Slain American Indian parolee had embraced heritage, activismPosted to NDN AIM by Dodie
By DALE LEZON
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle
Standing Deer, who spent about a quarter century in prison, turned his life
around after he met the man he said he had been asked to help "neutralize"
nearly 25 years ago.
He became an activist for inmates and an advocate for American Indians.
Standing Deer's work as a free man, however, was short-lived. A little more
than a year after he was paroled, the 70-year-old was fatally stabbed.
"It's been a tremendous loss," said Jacquelyn Battise, a longtime Houston
peace activist and producer of People of Earth, a radio program devoted to
American Indians that is broadcast on KPFT-FM. Battise is an
Alabama-Coushatta Choctaw.
Standing Deer, a Choctaw Oneida also known as Robert Hugh Wilson, was best
known in the American Indian community for his friendship with longtime
activist Leonard Peltier and for exposing an alleged plot to assassinate
him. Peltier was imprisoned for allegedly killing two FBI agents in 1975.
Standing Deer also worked for inmate rights, especially religious freedoms
for American Indian inmates, his friends said.
One of his two daughters, Vicki Larsen, 43, of Oklahoma, said she never got
a chance to know her father, who had been in prison much of her life. She
said she loved him and that his friends from all over the world made her
realize how much he was admired.
She said she has received e-mail from England, Belgium and all over the
United States from people who "were devastated by what happened to him."
"Anyone I have spoken to about him, they all loved him, and they told me he
was a kind, generous man who had a huge smile all the time," Larsen said.
Police said Standing Deer was killed Jan. 20 by Pius Vinton Smashed Ice,
37, who is being held in the Harris County Jail without bail on murder
charges. Smashed Ice originally said burglars broke into the house and that
he came home to find Standing Deer dead, police said. He later admitted he
had killed him, they said.
Battise said Standing Deer had lived alone after being paroled from prison
in September 2001. She said Smashed Ice is a Lakota who had come to Houston
to stay with Standing Deer.
"Standing Deer didn't know him before but was very generous, and for
whatever reason trusted him and brought him to his house," Battise said.
Standing Deer had several robbery convictions, some in federal and state
courts. Before he served time in a Texas prison for a 1975 robbery in
Harris County, he was sentenced in 1976 to 15 years in federal prison for
bank robbery and interstate transportation of stolen property.
He was sent to the federal prison at Marion, Ill., where he met Peltier.
Standing Deer told his friends that Peltier "saved his life" after Standing
Deer had agreed to be a part of what some have called a government plan to
kill the activist.
In a sworn affidavit, Standing Deer claimed he was recruited by a prison
official and an unidentified civilian to help them in "neutralizing"
Peltier. He said that if he agreed to the plan, he would have received
medical treatment for his back, and seven indictments against him in
Oklahoma would have been dismissed.
But instead of carrying out the plan, he befriended Peltier. He told his
friends that Peltier taught him to renounce his criminal past and return to
his American Indian roots. He said Peltier instilled in him so much pride
for his heritage that Standing Deer began using his Indian name, which had
been given to him as a child by his grandfather.
"He told me that Peltier had saved his life," said James Clark, one of
Standing Deer's close friends and Battise's husband.
"He was transformed from being a kind of hard gangster into a beautiful,
beautiful man -- a Native American," Battise said.
Peter Matthiessen's book In the Spirit of Crazy Horse recounts the plot
against Peltier.
In writings from prison, Standing Deer railed against inhuman treatment of
inmates. He warned that men held in high-security prisons with few
privileges could turn their rage on innocent people when they're released.
"What do these severe terms of confinement do to the minds of the men? Does
living in a cage smaller than your bathroom with constant harassment from
guards reduce men to sniveling, quivering jellyfish -- like the parole
board wants -- or are some of these prisoners harboring a seething rage, a
hatred and lust for revenge so deep that citizens will have to pay with
their lives when these men get out?" he wrote.
Standing Deer, however, avoided the rage. Outside prison, "he was a
charming guy," Clark said. "He was easy-going, fun to be around."
He planned to tell stories of his prison life on Battise's radio program to
let people know about the cruel treatment of inmates, Clark said.
Ray Hill, Standing Deer's close friend and host of the Prison Show on KPFT,
said he had corresponded with Standing Deer for several years and met him
after he was paroled.
"He was a sage," Hill said.
The official Standing Deer website
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