Anna Mae Aquash

Anna Mae Aquash
Born	March 27, 1945 Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia
Died	Mid-December, 1975 (age 30) Body found along Highway 73 in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota
Known for	Activism with the American Indian Movement

Annie Mae Aquash (Mi'kmaq name Naguset Eask) (March 27, 1945 – mid-December 1975, Mi'kmaq) was a First Nations activist from Nova Scotia, Canada, who moved to Boston in the 1960s and joined American Indians in education and resistance. She was part of the American Indian Movement in the Wounded Knee Incident at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, United States in 1973.

Aquash participated in the 1972 Trail of Broken Treaties and occupation of the Department of Interior headquarters in Washington, DC; and armed occupations to promote Native American goals in Canada and Wisconsin in the following years. After she disappeared in late 1975, there were rumors she had been killed. On February 24, 1976, her body was found on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota; she was initially determined to have died from exposure but was found to have been murdered by an execution-style gunshot. Aquash was thirty years old at the time of her death and had two young daughters.

After decades of investigation and the hearing of testimony by three federal grand juries, in March 2003, Arlo Looking Cloud and John Graham (also known as John Boy Patton) were indicted for the murder of Aquash. Looking Cloud was convicted in 2004 and Graham in 2010; both received life sentences. Thelma Rios was indicted along with Graham, but she pleaded guilty to charges as an accessory to the kidnapping. In 2008 Vine Richard "Dick" Marshall was charged with aiding the murder, but was acquitted of providing the gun. Numerous Aquash supporters and her daughters believe that higher-level AIM officials ordered her murder, fearing she was an FBI informant.

Early life and education

Anna Mae Pictou was born into the Mi'kmaq First Nation at Indian Brook Reserve in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia. Her mother was Mary Ellen Pictou and her father Francis Thomas Levi. She had two older sisters, Mary and Becky Pictou, and a younger brother Francis. Her mother and sisters survived her death. Pictou and her siblings received their early educations on the reserve.

Marriage and family

In 1962 Anna Mae Pictou and James Maloney moved together from the reserve to Boston. They had two daughters together: Denise born in 1964 and Debbie born in September 1965. They married that year, but divorced in mid-1970.

Anna Mae later married Nogeeshik Aquash, an Ojibwa activist, in a Native ceremony. She kept his last name after they separated.

Activism

In Boston, Pictou began to meet urban American Indians and other First Nations people from Canada. About 1968-1969, she met members of the American Indian Movement (AIM), founded in Minneapolis in 1968, who were organizing among urban Indians, initially to combat police brutality. Pictou became involved in the Teaching and Research in Bicultural Education School Project (TRIBES), a program in Bar Harbor, Maine to teach young American Indians about their history.

On Thanksgiving Day 1970, AIM activists in Boston held a major protest against the Mayflower II celebration at the harbor by boarding and seizing the ship. Pictou helped create the Boston Indian Council (now the North American Indian Center of Boston), to work to improve conditions for Indians in the city.

In 1972 Pictou participated in the Trail of Broken Treaties march of American Indian activists to Washington, D.C.. Protesters occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs national headquarters and presented a list of 20 demands to the government, 12 of them dealing with treaty issues. In Boston, Pictou had met Nogeeshik Aquash, from Walpole Island, Canada, and they began a relationship.

In 1973 Nogeeshik and Anna Mae traveled together to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota to join AIM activists and Oglala Lakota in what developed as the 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee. They were married there in a Native ceremony by Wallace Black Elk, a Lakota elder. Anna Mae took Aquash as her surname, keeping it after they later separated.

“These white people think this country belongs to them,” Aquash wrote in a letter to her sister at the time. “The whole country changed with only a handful of raggedy-ass pilgrims that came over here in the 1500s. And it can take a handful of raggedy-ass Indians to do the same, and I intend to be one of those raggedy-ass Indians.” On her first night in South Dakota, [Dennis] Banks told her that newcomers were needed on kitchen duty. “Mr. Banks,” she replied, “I didn’t come here to wash dishes. I came here to fight.”

