Murder in the American Indian Movement: 30 Years Later

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A thirty-five year old murder case is taking place in Rapid City, South Dakota.  John Graham, a member of the American Indian Movement (AIM) was charged in the 7th Circuit Court with the 1975 murder of Annie Mae Pictou Aquash, a 30-year-old Canadian native and AIM activist. This is the third trial in the case. It began in 2003 with the arrest and trial of Fritz Arlo Looking Cloud and Graham, aka John Boy Patton. In 2008, a third man, Richard Marshall, was also indicted for murder. In 2009, Graham and a woman named Thelma Rios were charged with Aquash’s kidnapping and murder in South Dakota.  The results so far:  Looking Cloud was convicted of murder; Richard Marshall was acquitted; Thelma Rios pleaded guilty to accessory in Aquash’s kidnapping and received a suspended prison sentence; and John Graham is currently on trial.

How and why Ms. Aquash was killed remains in dispute.  Some members of the AIM movement believe the FBI murdered her, and then tried to cover up the crime by removing her hands to prevent identification and ruling the death an accident.  (The FBI says her hands were sent to Washington, D.C.  to help identify a body which was originally identified as a “Jane Doe” who died of exposure and was subsequently buried.  After Aquash was identified, a second autopsy determined she had been killed by a gunshot would to the back of the head.)  Others believe AIM themselves ordered her death, convinced she was an FBI informant.

Aquash was a dedicated member of the American Indian Movement, a Native American activist organization founded in 1968 by George Mitchell, Dennis Banks, and Clyde Bellecourt.  The original impetus of AIM was to respond to alleged incidents of police brutality committed against Native Americans in the Twin Cities in Minnesota.  Patrols were organized to make sure police acted properly when arrests of Native Americans were made.  Within four years, AIM was a national organization with over forty chapters, as frustration felt by many Indians regarding the federal government’s official policies, which they considered discriminatory, exponentially increased. AIM’s leaders had long insisted that bad federal policies led to high unemployment, slum housing, and racist treatment among Native Americans.

Public protests to raise public consciousness became their vehicle of choice.  Such protests began with a nineteen-month occupation of Alcatraz in 1969. In 1972, they conducted a “Trail of Broken Treaties” march on Washington, D.C., taking over the Bureau of Indian Affairs and demanding reform in the process.  As a result of their escalating activity, they drew the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which AIM members and their supporters claim turned into an orchestrated and ongoing effort to destroy the movement.

Two incidents in the 1970s garnered national attention.  On February 27th, 1973,  AIM members seized the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota due to a conflict among those Indians who supported the federal government, and those who wanted tribal autonomy.  The FBI and the U.S. Marshals Services surrounded the town, resulting a 71-day siege, in which both sides traded gunfire for months.  Aquash was one of the AIM activists who participated in the siege.  Two government agents were seriously wounded and two Indians were killed during the standoff.  After a series of negotiations, the occupiers relented.  Several arrests were made and AIM leaders Dennis Banks and Russell Means were put on trial.  In 1974, a federal judge dismissed charges against both men.

The second major incident, the Ogala Firefight of 1975, allegedly grew out of increasing tensions between the FBI and AIM which traced back to Wounded Knee.  On June 26th 1975, a gun battle at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota resulted in the deaths of FBI agents Jack Coler and Ron Williams.  A nationwide FBI manhunt to find the killer ensued, and AIM activist Leonard Peltier was captured and convicted of the crime. After several unsuccessful appeals, Peltier remains incarcerated at the U.S. Penitentiary, Lewisburg, PA.

Peltier is linked to the current trial.  Darlene “Kamook” Ecoffey testified that Annie Mae Aquash was one of the passengers traveling in a motor home in the fall of 1975 when Peltier confessed to killing Coler and Williams at Ogala.  “He held his hand like this,” she testified during the current trial, pointing her index finger like a gun, “and he said ‘that (expletive) was begging for his life but I shot him anyway.’”  It should be noted that Ms. Ecoffey was the former common-law wife of AIM leader Dennis Banks for 17 years–but is is now married to the chief investigator in the Aquash case.  It should also be noted that Judge Jack Delaney had originally ruled against allowing the jury to hear about Leonard Peltier’s alleged confession in front of Aquash, but reversed himself.

