"At Indian Country Today we use internet sources as potential leads for stories. We carefully check the sources and authenticate information. We do not consider much of the internet as a factual source. Indian Country Today will no longer visit the [First Nations] web site ... because of [its] continued proliferation of gossip, rumor and innuendo in their misguided attempt to support American Indian issues. ...misleading and misinformed sources may harm innocent people and cause others unnecessary anguish. "

12.17.96, Jordan S. Dill

---

Search First Nations Site

	Enter your search terms
	Web dickshovel.com tolatsga.org Submit search form

---

AIM Index...

AIM:101

[Anna Mae Aquash Archive]

Anna Mae Aquash Book Now Available

[Background] - [AIM Chapters] - [Autonomous AIM] - [Email Campaigns] - [Interviews] -
[Peter Matthiessen] - [Leonard Peltier] - [John Trudell] -

---

"...findings reveal a disturbing picture of American Indian involvement in crime as both victims and offenders. The rate of violent victimization estimated from responses by American Indians is well above that of other U.S. racial or ethnic subgroups and is more than twice as high as the national average. This disparity in the rates of violence affecting American Indians occurs across age groups, housing locations, income groups, and sexes."

Calling a U.S. Civil Rights Commission report "garbage" and "fiction," Gov. Bill Janklow blasted the week-old report that labels South Dakota race relations a crisis.

American Indian activists Russell Means, Dennis Banks and Clyde Bellecourt plan to attend a rally Saturday (June 26, 1999) at Pine Ridge to protest the investigation into the deaths of two men, according to the organizer.

Tom Poor Bear, Black Elk's older half-brother and Hard Heart's cousin, is organizing a rally Saturday to call attention to numerous unsolved deaths on the reservation.

The bodies of Wilson Black Elk Jr., 40, and Ronald Hard Heart, 39, were found June 8 in a culvert about 1 1/2 miles south of Pine Ridge near the Nebraska border. They were reportedly last seen June 6. "For years, Indian deaths along the Nebraska border have gone unsolved," he said. Poor Bear helped identify Black Elk's body, which he said appeared to have been severely beaten.

"If the Indians kill another FBI by golly they'll be coming in here like fleas again, but Anna Mae's an Indian," said Loud Hawk. "Just proves Indians are nothing to white people. I keep thinking a lawman got her that's why they're covering up. That always in my mind," he said. Loud Hawk is head of the traditional Tokala Society and one of the those who invited the AIM group to come to Oglala.

That the manipulation, coercion, and outright threatening of Myrtle Poor Bear so as to "force" the following concoctions into existence is well known.

That the FBI used these fraudulent affidavits deliberately to fool Canadian courts into extraditing Leonard Peltier to the United States of America is also well known.

Myrtle Poor Bear, an unbalanced Lakota woman, was held incommunicado and intimidated systematically by agents Price and Wood for over a month, thus induced to provide false affidavits and testimony against Peltier and Richard Marshall. Poor Bear later recanted everything and described the process by which her perjury had been obtained:

On your behalf, I have contacted Lee Rawls, Assistant Secretary for Congressional Relations at the United States Separtment of Justice (DOJ). I have related your concerns to Mr. Rawls and requested his assistance in reviewing this matter. A copy of that correspondence is enclosed for your review.

Thought it was about time you and I touched base. I am going to give you some real good advice and that is turn yourself in. Theda says,"you were a real good kid, you never smoked or drank and you were a real pleasure to be around." and your buddy, Arlo says, "you shot Anna Mae in the back of the head." What Arlo says appears to be the truth. What's going to end up happening, is that you are going to go down as the Benedict Arnold of all Native Americans. You killed a hero and now that hero is a legend. This has all happened in 22 years, imagine another 20 years.

Fourteen years have passed [this was written in 1992] since the shocking story of Anna Mae Aquash was first published. The recent surge of support for imprisoned Indian rights activist Leonard Peltier reminds us once more of the unsolved, neglected and almost-forgotten case of Ms. Aquash.

When I read the story, I was disappointed to find it sounding more like an FBI press release or National Enquirer piece than hard journalism. I found it surprising and disturbing to see the paper claim a "source" told you I had encouraged the rumor that Anna-Mae was an informant. Had you bothered to ask me, I would have told you that this was not true. I HEREBY DEMAND A RETRACTION of this garbage.

"The body was taken to the Pine Ridge hospital, where Dr. W.O. Brown performed an autopsy in the presence of FBI agents. The doctor said the unidentified woman died of exposure. She had frozen to death. There was no sign of violence.

"During the autopsy, an FBI agent asked Doctor Brown, "I need her hands. Sever them at the wrist, would ya, Doc?"

