I went to hear legendary music stars Jackson Browne and 93-year-old Pete Seeger sing, and just to see the no-longer-singing Harry Belafonte, Peter Coyote, and Danny Glover. The rapper Mos Def and Michael Moore also put in surprise appearances. The most powerful performance, however, was by a Native American singer song-writer named Bill Miller.

The event was the Bring Leonard Peltier Home in 2012 Concert. I must admit I was more interested in the musicians than the politics. By the end of the four-hour teach-in and song-fest dedicated to the American Indian Movement (AIM), I was convinced that Peltier was a martyr to a run-amok government conspiracy that was going to either execute him or put him in jail for life for either killing or being part of a conspiracy to kill two FBI agents in 1975.

When I got home, I googled Peltier and found a much more complex picture. Peltier was no Gandhi or even Nelson Mandela. He was a revolutionary around whom people seemed to die.

Peltier was fleeing a warrant, and later acquitted, for the attempted murder of an off-duty Milwaukee police officer. Then later in 1975, Peltier, as a member of American Indian Movement, was at Pine Ridge in South Dakota when two FBI agents in unmarked cars were fired on. Over one hundred bullets from high-powered rifles hit the cars, seriously wounding the two agents, who were then finished off execution style with bullets to the head. After fleeing, Peltier was extradited from Canada apparently based on coerced and perjured testimony. While two others were acquitted because they said they fired because they feared for their lives, a defense that worked in the 1970s, the government learned from its mistakes and got a conviction. Numerous subsequent appeals have failed to yield a new trial.

At the time, Peltier gave himself at least three different alibis saying in each that he was not at the shooting. Other Indians, however, have said that he was the executioner. In 2002, an editorial appeared in the News from Indian County stating that a number of Indians, including AIM members, had told the editor that they had carried a heavy burden in knowing, but not revealing, that Peltier was the executioner.

What no one has ever heard from Peltier is remorse over the shootings of the agents. Most likely, they had wives who would never grow old with them, and children who would never again have fathers. Whether Peltier actually executed the two or not, he was there, and he was at least partially responsible for the widowing and orphaning of the two families. When I hear Peltier’s apology rather than his denials, I will have more compassion for him. It may be nice to be a plaster saint, but people are usually sinners.