The Hard Life and Harder Death of Annie Mae Aquash

“I’m Indian all the way, and always will be. I’m not going to stop fighting until I die, and I hope I’m a good example of a human being and of my tribe.”
– Anna Mae Aquash

“They’re a conquered nation, and when you’re conquered, the people you’re conquered by dictate your future.”
-Norman Zigrossi, FBI Special-Agent in Charge, Rapid City, SD

On a cold February morning in 1976 a rancher telephoned the Bureau of Indian Affairs police to report a dead body, discovered below an embankment. Within twenty minutes BIA police arrived on the scene, followed by an FBI agent just over an hour later. Only when an ambulance arrived to transport the body to Indian Health Services in Pine Ridge and he heard the dead body referred to as “her” did the rancher realize he’d discovered the body of a woman.

Oddly for a time and a place and a culture where the occasional dead body was not a rare occurrence, three more FBI agents arrived to view the autopsy. Odder still was the pathologist missing the bullet lodged in the back of the dead woman’s skull, a bullet which both the resident doctor and nurse on duty at the hospital had observed when the fresh out of medical school doctor pronounced her dead on arrival. The FBI agent’s insistence on removal of the dead woman’s hands for fingerprinting in Washington was almost in keeping with the strangeness of the scenario. It was also an intolerable affront to the dignity of the victim.

The 70’s were a turbulent time – Vietnam, COINTELPRO, the Black Panther Party. There was a mindset that America was beset by enemies, both within and without, and the FBI as the Federal Government’s internal intelligence saw themselves at war with subversives.

In 1973, the Pine Ridge Oglala Sioux reservation in South Dakota was an island of poverty and alcoholism and 54% unemployment lorded over by tribal chairman Dick Wilson. His profiting from uranium leasing deals opposed by much of the tribe and lack of required public meetings had aroused the ire of the traditionals (followers of traditional Sioux teachings) who hoped to have Wilson impeached. His armed supporters were called goons by the traditionals – which Wilson’s men came to use as an acronym – Guardians Of the Oglala Nation. The GOON’s harassment of their opposition had grown violent, and the traditionals asked the fledgling American Indian Movement (AIM) for help.

AIM met the far better armed GOON’s violence with their own violence, and more than 60 people died of shooting deaths. Angry Sioux along with AIM took over and occupied a trading post and Catholic church in the town of Wounded Knee, symbolic to the Sioux because of the 1890 massacre. The FBI moved in to break the occupation with machine guns and armored personnel carriers. The Federal’s mistake was in conflating the escalation of Sioux tribal infighting with a subversive attempt to undermine America. This mistake leads to the subject of my post.

Annie Mae Aquash was born in 1945 on New England’s Micmac Reservation. Despite living in a shack without electricity or plumbing, Annie Mae got straight A’s in school and was close to her father, a Micmac traditional. In 1956 her father died of cancer, her mother abandoned her, and Annie Mae at the age of 11 found herself shuttling between family members, harvesting potatoes and berries to pay her way and attending school sporadically. At 17, she went to Boston and entered into a short-lived marriage that produced two daughters. She spent her time caring for her children, working at a daycare center and developing an interest in Indian activism, an activism which eventually became all-consuming.

News of the Wounded Knee occupation obsessed Annie Mae, eventually leading to her quitting a good paying job at GM, leaving her daughters with family members, and joining with AIM members to smuggle in food and supplies during the 71-day occupation. At only 5-feet 2-inches, Annie Mae’s personal strength led her to quickly become a respected AIM member. In 1975, while demonstrating with an AIM group in Iowa, Annie Mae learned of the deaths of a young Indian man and two FBI agents; knowing hard times at Pine Ridge were about to get much harder, she headed back to do what she could to help.

The deaths of the two FBI agents brought the agency’s efforts to a fever pitch; they not only wanted to solve the murders, but they wanted to break AIM and crush opposition to the cooperative tribal chairman Wilson’s hold on the tribe. Wilson’s GOONs were happy to join in. COINTELPRO resources were used to infiltrate and provoke AIM. Their meetings and homes and gatherings were regularly raided by FBI and BIA officers.

Annie Mae’s organizational skills and commitment to the cause enabled her to rise within the group, thus becoming one of the few AIM women in a leadership capacity. Perhaps viewing a female as a weak link, the FBI “rat jacketed” Annie Mae. Rather than hold her for days or weeks until she made bail like the others, she would be quickly released. She refused offers of money or immunity; she told them she had no knowledge of the killings. FBI agent David Price remarked to her “You know, if you don’t cooperate you’ll be dead within a year.”

In November of 1975, Annie Mae went underground, looking to AIM for protection.

One week after the dead Indian woman was given a pauper’s burial in Pine Ridge, the FBI announced the fingerprints showed the woman was Annie Mae Aquash, and she had died of frostbite. The family demanded an exhumation and second autopsy, which was performed in the Pine Ridge Hospital by a doctor hired by the Wounded Knee Legal Defense Committee. He immediately discovered the bullet lodged in her skull. The family demanded that Annie Mae’s severed hands be returned, and she was buried again, on the Micmac Reservation with her body now whole. The murder was not solved for another 28 years.

In 2003, AIM members Arlo Looking Cloud and John Graham were charged with the murder. Graham fought extradition from Canada for years and is finally slated to go to trial some time this summer in South Dakota. Looking Cloud was convicted and is serving a life sentence. To this day he denies knowing of any plan to kill Aquash, claiming that he only accompanied Graham with no further involvement. Looking Cloud admitted to raping her prior to her death, and his testimony indicates she pleaded for her life and was shot in the head as she knelt in prayer. FBI agent price testified Aquash was never an informant. Other witnesses’ testimony indicates that Annie Mae stayed in a series of AIM “safe houses” in the Pacific Northwest and Colorado, until Looking Cloud and Graham picked her up in Denver and drove her to South Dakota for interrogation by AIM.

I don’t believe Annie Mae Aquash was an extraordinary woman. To me that would indicate she had some special ability to cope with and deal with her pain and fear and struggle. I don’t think Annie Mae had any special ability. What I believe is that she was a good woman who cared about her people, and when she saw a need she stepped up. All the tough things life threw at her, she dealt with them the best way she knew how.

In the end most everyone failed her. One of the reasons the U.S. Government exists is to look out for the public good. Yet the government, through its FBI, tormented Annie Mae and harassed her, and its agents used her to further their own ends which ultimately cost Annie Mae her life. They degraded her poor dead body by cutting off her hands, possibly to delay identification.

She gave so much to the cause of justice, yet one of the vehicles for that justice failed her. AIM gave in to the paranoia caused by the FBI. Possibly in the John Graham trial more blame will come out; there is certainly much of it to go around. Annie Mae was interrogated by various AIM members, some female. This interrogation is said to have been violent, it is said she lost many of her teeth. As she begged for her life, this young mother was shot in the head and tossed over an embankment. Earlier she had been used for sexual pleasure.

The FBI agents used her, rat-jacketed her, and degraded her dead body by cutting off her poor hands. Indians abused her, beating an innocent woman, using her as a receptacle for their semen, and then taking her life.

God damn them all.

Originally published at TheLineUp.

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