Graphic of Bear

STANDING DEER
Native American Political Prisoner and Spiritual Activist

Marion Federal Penitentiary, a forerunner in the hideous, inhumane practice of "behavior modification" is where both Leonard Peltier and Standing Deer have spent most of their time since l976. A fitting introduction to enable the reader to picture conditions is given below by Standing Deer.


spider


ON BEING IN THE MARION CONTROL UNIT
A Message From the Hole To the People

From Standing Deer, December 2, 1979

For me, existing for three months in the Control Unit was the most nightmarish experience of my entire life. To wake up day after endless day in a tiny 6" x 8" sealed-tomb tiger-cage completely destroyed my will to live. I would have killed myself, but 24-hour-a-day deadlock solitary confinement produced so much apathy that even suicide required more interest than I could muster.


I spent the first four days in total darkness in the soundproof sensory deprivation chamber known to the prisoners as "The Box cars." Those four days seemed like weeks. It was like living in a bathtub with a roof over it. I lost all sense of time, and the only way I could keep track was by trying to remember how many times the door had been opened to put a food tray in the food slot. Each time the door opened, the light produced stabbing pains in my head, and the guard's silhouette in bright red would be imprinted on the retina of my blinded eyes for several minutes after the cell would return to darkness.


On the third day I became disoriented and could no longer tell if I was standing up or sitting down or laying on the sleeping slab. Before the fourth day was over, I didn't know whether I was awake or asleep. I began either dreaming with my eyes open or dreaming I was dreaming with my eyes open. I was obsessed with a dreamlike image of black blood oozing from a butcher's block.

I heard voices from my past, and entered into an experience where I would hallucinate whole periods from my life. I was on the brink of insanity. Even after they opened the outer door on the fifth day, I continued having headaches and constant nausea. Every time the door to the boxcars section would clang open or closed, my stomach would cramp with fear. The walls of the cage seemed to be crushing the life out of me, and it felt as if the foetid air was smothering me with every breath l took.


Until the Control Unit, the worst mental pain I had ever known was when my brother died. I felt so grief-stricken I wanted to jump into the grave with the casket. If I hadn't been restrained by my mother and father, I would have done so. Imagine the worst you ever felt in your entire life. That's how I felt every single minute when I was in the Control Unit.


spider

Somewhere I read about a creature called the Hunting Wasp. The female hunts for spiders and when she finds one she stings it in the large nerve ganglion at the base of the thorax so that it is not killed but only paralyzed. She then lays eggs just under the skin of her helpless victim, and when the larvae hatch they hegin eating the spider, consuming the non-vital organs first, allowing the paralyzed spider to live a good many days while being eaten alive. Eventually, or course, they eat too much of their unwilling host, allowing it to die. But all during the long hideous process of consumption, the victim cannot cry out, fight back or defend itself in any way.


A Control Unit victim is very much like the spider in this analogy.


The Greeds intend to put Leonard Peltier, Bobby Garcia and possibly Roque Duenas in the Control Unit. Only the people can prevent this gross act of inhumanity from taking place. We must gather our strength for a combined effort to demand justice for these courageous warriors.

FREE LEONARD PELTIER!!!

FREE BOBBY GARCIA!!!

FREE ROQUE DUENAS!!!
- Standing Deer -
from the Federal Concentration Kamp at Terminal Island, -Calif.



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