Under cross examination Ms. Ecoffey admitted she received $49,000 from the government which she said was given at the direction of the FBI agents “concerned for her safety.” Defense attorney John Murphy also asked Ecoffey about a  taped conversation with convicted killer Looking Cloud in which Looking Cloud asked, “How many people should I implicate?” and Ecoffey said, “Only John Boy,” referring to Mr. Graham.

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  • Aaron

    Yeah and little miss Hollyweird klepto Wynona Ryder is supporting his release.

    • lisa2unow

      Read the transcripts of the trial, They could not prove that Leonard killed the agents so he was charged with an aidding and abetting a self defense murder. The other two charged with the shooting were "AQUITTED" in self defense. This was after 64 people were murdered stemming from the take over of Wounded Knee

  • WF Poset

    Rusell Means is almost certainly the "authority" who ordered her death. Also it should be noted that there was no "dispute" at Wounded Knee, it was a spontaneous, drunken act of theft and vandalism that was intercepted by the FBI before the trash, lead by Rusell Means, could escape. Much that is written in this article is slanted away from what really happened. I am an American Indian, an Ojibwe man who was also active at this time. Most of us believe banks and Means were behind the killing.

  • WF Posey

    As for the lost and blind post from Aaron, thousands of hollywood people and world celebrities have been scammed by Peltier and believe the lies his support group gives to raise money, as in all over the world. The free peltier movement is very worldwide scam that has raised millions over the years that no one can discover what happened to.

    • cowfy

      i don't get it.if this guy is living high with the money its one thing but" no one can discover what happened"to the funds.what the hell does that mean?

  • Rick

    GOD IS and HE knows who murdered Annie Mae. The guilty will pay; if not in this life, then in the next, but the GUILTY WILL PAY. Oh yeah, Annie Mae knows too.

  • Lester Whiteeagle

    In 1972 Peltier attempted to shoot a Milwaukee policeman. In 1975 after escaping capture by shooting at an Oregon State trooper and fleeing on foot he left behind, in his car, one of the FBI agents handgun. Witnesses state that Peltier was at the scene of the FBI agents execution and forensic evidence shows that it was Peltier's AR-15 that was the murder weapon. Peltier admitted to Canadian Mounties that his shooting of the FBI agents was because he thought they were on Pine Ridge to arrest him for the 1972 shooting in Milwaukee. Peltier was never the significant AIM leader his advocates make him out to be–but only a "bodyguard" for AIM, "hired muscle" with a long history of armed violence. May he rot in jail!

    • Lisa2unow

      Lets gets the facts right,. Peltier's gun did not match the "forensic" evidence. At the trial the government testified that the gun was to badly burnt to get a correct ballistic reading form it, but with the Freedom Information Act , the file was released saying a ballistic was preformed and the ballistic did not match. It is also know that there were informants (Durham) in AIM and that the guns were those that the informant delivered. The main story is there are still thousands up on thousands of files that the FBI refuse to release, my question is why not?
      And the story out of Milwaukee was thrown out.

  • USMCSniper

    Why does this 35 year old cold case rate an article? Canada's First Nations corruption and domestic violence is well documented, I have a two cousins who are both RCMP, and one has jurisdiction over the First Nations reservation Northern Manitoba. The braves get drunk every weekend and go on the warpath and shoot at each other with rifles.

    • muchiboy

      "Why does this 35 year old cold case rate an article? Canada's First Nations corruption and domestic violence is well documented, I have a two cousins who are both RCMP, and one has jurisdiction over the First Nations reservation Northern Manitoba."

      Fair question,USMCSniper.

      " The braves get drunk every weekend and go on the warpath and shoot at each other with rifles."

