Annie Mae Pictou Aquash's daughter wants apology from Perry Bellegarde

To many aboriginal people, Leonard Peltier is a hero of theAmerican indigenous rights movement in the 1970s and a wrongfullyconvicted political prisoner whose story has inspired films, books,songs and T-shirt slogans.

But in the Mi'kmaq community of Indian Brook, N.S., the formermember of the American Indian Movement is a largely reviled figure,considered unworthy of his cult-like status.

Those competing visions clashed Wednesday when the daughter of amurdered indigenous rights activist from Indian Brook demanded anapology from the head of the Assembly of First Nations forsuggesting Peltier should be freed from a U.S. prison.

Denise Maloney Pictou, daughter of Annie Mae Pictou Aquash, saidPerry Bellegarde's comments earlier this week were insensitive tothe plight of murdered and missing aboriginal women because ofPeltier's ties to the men convicted of killing Aquash in 1975.

"To have an entity like the AFN endorse him marks a sad day,"Pictou said in an interview.

"It sends a mixed message ... It'scertainly a slap in the face."

AFN still wants Peltier free

In a series of previous court cases in the United States, the FBIhas implied that Aquash was executed by members of the AmericanIndian Movement because the group's leaders believed she was aninformant.

Bellegarde said Wednesday he planned to apologize to Pictou forthe pain his comments caused.

"I regret that my statement on TV caused some hurt and pain forher and I want to make sure she knows that," Bellegarde said in aninterview.

"I don't have as much information as the family has, so I'll bemindful and respectful, and if they've got requests for support, Ican also look at that as well."

However, he said the AFN's position on the matter has been clearsince 1999 when the organization adopted a resolution urging theCanadian government to ask the U.S. attorney general to freePeltier.

"The Peltier family has been living with an injustice as well,"he said.

"We have chiefs' resolutions that call for his release, inaddition to (a similar call) from Amnesty International and ... the
Dalai Lama."

The national chief, in an interview broadcast Monday on CBC, saidPrime Minister Justin Trudeau should ask U.S. President Barack Obamato pardon Peltier when Trudeau visits the White House on Thursday.

Bellegarde said Peltier was the victim of a miscarriage ofjustice when he was sentenced to life in prison for fatally shootingtwo FBI agents in South Dakota in 1975.

Peltier 'romanticized as a hero'

Cheryl Maloney, president of the Nova Scotia Native Women'sAssociation, said indigenousleaders in the province, including theregional representative for the AFN, "had no clue" aboutBellegarde's position.

"I think the national chief has to retract what he said,"Maloney said in an interview.

"He's been very insensitive to the(Aquash) family."

Maloney said the timing of Bellegarde's comments couldn't beworse, coming on the eve of International Women's Day and in advanceof the federal government's promised inquiry into murdered andmissing indigenous women.

"Leonard Peltier has been romanticized as a hero," Maloneysaid.

"The (Aquash) family has taken great offence to that."

In 1973, Aquash was among American Indian Movement militants whooccupied the village of Wounded Knee on South Dakota's Pine RidgeReservation in a 71-day standoff with federal authorities.

The simmering conflict came to a head in 1975 when the two FBIagents were shot on the reserve.

In 1977, a jury in Fargo, N.D., convicted Peltier of first-degreemurder. The resident of the Turtle Mountain Reservation in NorthDakota was sentenced to life in prison, but he has always maintainedhis innocence.

Aquash's body was found in a remote area in southwest SouthDakota in February 1976, but U.S. authorities didn't file anindictment until March 2003.

Arlo Looking Cloud was convicted of Aquash's murder in February2004 and was sentenced to life in prison.

In April 2004, Aquash's remains were exhumed from the reservationand later buried near her childhood home in Indian Brook, a smallindigenous community about 70 kilometres west of Halifax. Mi'kmaq andindigenous leaders came from across Canada to mark the occasion onNational Aboriginal Day.

In December 2007, a member of the Southern Tutchone tribe in theYukon, John Graham, was extradited to the United States fromVancouver to stand trial for Aquash's murder.

Graham was sentenced to life in prison in January 2011 for felonymurder. Prosecutors said Graham and two other AIM activists, LookingCloud and Theda Clarke, killed Aquash because they suspected she wasan informant.

Clarke, who was never charged, died in October 2011.