Using the surname Aquash, in 1974 Annie Mae was based mostly in Minneapolis. She worked on the Red Schoolhouse project, for a culturally based school for the numerous American Indian students who lived in the city. That year she also participated in the armed occupation at Anicinabe Park in Kenora, Ontario by Ojibway activists and AIM supporters. They were protesting treatment of the Ojibway in Kenora and northwestern Ontario in relation to health, police harassment, education and other issues, and failures by the national government's Office of Indian Affairs to improve conditions.

In January 1975, Aquash worked with the Menominee Warriors Society in the month-long armed occupation of the Alexian Brothers Novitiate at Gresham, Wisconsin. The Catholic abbey had been closed and abandoned and the Menominee wanted the property returned to the tribe, as the land had originally been appropriated by the Alexian Brothers for their mission. That year, Aquash was arrested twice on federal weapons-related charges, but was quickly released.

Her arrests heightened internal AIM suspicions and rumors that Aquash might be a government informant. Leaders were nervous since they had discovered in late 1974 that Douglas Durham, a prominent member who by then had been appointed as head of security for AIM, was an FBI informant. The officials expelled him from AIM in February 1975 at a public press conference.

According to biographer Johanna Brand, by the spring of 1975 Aquash was "recognized and respected as an organizer in her own right and was taking an increasing role in the decision-making of AIM policies and programs." She was close to AIM leaders Leonard Peltier and Dennis Banks. She and Banks had developed an intimate relationship beginning in the summer of 1974, although he was in a common-law marriage with another woman. Aquash also continued to work for the Elders and Lakota People of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. After having been seen in Denver and Rapid City, South Dakota, she disappeared in December 1975.

Murder

On February 24, 1976, rancher Roger Amiotte found Aquash's body by the side of State Road 73 in the northeast corner of the reservation, about 10 miles from Wanblee, South Dakota. Her remains were revealed when snow melted during an unseasonably warm February. An autopsy was conducted by medical practitioner, W. O. Brown, who wrote: "it appears she had been dead for about 10 days." and she had "died from frost." Failing to notice a bullet wound at the base of her skull, Brown concluded that "she had died of exposure." She was not identified at the time. Her hands were cut off and sent for fingerprinting to the Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters in Washington, D.C. Her body was soon buried in South Dakota as a "Jane Doe."

On March 10, 1976, eight days after the burial, Aquash's remains were exhumed due to requests made by the American Indian Movement and her family. AIM arranged for a second autopsy to be conducted by Dr. Garry Peterson, a pathologist from Minneapolis. He found that she had been shot by a .32 caliber bullet on the left side at the back of her head, under the hairline, in a shot that traveled upwards, missing the brain and lodging in her left eye socket. It was described as execution style. She was reinterred in Oglala Lakota land. Rumors persisted that she had been killed by AIM as an informant, related to federal prosecution of activist Leonard Peltier in the 1975 shooting deaths of FBI agents at Pine Ridge.

Her murder was investigated by the BIA, who started the investigation as the death appeared to have taken place on the reservation. The FBI became involved because of its interest in AIM. It was learned that she had been seen at the Pine Ridge Reservation before her disappearance in December 1975. Federal grand juries were called to hear testimony in her case in 1976, 1982 and 1994, but no indictments were made. In 1997 Paul DeMain, editor of the independent newspaper News From Indian Country, started regularly publishing articles about the investigation of the murder of Aquash.

People come forward

On 3 November 1999, Robert Pictou-Branscombe, a maternal cousin of Aquash from Canada, and Russell Means, associated with the Denver-based AIM movement, held a press conference in Denver at the Federal Building to discuss the slow progress of the investigation into Aquash's murder. It had been under investigation both by the FBI and the BIA.

