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By Gloria Rubac
Houston
Family, friends and comrades filled a funeral parlor room to overflowing
on Jan. 26 as they honored Native activist and former political prisoner
Standing Deer Wilson. Standing Deer was murdered in Houston on Jan. 20. His family, friends and fellow activists spoke out in remembrance of
this man who had touched their lives so profoundly.
After serving over 25 years in some of this country's most brutal prisons, Standing Deer, a full-blooded Oneida/ Choctaw, was paroled to Houston by the state of Texas on Sept. 4, 2001. Texas had previously rejected his five other parole appeals.
In his short year and four months of freedom, Standing Deer devoted his
life to freeing his brother in the struggle, American Indian Movement
leader Leonard Peltier. He was involved with the Indigenous community
and marched and spoke at a rally here last summer for Peltier. The week he was killed, he was to begin working as a volunteer on the Native
program hosted by the local Pacifica radio station.
Standing Deer had been active with the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee and recently joined the LPDC's Board of Directors, which issued a statement saying they were "saddened and greatly regret his passing."
Standing Deer came to know Peltier in prison under the most dangerous
conditions. In 1978 at the federal prison at Marion, Ill., he was offered his freedom in exchange for assassinating Peltier. After meeting the AIM leader in the prison yard and listening to him speak, Standing Deer realized that Peltier could give him more true freedom--the freedom
to discover his Native heritage--than his release would. The two men
formed an unbreakable bond.
The story of Standing Deer and Peltier is told in the book "In the
Spirit of Crazy Horse" by Peter Matthiessen, which documents the
government conspiracy and tells how Standing Deer exposed it, first
to Peltier and then to the world.
Those closest to him believe that Standing Deer's murder very likely was planned. He had told me as well as many friends about a "suit"--a man
not in a prison uniform but in plain clothes--who visited him in the
Estelle Prison Unit in Huntsville on the day of his release and warned
him not to get involved in political activity. He also said that at his
most recent appointment with his parole officer, he was told that parole
supervisors wanted him to stay out of activism.
Native activists will independently investigate the murder on their own.
A MOVING TRIBUTE
Vicki Larsen, Standing Deer's youngest daughter, will take her father's
ashes back to his native Oklahoma, accompanied by his dear friend Judy Krull and fellow Native activist Jac Battise. They organized his
memorial, with input from Anna Standing Deer, his ex-wife and very close friend who had spoken with him hours before his murder.
As the smell of burning sage drifted through the room, the program began with words by an elder of the Alabama-Coushatta Nation in Texas.
Two young Native activists, Tristen Ahtone and Jason Socier, vowed to
continue the spirit and work of a mentor they considered their family.
Virtually all spoke of his "beautiful smile," freely given to all his
sisters and brothers in the struggle, and his wit and jokes.
Speakers represented the diversity of Houston.
Savea Partsch, born in the U.S. colony of Samoa, treasured the
conversations he'd had with Standing Deer and said he would never forget his wisdom. Partsch's family has performed dances and music
at several progressive and anti-war events in Houston.
Kofi Taharka paid respects on behalf of the Houston chapter of the
National Black United Front. Njeri Shakur and Lonnie X of the Texas
Death Penalty Abolition Movement recalled being strengthened by Standing Deer's message from behind the bars to a rally they had organized at the death-row prison of Huntsville.
The crowd was electrified by the reading of a document written by
Standing Deer on how the government had hired him to kill Peltier.
Many ex-prisoners attended the memorial. Johnny Martinez of the
Prisoners Defense Committee in San Antonio told of meeting Standing Deer in the federal prison at Terre Haute, Ind., in 1979. Martinez and a
hundred other Texas prisoners had been transferred there for their
safety after giving testimony in the Ruiz lawsuit, which exposed the
brutal prison authorities in Texas. "He was my friend," Martinez said
quietly.
Two young Chicana/Indigenous activ ists, Annica Gorham and Binx, stood by the open casket and softly sang a Native-language lullaby to Standing Deer as mourners left the room. Many filled small squares of red cloth with tobacco and tied them into tiny bundles called prayer pouches, which will be with Standing Deer when his body is cremated.
Standing Deer's daughters, grandchildren and great-grandchildren hugged everyone as they left for Oklahoma. Daughter Vicki Larsen said, "I am so thankful for all of you down here who loved my Daddy and shared your expressions with us."
Standing Deer grew up in Oklahoma, where racism against all people
of color was very strong, with parents who tried to deny their Indian
heritage. After marrying and having two daughters, Vicki and Susan,
he was imprisoned for bank robberies, or, as he said, "While doing
compulsory expropriations from banking facilities, I zigged when I should have zagged and was thus captured and sent to the Control Unit at the prison in Marion, Illinois."
Meeting Peltier changed his life. He became a warrior for his people as
well as for all those oppressed by the system he despised. "From that
day in Marion," he wrote, "I have thanked my lucky stars that [Peltier]
re-centered my life. He put me in touch with my roots and started me
on the road to recovering the humanity that had been buried all my life
under the conditioning of the culture of greed."
Standing Deer always referred to freeing Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal as his goals in life.
He once wrote: "Some people say these capitalists are this way because they are evil and have bad thoughts in their heads. But that's bullshit. The reason they compete in building and destroying personal empires is because they are driven by the real material forces at work within the social system of production which they direct. And while some of them are good 'god-fearing' christians they will mash your guts in the street before they will concede one iota of the riches that they have stolen from the children of the poor... .
"Only when the people who suffer the immediate deprivations and
punishments of this insane form of social organization are organized
into a force that can physically wrest control of this society from the
tiny minority of criminals who today 'own' all the mass technology and the means of production, only then will freedom become a possibility."
In a message written to death penalty abolitionists and read by Martinez
in Huntsville in 1998, Standing Deer said: "All of you who struggle in
unity to abolish the heinous crime of state-sanctioned murder are
heroes. Work like hell! Agitate, propagate, educate ... . Let me express
my profound thanks and solidarity to all of you who believe in our
cause, and especially to all of you on death rows throughout the land.
I extend to you the left hand of my left arm which is the closest to my
heart. My love and strength are with you every step of the way! In the spirit of Crazy Horse, Standing Deer."
The outpouring of grief from around the country, and calls to fight on
for Peltier and Mumia, showed that Standing Deer's love and strength
live on in the hearts and actions of legions of people on both sides of
the razor wire.
STANDING DEER, PRESENTE!
- END -
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