THINGS USEFUL TO UNDERSTAND BEFORE READING ANGEL

OF THE MEDICINE SHOW AND ANNIE MAES MOVEMENT.

Rugaru: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smpdfvvGGwU
AIM: The American Indian Movement (AIM) is an American Indian advocacy
group in the United States, founded in July 1968 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.[1]
AIM was initially formed to address American Indian sovereignty, treaty
issues, spirituality, and leadership, while simultaneously addressing incidents
of police harassment and racism against Native Americans forced to move
away from reservations and tribal culture by the 1950s-era enforcement of
the U.S. federal government-enforced Indian Termination Policies originally
created in the 1930s. "As independent citizens and taxpayers, without good
education or experience, most 'terminated' Indians were reduced within a
few years to widespread illness and utter poverty, whether or not they were
relocated to cities," from the reservations.[2] The various specific issues
concerning Native American urban communities like the one in Minneapolis
(disparagingly labeled "red ghettos") include unusually high unemployment
levels, overt and covert racism, police harassment and neglect, epidemic
drug abuse (mainly alcoholism), crushing poverty, domestic violence and
substandard housing. AIM's paramount objective is to create "real economic
independence for the Indians.

Survival Schools: In the late 1960s, Indian families in Minneapolis and

St. Paul were under siege. Clyde Bellecourt remembers, We were losing our
children during this time; juvenile courts were sweeping our children up, and
they were fostering them out, and sometimes whole families were being
broken up. In 1972, motivated by prejudice in the child welfare system and
hostility in the public schools, American Indian Movement (AIM) organizers
and local Native parents came together to start their own community school.
For Pat Bellanger, it was about cultural survival. Though established in a
moment of crisis, the school fulfilled a goal that she had worked toward for
years: to create an educational system that would enable Native children
never to forget who they were.
The schools provided informal, supportive, culturally relevant learning
environments for students who had struggled in the public schools. Survival
school classes, for example, were often conducted with students and
instructors seated together in a circle, which signified the concept of mutual
human respect
Wendigo (linked to Rugaru): The Wendigo is a demonic spirit
believed by Algonquin-based Native American tribes to possess humans and
turn them into cannibals. The term "Wendigo" or "Windigo" is used to
describe both the evil spirit as well as the creature that humans can become
when possessed by the spirit. The "monster" version of the mythical creature
is human-like, but very tall and gaunt, with deeply sunken eyes and
yellowish, decaying skin. They are impossibly thin and have an unending
hunger that craves only human flesh.
The best known way to become a Wendigo is through cannibalism. By eating
another human being, even out of necessity for survival, a human can be
overcome by these spirits and be transformed into one. The fear of turning
into this creature was so strong that it was preferable to kill one's self rather
than resort to cannibalism. The Wendigo legend was prevalent in the
northern United States and Canada, and particularly roamed around woods
and forests in the coldest areas where food was scarce and survival was
challenging.
The Rugaru was a conflation of the idea of the werewolf (the loup-garou, an
idea brought over by French settlers) and the Weetigo, which was described
above. While the two ideas are different, both creatures consume human
flesh, and both are threats to a sense of community as they act solely by,
and for, themselves.

Wounded Knee: Many traditional people at the Pine Ridge Indian

Reservation were unhappy with the government of Richard Wilson, elected in
1972. When their effort to impeach him in February 1973 failed, they met to
plan protests and action. Many people on the reservation were unhappy
about its longstanding poverty and failures of the federal government to live
up to its treaties with Indian nations. The women elders encouraged the men
to act. On February 27, 1973, about 300 Oglala Lakota and AIM activists went
to the hamlet of Wounded Knee for their protest. It developed into a 71-day
siege, with the FBI cordoning off the area by using US Marshals and later
National Guard units.[4] The occupation was symbolically held at the site of
the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre. The Oglala Lakota demanded a revival of
treaty negotiations to begin to correct relations with the federal government,
the respect of their sovereignty, and the removal of Wilson from office. The
American Indians occupied the Sacred Heart Church, the Gildersleeve Trading
Post and numerous homes of the village. Although periodic negotiations were
held between AIM spokesman and U.S. government negotiators, gunfire
occurred on both sides. A US Marshal, Lloyd Grimm, was wounded severely
and paralyzed. In April, a Cherokee from North Carolina and a Lakota AIM
member were shot and killed. The elders ended the occupation then. [23]