Earlier that day in a telephone interview with journalists Paul DeMain and Harlan McKosato, journalist Minnie Two Shoes commented about the importance of Aquash,

"Part of why she was so important is because she was very symbolic. She was a hard working woman. She dedicated her life to the movement, to righting all the injustices that she could, and to pick somebody out and launch their little cointelpro program on her, to bad jacket her to the point where she ends up dead - whoever did it - let’s look at what the reasons are. You know, she was killed and lets look at the real reasons why it could have been any of us. It could have been me. It could have been... Ya gotta look at the basically thousands of women. You gotta remember that it was mostly women in AIM. It could have been any one of us and I think that’s why it’s been so important. And she was just such a good person."

Paul DeMain, publisher and editor of News from Indian Country, said that day, "...Anna Mae had a legacy of doing things differently, in 1975 she was alcohol- and drug-free, which made her stand out within the movement boldly because many people were still using and partying and there were many things going on in that area."

In a January 2002 editorial in the News from Indian Country, DeMain said that he had met with several people who said they had heard Leonard Peltier in 1975 admit the shootings of the two FBI agents on 26 June 1975 at the Pine Ridge Reservation. They also said that they believed the motive for the death of Aquash "allegedly was her knowledge of who shot the two [FBI] agents, and Joe Stuntz." DeMain did not reveal his sources because of their personal danger in having spoken to him. In an editorial of March 2003, DeMain withdrew his support for clemency for Peltier. In response, Peltier sued DeMain for libel on May 1, 2003. On May 25, 2004, after the Arlo Looking Cloud trial ended with his conviction, Peltier withdrew the suit; he and DeMain reached a settlement.

Indictments and a co-conspirator

In January 2003, a fourth federal grand jury was called in Rapid City to hear testimony about the murder of Aquash. She was known to have been given a ride from the home of Troy Lynn Yellow Wood of Denver, Colorado on December 10, 1975, by AIM members Arlo Looking Cloud, John Graham and Theda Nelson Clark, who transported her to Rapid City. They took Aquash further to the Pine Ridge Reservation in mid-December.

On March 20, 2003, a federal grand jury indicted two men for her murder: Fritz Arlo Looking Cloud (an Oglala Lakota) and John Graham (aka John Boy Patton) (a Southern Tutchone Athabascan), from Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada.) Although Theda Nelson Clark, Graham's adopted aunt, was also alleged to have been involved, she was not indicted; by then she was in failing health and being cared for in a nursing home.

Bruce Ellison, who has been Leonard Peltier's lawyer since the 1970s, invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination and refused to testify at the grand jury hearings on charges against Looking Cloud or at his trial in 2004. During the trial, the federal prosecutor referred to Ellison as a co-conspirator in the Aquash case.

Looking Cloud convicted

On February 8, 2004 the trial of Arlo Looking Cloud began before a U.S. federal jury; five days later he was found guilty of murder. On April 23, 2004 he was given a mandatory sentence of life in prison. Although no physical evidence linking Looking Cloud to the crime was presented, a videotape was shown in which he admitted to having been at the scene of the murder, but said he was not aware that Aquash was going to be killed. In that video, Looking Cloud was interviewed by Detective Abe Alonzo of the Denver Police Department and Robert Ecoffey, the Director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Office of Law Enforcement Services. On March 27, 2003, Looking Cloud said that John Graham was the gunman.

Looking Cloud said that he was making his statement while high and under the influence of "a little bit of alcohol." Trial testimony showed that Looking Cloud told a number of other individuals in various times and places about having been present at the murder of Aquash.