      I think you may have answered your own question,USMCSniper.AIM was about the legacy of occupation,colonization,oppression and ethnic cleansing of the American Indian.As you so racially point out,it is NOT over.muchiboy

    • Lester Whiteeagle

      Because Native Americans are children. Because they were children long before the whites defeated them. For 200 years or so, they've had their noses wiped and their diapers changed by the BIA. Why should they, and why would their Great White Father expect them to, grow up? The Rez is not where whites oppress Native Americans, it's where Native Americans oppress each other. There are just two types of Native Americans in this land we all call home, the child who remains on the Rez (or takes the Rez wherever he roams) and the adult who leaves the Rez and leaves the Rez behind. Whites are not the Native American's greatest enemy, social immaturity is. And the Great White Father through the BIA is merely a co-enabler.

      • Greg

        I can't even believe that you said that entire peoples are simple children in a sweeping statement effecting natives from the Colville to the Seminole. How are you justified in judging them?

        Are they children because they didn't travel thousands of miles in order to enslave people and work them nigh to death on land stolen from other people?

        Your false dichotomy forgets the fact that more Indians live off reservations than on, and the ones on the reservation too often lack even running water.

        Thanks for being an obvious racist.

  • Eto_Akwahnv

    Must be some feds in the house. Folks should look at this before they think some of the postings here are at all accurate: http://www.freepeltiernow.org/LEGAL/uploads/FBI_c

    • http://www.bubbascorners.com Robert Fabel

      Totally agree most people get their facts from gossip and the media which is owned and controlled by the government. Or even worst they watch some Hollywood movie and believe it as fact wake up the tactics used against our Indian brothers and sisters is coming soon to your front door. The main truth behind all this is if Pettier was any other race the outrage would have been so great the government would have been forced to provide all the evidence and relations with native Americans would be a top priority. I haven't read it all in this matter but what I have found is lies and more lies mostly from the USA government this is the way things handled with the American Indian.

  • Eto Akwahnv

    Ecoffey's uncorroborated testimony very conveniently and exactly matches the prosecutorial theory presented at Peltier's 1977 trial. Now, research shows that the human mind doesn't work like a tape recorder; we neither record events exactly as we see them, nor recall them like a tape that has been rewound and played back. Based on the content of her testimony, as well as its style of delivery, Ecoffey's testimony is highly suspect. In addition, Ecoffey, a resident of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, was paid over $40,000 by the FBI for her testimony. That doesn't seem like a great deal of money unless you take into account that the average annual income on the reservation is roughly $5,000. She also married one of the lead investigators? Geez!

  • Eto Akwahnv

    But what matters here is the court record in the Peltier case. The rifle that caused the agents' fatal injuries was found to be incompatible with the bullet casing found at the scene. That means Peltier wasn't the shooter. But what else does it mean? It means the FBI manufactured a murder weapon. Twice, before the appellate court, the prosecutor in the Peltier case stated, "We don't know who shot those agents." The government "did not and cannot prove" Peltier’s guilt or what role he "may have played" in the 1975 incident. With Ecoffey's testimony in an unrelated case, the government simply hopes to re-write history. This testimony has been presented repeatedly and widely publicized for this very purpose. Done in this way, Leonard is unable to face his accuser, cross-examine her or otherwise defend himself. You want the truth about the Peltier case? Read the FBI documents; they tell the tale: http://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info/download/Crit….

    • Lisa

      Don't forget to add the Subway franchize in Pine Ridge added to that government pay off, and if that was just protection money, you would think she would be in fear on the rez.

  • Seek

    In a piece of good news, the Wall Street Journal yesterday reported that tribal gaming revenues are way down. I ask you: Is there any reason why a white person should step foot in an Injun casino? We know some of that money is going for legal defense. Head toward Vegas, man.

  • PAthena

    American Indians have been blessed by their conquest by non-Indian Americans and Canadians since they have gotten peace. The different tribes were fighting each other before their conquest; now they go to court instead to settle disputes. See Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan.

