According to loudwire.com, the day that Rage Against the Machine has longed for since the start of their career has finally arrived as jailed indigenous activist Leonard Peltier had his sentence commuted by outgoing President Joe Biden. For some music fans in the ’90s, they first learned of Peltier’s plight through Rage Against the Machine, who campaigned for his release within their breakout video for “Freedom.”

In the video, the band details the FBI’s growing concern over the American Indian movement and a pivotal moment in 1975 when two agents attempted to serve arrest warrants and then engaged in a firefight that left two FBI agents and one Indian male dead. What followed was a massive manhunt that resulted in three AIM members being arrested. While two of the three were acquitted, Leonard Peltier had been found guilty for his alleged involvement in the incident.

As the video tells it, witnesses claimed that they had been allegedly coerced by the FBI to give testimony and multiple contradictions when the FBI’s alleged case came to light but the alleged proof of Peltier’s innocence was either allegedly ignored or withheld citing national security.

Per PBS, Peltier had been denied parole as recently as July 2024 and was not eligible for parole again until 2026. He was serving out a life sentence for the deaths of the two agents.

Photo Credit: Marv Watson