Looking Cloud appealed his conviction. In the appeal, filed by attorney Terry Gilbert, who replaced his trial attorney Tim Rensch, Looking Cloud retracted his videotaped confession, saying that it was false. He appealed based on the grounds that his trial counsel Rensch was ineffective in failing to object to the introduction of the videotaped statement, that he failed to object to hearsay statements of Anna Mae Aquash, failed to object to hearsay instruction for the jury, and failed to object to leading questions by the prosecution to Robert Ecoffey. The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit denied Looking Cloud's appeal. On August 19, 2005, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed the judgment of conviction. Richard Two Elk, adopted brother of Looking Cloud; Troy Lynn Yellow Wood, former AIM chairman John Trudell, and Aquash's daughters Denise and Debbie Maloney were other witnesses who testified at the trial that Looking Cloud had separately confessed his involvement to them prior to any indictments or arrests.

Extradition of Graham

On June 22, 2006 Canada's Minister of Justice, Vic Toews, ordered the extradition of John Graham to the United States to face charges on his alleged involvement in the murder of Aquash. Graham appealed the order and was held under house arrest, with conditions. In July 2007, a Canadian court denied his appeal, and upheld the extradition order. On December 6, 2007 the Supreme Court of Canada denied Graham's second appeal of his extradition.

Graham told police that he last saw Aquash while accompanying her on a drive from Denver to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where he left her at a safe house.

Richard Marshall

In August 2008, a federal grand jury indicted Vine Richard "Dick" Marshall with aiding and abetting the murder. Marshall was a bodyguard for Russell Means at the time of Aquash's murder. It was alleged that Graham, Looking Cloud, and Theda Nelson Clark had taken Aquash to Marshall's house, where they held her prior to taking her to be executed in a far corner of the reservation. Marshall's wife, Cleo Gates, testified to this at Looking Cloud's trial. Marshall is alleged to have provided the murder weapon to Graham and Looking Cloud. Marshall was imprisoned in 1976 after being convicted in the 1975 shooting death of a man. He was paroled from prison in 2000. He was acquitted of the charge of conspiracy to murder Anna Mae.

State trial for Graham and Rios

In September 2009, Graham and Thelma Rios, a Lakota advocate in Rapid City, were charged by the State Court of South Dakota with the kidnapping, rape and murder of Anna Mae. The case against the defendants continued through much of 2010.

Thelma Rios

Thelma Rios, a longtime Lakota advocate in Rapid City, was charged by the state of South Dakota in September 2009, along with John Graham, for the kidnapping, rape and murder of Aquash. Already in poor health, she avoided a trial on murder charges by agreeing to a plea bargain "that acknowledged her role in the events leading up to Aquash's death." In November 2010, she pleaded guilty to the charge of being an accessory to kidnapping and received a 5-year sentence, most of which was suspended due to her poor health.

Rios admitted in court that she "relayed a message from AIM leadership to other AIM members to bring Aquash from Denver to Rapid City in December 1975, because they thought she was a government informant." Rios died of lung cancer 9 February 2011. Although names were redacted in her plea agreement at court, she had said she heard two people ordering Aquash to be brought from Denver to Rapid City and that there was a discussion about "offing her".

Graham convicted of felony murder

On December 10, 2010 after two days of deliberation in the state court, jurors found Graham guilty of felony murder, but acquitted him of the premeditated murder charge. The felony murder conviction carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison. After an appeal by Graham, the South Dakota Supreme Court upheld the lower court conviction in May, 2012.

Theories

Observers and historians speculate about who ordered the murder of Annie Mae Aquash. John Trudell testified in both the 1976 Butler and Robideau trial and the 2004 Looking Cloud trial that Dennis Banks had told him that the body of Anna Mae Aquash had been found before it was officially identified. Banks wrote in his autobiography, Ojibwa Warrior, that Trudell told him that the body found was that of Aquash. Banks wrote that he did not know until then that Aquash had been killed, although she had been missing.