  • Ageofreason

    In Canada, some Natives have made careers, at taxpayers' expense, of whining constantly about the "need" to protect native culture. Native culture was not worth preserving. It was a culture of slaughter, torture, slavery, inter-tribal warfare, subsistance living, illiteracy, and short life-spans. Also here, natives in BC won the right to hunt at night. At night! It was, they said, part of their culture to do so. Were electric lights and high-powered rifles also part of their culture? Personally, I would have given them the right as long as they used "native culture" to do the hunting: bows and arrows with stone tips, and torches made of pine sap and twigs. Much of our judiciary has their heqads you know where. By the way, it's a myth, and abuse of reason to make the blanket claim that whites stole native land. You don't gain ownership of land simply by walking across it. To establish ownership, you make it productive, and build a permanent home on it as the homesteaders did. After that it's land titles and cold, hard cash. Ain't life tough.

    • Lori

      Well Got To say You are right about them getting out , The Culture Of The Indians are also In Prison By The Government By feeding them Food limited, Housing with The cold wind blowing through there Homes due to Bid Rigging building. It Is A Joke and The life On the res Is Horride! Thanks to all the Towns that surround The Reservation. also, Alcohol sales Are High On the First Of the Month and during the middle of the Month, They get The check from the Government who tries to keep them salvages, Murders of The Indians are not even published Or Told In the Local Newspapers. Rosebud Indian Reservation Is Horride and abused by The white as well as the Indians! Two Murders In Valentine Ne. This summer was not even Reported Due The Fear Of not having People come from all over to look at the wonderful Niobrara River and spend the money!. The Indians are murdered and Gone By The way side not told or investigated! Scapegoated again and the white still playing into the government ways to help slaughter, and the Indian being the victim! Both Are Victims. The Land Is the Indians and for it to be productive! The Law needs to report murders, and rape that happen, Tribal police on A reservation is the big Excuse! It Is A twisted Salvage area with those who live on them to those around the reservations.

    • Red Sun Woman!!!!!

      NATIVE culture is about the right to do what native people have done for thousands of year.WATER -ceremony,pipe -teachings,Drumming-singing.putting out your sema,lanuage,hands on skill,basket makeing,blankets,regalya,jewlry makein,gardening.to love one another to teach one on history of the good are people.Nishnaba kwe,Nishnabe nine,Nishnabe gigabe,Nishnabe gegeiagos.yes we did hunt are own food who didn't? yes we all move with the time who dosen't.we still have that right!!!!!!sure as you have the right to get up on sunday for church!11111

  • Sarah Johns

    the AR-15 was found by Ballistics to NOT have been the Firearm that killed the 2 Agents..and
    Darlene “Kamook” Ecoffey ” It should be noted that Ms. Ecoffey is now married to the chief investigator in the Aquash case. It should also be noted that Judge Jack Delaney had originally ruled against allowing the jury to hear about Leonard Peltier’s alleged confession in front of Aquash, but reversed himself.
    HER Testimony should be thrown out of Court..this is clearly Conflict of Interest!! Annie May was Killed & Mutilated by FBI Informants if not the FBI Itself! Nixon Ordered all of this..Orchestrated the WHOLE Thing..same as the 4 dead students in Ohio State, shot by Our "National Guard" Those who do not LEARN from the Past, are Condemned to repeat it"..keep that in mind Folks..NDNs are NOT Boogie men.. The Reservation People live WORSE than ANY 3d World Country!!

    • Lori

      They Do Live Worst than Third world, And when They wake Up, Well another Wounded Knee, Do You Think The FBI can control It? Tribal Law Will Take A Stand And the results well Who Knows? It Is already happening!

  • dennis running hawk

    sounds like a lot of fed lovers in here. the feds are the true muderers, FREE LEONARD PELTIER NOW RELEASE ALL P.O.W OF THE US GOVERNMENT NOW IN THE SPIRIT OF CRAZY HORSE

  • Louis Red Cloud

    Where is the evidence the feds are the murders? Robideau and Butler were released, so don't say the govt hates all Indians. Dennis Banks has a history of burning fed buildings, kidnapping innocent Indians in Wounded Knee, lying and he did not go to jail over it. AIM destroyed Wounded Knee, not the government. If you hate the government, quit taking it's free aid to you. Peltier admitted to the killings.. Why don't you stop the lies and just say you want Leonard free even if he killed the agents. If he now publicly admitted to the killings you would still want him let out of jail. What is a fed lover? What do you even mean "in the spirit of crazy horse" Learn the facts…..