.
“His imprisonment was meant to demoralize us and discourage us from resisting. He was meant to be made an example of, to show people this is what happens if you speak out. This is what happens if you are revolutionary. And we say no, because you can incarcerate the protester or the resistor but you can’t incarcerate a movement, right? So we all walk in the spirit of Leonard Peltier.” -Jennifer Marley1
The American Indian Movement and Leonard Peltier bravely stood up and spoke out against injustice & oppression and the US Government tried to silence their resistance. Nearly five decades after his unjust trial, The Free Peltier campaign and his family persist in their tireless advocacy for Leonard's clemency. The legacy and spirit of the American Indian Movement and Leonard Peltier resonate deeply in Lincoln Street Exit & XIT's powerful music and messages; their revolutionary records also deserve to be heard.
As boldly stated on the liner notes of Lincoln Street Exit’s Drive It album:
God Bless The Exit!
Look Up In The Sky
As the wind whispers in the trees
Atop a floating cloud
That echoes to be free2
XIT - Plight Of The Redman, 1972 (Full album):
Lincoln Street Exit - Drive It, 1970 (Full album):
Free Peltier!
“As I look in the mirror of the sky, my heart storms with beats of joy, buried in the shadows I see visions of the rainbow dancing around the pine trees, beauty is all around me, I walk in beauty.” - Tom Bee
Source New Mexico, Clemency for Leonard Peltier demanded decades after his incarceration, February 7, 2023
From ‘Someday,’ track seven on Plight Of The Redman by XIT (1972)
Another excellent read. I recall finding out about the Peltier case through music. Having got into the work of John Trudell via Rykodisc's release of AKA Grafitti Man, I found out what I could about AIM and then watched Michael Apted's Incident at Oglala when it was aired on UK television. So frustrating then and now to see how things played out. Thanks for the reminder and the writing on Lincoln Street Exit (1970 strikes again!) and Xit.
Thanks Michael for this fantastic essay. I’d been aware of Leonard Peltier but don’t know as much as I’d like to so have bookmarked that documentary for later viewing. And thanks for the intro to Lincoln Street Exit (listening to the full album now) and XIT, two artists I’d never encountered before.
I notice the XIT on the Lincoln Street Exit album cover is in black while the rest of the letters are in purple so perhaps the XIT moniker was already in their minds.