In Looking Cloud's trial, the prosecution argued that AIM's suspicion of Aquash stemmed from her having heard Peltier admit to the murders. Darlene “Kamook” Nichols, former wife of the AIM leader Dennis Banks, testified that in late 1975, Peltier told of shooting the FBI agents. He was talking to a small group of AIM activists who were fugitives from law enforcement. They included Nichols, her sister Bernie Nichols (later Lafferty), Nichols' husband Dennis Banks, and Aquash, among several others. Nichols testified that Peltier said, “The mother fucker was begging for his life, but I shot him anyway.” Bernie Nichols-Lafferty gave the same account of Peltier’s statement.

Other witnesses have testified that once Aquash came under suspicion as an informant, Peltier interrogated her while holding a gun to her head. Peltier and David Hill later had Aquash participate in bomb-making so that her fingerprints would be on the bombs. The trio planted the bombs at two power plants on the Pine Ridge reservation. Extensive testimony suggests that AIM leaders ordered the murder of Aquash; because of her prominent position in the organization, lower-ranking members would not have taken action against her without permission from above.

Denise and Debby Maloney

Together with federal and state investigators, Aquash's daughters Denise and Debby believe that high-ranking AIM leaders ordered the death of their mother due to fears of her being an informant; they support the continued investigation. Denise Pictou-Maloney is the executive director of the "Indigenous Women for Justice," a group she founded to support justice for her mother and other Native women. In a 2004 interview, Pictou-Maloney said her mother was killed by AIM members who

"thought she knew too much. She knew what was happening in California, she knew where the money was coming from to pay for the guns, she knew the plans, but more than any of that, she knew about the killings."

Reinterment at Indian Brook Reservation

After the conviction of Looking Cloud in 2004, Aquash's family had her remains exhumed. They were transported to her homeland of Nova Scotia for reinterment on June 21 at Indian Brook Reservation in Shubenacadie. They held appropriate Mi'kmaq ceremonies and celebrated the work and life of the activist. Family and supporters have held annual anniversary ceremonies in Annie Mae's honor since then.

Representation in plays, movies, and songs

• "Anna Mae" - song by British Socialist folk singer, Roy Bailey.
• Annie Mae's Movement (1999, reprinted 2006) - play by Yvette Nolan about Aquash and her participation in AIM.
• "Gun In Her Mouth" on YouTube - documentary, includes interviews with Aquash's friends and family.
• Maggie Eagle Bear - character in the movie Thunderheart who is loosely based on Aquash.
• "Slaying the Sun Woman" - song by Buffy St. Marie Also “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.”
• The Spirit of Anna Mae (2002) - a 72-minute film directed by Catherine Anne Martin, a tribute by women who knew Aquash. It was produced by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).
• "Today's Empires, Tomorrow's Ashes" - song by the Winnipeg punk band Propagandhi that refers to Aquash's murder.
• "The Uranium War" - song by Buffy St. Marie on "Power in the Blood" album (2015)

Sources

• Johanna Brand, The Life and Death of Anna Mae Aquash, Lorimer; 2nd edition (January 1, 1993). ISBN 1-55028-422-3.
• Steve Hendricks, The Unquiet Grave: The FBI and the Struggle for the Soul of Indian Country. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2006. ISBN 1-56025-735-0

Further reading

• Angie Canon, "Healing Old Wounds — An Indian woman's murder goes to trial, too many years later", U.S. News & World Report, 22 December 2003, hosted at DickShovel website
• "Voices from Wounded Knee, 1973, In the Words of the Participants," Rooseveltown, New York: Akwesasne Notes, 1974. ISBN 0-914838-01-6.
• Eric Konigsberg, "Who Killed Anna Mae?", The New York Times Magazine, 25 April 2014

External links

• Anna Mae Aquash biography
• "Anna Mae Pictou Aquash" archive, First Nations/Issues of Consequence site, hosted at DickShovel website
• Indigenous Women for Justice
• Justice for Annie Mae and Ray Robinson, Official Website
• Compilation of news coverage of Annie Mae Aquash murder and related investigations
• John LeKay, "Interview with Robert Robideau on Anna Mae Aquash", Heyoka Magazine, Vol. 7, Spring 2007