It has come to my attention that her murderers are known, but they have never been prosecuted. Arlo Looking Cloud is one of the perpetrators. It is my understanding, that he has been given IMMUNITY in lieu of his testimony by the State Attorney's Office in South Dakota. Arlo stated that he was accompanied by Theda Nelson Clark and John Boy Patton. My question is, how did the Attorney's Office have the right to allow IMMUNITY to him. Since the other two have not been prosecuted, perhaps they have been given IMMUNITY also. John Boy Patton, the actual trigger man, is apparently in Canada. I wonder if the Canadian government is protecting him under the same statute.

Anna Mae was born on March 27, 1945 to Mary Ellen Pictou and Francis Thomas Levi, both Micmac Indians. She came into the world in a small Indian village just outside the town of Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Q: And who was Annie Mae Aquash?

A: She was a 30-year-old woman from Nova Scotia, Canada, and she had been with AIM for quite a while and she was very much respected and she was close to a lot of people that were within the AIM group.

Q: Is she alive or dead?

A: Annie Mae is dead.

Who ever first placed the information concerning Bob Robideaux and John Trudell is way out of line. She said, that he said! Reminds me of children in a playground spreading gossip.

None of the people who are posting this information are members of the American Indian Movement, so I caution you to check sources first.

For the past several months, the United States government has been engaged in an aggressive re-opening of the investigation of the 1976 murder of American Indian Movement (AIM) member Anna Mae Pictou Aquash. The investigation has taken the form of impaneling a federal grand jury in Pierre, South Dakota, and interrogating dozens of current and former AIM members across the United States, by the FBI and US Marshall Bob Ecoffey, once a member of the violently anti-AIM "GOON Squad" on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

...you mentioned a video titled Brave Hearted Woman. I'm having trouble locating it. Do you know who distributes it?

Originally I was gonna try to convince Brand to let me publish a copy under a protective but "Free to copy" copyright. I got so far as to talk with Ms. Brand (long distance to Canada) once and typing in my own personal copy before pooping out on the deal, chiefly because there were too many other things going on at the time, and it looked like the Matthiessen book would be back out soon.

How anyone might consider an investigation underwritten by the agency which cut off Anna's hands, directed that she be buried anonymously, AND alleged that she died of exposure is anything other than another attack on AIM is beyond me...however serious Ecoffey might be, his alignment with the FBI seriously damages his veracity...JS Dill, 5.14.97

Among some AIM members, particularly the women who had been Anna Mae's friends, the death created a desire to get as far from AIM as possible. Some felt it was dangerous to defend the dead woman, fearing that anyone who did so would be labelled an informer. Thus the already battered movement suffered another sever blow. According to Paula Giese, "Anna Mae's death did not destroy AIM. What it did was show that AIM was dead."

History has always recorded that death never really stopped powerful people. Their deeds snowballed, their spirits roamed, and their memories are within the hearts of those who knew them either through experience or through legend. Many times, death actually released powerful souls from their limiting bodies to limitless potential. Anna Mae's spirit is a powerful one. She will not rest until a domino effect has been set in motion to put her spirit at rest and to set her People free.

This detailed chronology of events of the last year in the life of Annie Mae Aquash is constructed from over 50 written or tape recorded interviews, trial transcripts, FBI file documents, newspaper accounts, and three books published by authors Joanna Brand in 1978, Peter Matthiessen in 1983 and Kenneth Stern in 1994.

And in nineteen hundred and seventy three
Blow, Daokta blow
The trouble exploded at Wounded Knee
And the cold Dakota winds did blow

And in nineteen hundred seventy four
Blow, Dakota blow
There was a backlash beatin' at everybody's door
And the cold Dakota winds did blow

another dead indian. worked for these kind of things. and she can't tell the stories. so i try. anna mae pictou aquash micmac from shubencadie nova scotia worked for the people, the indigenous people of this continent. anna mae wasn't riding the trend of the times. in 1976 being indian was not a popular concept. working with AIM a dangerous reality. she worked for the elders, the children, to feed them and help them feel proud to be indian. and she died. too young. 30 years here. possessed by a passion to help the people and future generations, anna mae left a legend. a legacy of courage, strength and sorrow. she is fossilized into the psyche of all who knew her and all who know of her.

Anna Mae Aquash was found dead in the Badlands on the Pine Ridge Reservation on Feb 24, 1976. She was a 1973 Wounded Knee participant and was closely associated with Mr. Peltier.

"I remember Anna Mae when she told me she cared about how the people were being treated on the reservation, and she told me 'I want to be buried in Oglala,'" elder Celene Not Help Him said.