History has a significant impact on one's life chances and lifestyle. Many people say that it is family, schools, or friends which have the greatest impact on our socialization, but history has influenced all of those institutions. It is often believed that one's relationship with the past is imperative because it allows people to learn from their mistakes. In actuality one's relationship with history often poses problems. Both Leonard Peltier and Octavia Butler wrote literary works of art that portrayed the problem's of one's relationship to history. In the books "Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance" and "Kindred," it was shown that history imprisons races from entering society as equals with everyone. In his novel, Prison Writings My Life Is My Sun Dance, Leonard Peltier wrote an autobiographical piece about how the history of the Native Americans keeps him locked in jail for a crime he didn't commit. He states ""I am guilty only of being an Indian. That's why I'm here. Being who I am, being who you are-that's Aboriginal Sin" (pg 15). In 1977, Peltier was convicted of murdering two FBI's during a shootout at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Despite the lack of solid evidence against him and the blatant falsification of testimonies, Peltier was still given two consecutive life sentences plus seven years. Peltier contributes his imprisonment to the fact that the history between Americans and Native Americans has always been one of conflict. As European Americans first immigrated to the U.S they colonized the land by stealing it from the Native Americans, and those who tried to resist were killed. Today, the U.S government continues to find loopholes in the treaties with Native Americans to take away their reservation land. Through his imprisonment Peltier has learned that his suffering is one of his people. He describes this saying ""My life is an Indian life. I'm a small part of a much larger story. The personal specific