WASHINGTON Maxine was 4 years old when the bullet whizzed by her face. She remembers feeling a burning sensation on her forehead. And then the blood. Her uncle grabbed her, and they ran.

I have a scar, she said, motioning to a faint line above her right eyebrow. Just a lot of people hollering. Thats all I remember.

Maxine is in her 50s now. Her entire life has been shaped by that near-miss, and its not just because she could have died that day. Its because of the person who has been in prison ever since that chaotic 1975 shootout between FBI agents and Native American rights activists on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. And that person Leonard Peltier, a leader in the Indigenous rights movement has been on Maxines mind every day since.

Every day. Every day we pray for him, Maxine, who requested to only use her first name, said of her tribal community on Pine Ridge Reservation. About 19,000 people live here.

He should have been released a long time ago, she said. But they needed somebody to blame.