Chief Iron Horse Iron gravitated to the American Indian Movement (AIM) and

THE TORTURE OF CHIEF IRON THUNDERHORSE

http://www.iippi.org/pdf/questionnaire_iipp.pdf

Ruth asks for letters of support addressed to Iron. His adddress is:

Iron Thunderhorse, #624391 Polunsky Unit, 3872 FM 350 South,  Livingston, TX 77351.

by Tom Big Warrior

On June 7th, 2005, ranking officers of the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice (TDCJ), at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas, attacked an
elderly and legally blind inmate, Iron Thunderhorse, while he was
attempting to go to the chowhall. They knocked the glasses and UV shields
from his face and sprayed chemical pepper spray directly in his eyes.
They proceeded to spray him all over with the chemical irritant, kicking
him and wrenching his crippled arm behind his back.

For weeks, Iron had been denied entry into the chowhall, or any food at
all, as the TDCJ was attempting to starve him into complying with an
order to submit to a haircut, despite the fact that a federal court had
recently upheald that his civil rights were being violated. This was the
latest outrage in a struggle that has been going on for almost thirty
years.

After being railroaded by the FBI’s COINTELPRO program, along with many
other dissidents and activists around the country, in the early 70s,
Iron went to court to assert his rights as a Native American spiritual
practicioner. He got off the bus from jail to prison armed with a court
order requiring the TDCJ to respect these rights, including his right to
wear long hair. He was met by the warden and a “goon squad” of inmate
“building tenders” armed with baseball bats and axe handles. The warden
tore up Iron’s court order and had his “goons” beat Iron unconscious
and then forcibly cut his hair.

Year after year, Iron has suffered repeated beatings and torture,
including years in solitary confinement in the sweltering Texas heat. His
blindness stems from repeated gassings and being sprayed in the eyes with
pepper spray. His body is covered with scars, only a few of which he
received as a soldier in Vietnam.

Iron is the hereditary chief of the Quinnipiac Renapi, a branch of the
greater Lenape Nation, whose homeland runs along the Quinnipiac River
in Connecticut. His people have the dubious distinction of being the
first North American tribe to be placed on a reservation by the English
settlers at New Haven, in the early 1600s.

Iron’s long ordeal began when he stopped at a diner for a cup of coffee
on his way home from work, more than thirty years ago. Some of the
local Connecticut white boys, who saw him pull up on his classic Indian
motorcycle, thought it might be fun to give this long-haired Indian a hair
cut.

After years in the rough and tumble Indian boarding schools, his
muscles now hardened by long hours of construction work, Iron defended
himself well. It was a clear case of self-defense, but the white boys were
sons of the local establisment, and so the cops arrested Iron. But this
was the least of his problems, as the white boys, enraged by their
deserved ass-whipping, began to stalk Iron waiting for a chance to get
revenge. It happened one winter night when two of them spotted his car and
gave chase. They ran the car off the road, but Iron wasn’t in it.

After the highway patrol informed him that his young wife and child had
been killed in the resulting “accident,” Iron begain drinking heavily.
Then he donned his war-paint, got on his motorcycle, and went looking
for revenge. He found the boys before the police did, and when they
arrived, they arrested Iron for aggravated assault. It was then that the
Army stepped in, and Iron was released into the custody of a coloniel
recruiting for special service in Vietnam.

Having frequently run away from boarding school, Iron fine-tuned the
woodlands skills he had been taught as a child by living off the land in
wilderness areas. These skills, coupled with the rage he was going
through, made him an ideal candidate for the covert operations he was
groomed for at Fort Bragg and other army training schools. Placed under the
direction of the CIA, Iron was sent to Vietnam, where he took part in
secret operations, as well as elsewhere in S.E. Asia. But eventually, he
and his team refused to obey an illegal order, and they were sent back
to California and discharged.

Iron gravitated to the American Indian Movement (AIM) and to others
standing up to the system, and he became a target of COINTELPRO, the FBIs
illegal campaign to infiltrate, entrap, frame-up, assassinate and
otherwize suppress activists in the anti-war and other movements for social
justice that had emerged in the 60s. Their intent was to lock him up
and throw away the key.

Iron went into prison in top physical condition and highly trained in
martial arts. Over the years, he fended off several attempts to
assassinate him, but now his health is precarious and he is virtually blind. “I
suffer from corneal dystrophy and have cataracts and open angle
glaucoma, my corneas no longer produce tears,” Iron wrote in a complaint over
the June 7th attack, explaining the excruciating pain he was in when he
was at last taken to the medical unit. “Lt. Lawrence and Sgt. Sheffield
refused to allow the duty nurse to conduct a proper PHD
exam….Officers refused her admonishment to un-handcuff me due to excruciating pai