Annie Mae Aquash: First Nations (Mi'kmaq) activist and American

Indian Movement leader, was born Annie Mae Pictou in the Shubenacadie
band (now Indian Brook First Nation) reserve in central Nova Scotia, Canada
In her childhood, Annie Mae shared the way of life of many eastern Canadian
aboriginals, living in semipoverty in a crowded household often without the
comfort of electricity, running water, and heat. She also faced the challenges
of discrimination against native people in the schools and the communities
outside the reserve. Annie Mae Pictou traveled often to Maine to work as a
blueberry and potato harvester. By 1969, she had two children and, in that
year, divorced from her husband.
In 1969, she helped create the Boston Indian Council, a support and service
organization that soon became a point of reference for Native American
people living in the city. She soon came in contact with members of the
American Indian Movement (AIM) and soon chose to be an activist and
devoted increasing amounts of time and energy to raise public awareness of
Native American social and political issues. For instance, On Thanksgiving
Day 1970 she participated in a Native American demonstration at the site of
the Mayflower II (a replica of the seventeenth-century vessel) in Plymouth,
Massachusetts. The seizure of the ship was a symbolic protest against the
European invasion of North America and was attended by many AIM leaders.
Prompted by a sense of mission--exemplified by her instructional work with
native and other minority students, her refusal to serve alcohol to native
customers while holding a bartending job, and her involvement in a job
placement program for native people in the Boston area--Pictou devoted her
efforts to the fight for native social and political rights and, at the same time,
to promote the revitalization of native cultures and traditional values.
In 1973 Pictou left her two daughters in the care of her older sister Mary,
made a formal commitment to AIM's cause, and relocated to the western
United States with her lover, Nogeeshik Aquash, a Chippewa artist from
Ontario. Between February and May 1973 she participated in the historic
seventy-one-day occupation of Wounded Knee, the South Dakota site of an
army massacre in 1890 that killed an estimated three hundred Lakota. While
there, she developed close relations with prominent native activists,
including Dennis Banks, Russell Means, and Leonard Peltier. By early 1975
Aquash had established herself in the upper circles of the AIM leadership.
Her actions and close relations with AIM leaders led her on a path that ended
at the bottom of a cliff in the Pine Ridge Lakota reservation, ten miles away
from Wanblee, South Dakota, where she was found dead with a 0.32-caliber
bullet in the back of her head on 24 February 1976. She was last heard of on
20 December 1975, and the exact date of death has never been determined.
In March, after the FBI investigation on the body was concluded, she was
buried on the Pine Ridge reservation.
Annie Mae Aquash was a point of reference for the activist Native Americans
and, in particular, the activist women who were fighting for aboriginal rights
during the red power era of the 1970s. Yet many natives, including Mi'kmaw
people, disapproved of her militant attitude. However, by the twenty-first
century she had come to acquire a positive connotation in the eyes of all
Mi'kmaq, who saw her determination and resilience as markers of the
Mi'kmaw people's strength and courage in surviving centuries of colonial
aggression and injustice. Most highlighted Aquash's work with native
students, her reliance on traditional values to address the many problems
that urban natives face, and her faith in native education as a valid
counterforce to mainstream subjugation.
Medicine Shows: Medicine shows were touring acts (traveling by truck,
horse, or wagon teams) which peddled "miracle cure" nostrums and other
products between various entertainments. They developed from European
mountebank shows and were common in the United States in the nineteenth
century, especially in the Old West (though some continued until World War
II).[1] They usually promoted "miracle elixirs" (sometimes referred to as snake
oil), which, it was claimed, had the ability to cure any disease, smooth
wrinkles, remove stains, prolong life or cure any number of common
ailments. Most shows had their own patent medicine (these medicines were
for the most part unpatented but took the name to sound official).
Entertainment often included a freak show, a flea circus, musical acts, magic
tricks, jokes, or storytelling. Each show was run by a man posing as a doctor
who drew the crowd with a monologue. The entertainers, such as acrobats,
musclemen, magicians, dancers, ventriloquists, exotic performers [such as
Indian chiefs], and trick shots, kept the audience engaged until the
salesman sold his medicine.

Works Cited
Davis, Julie L. Survival Schools: The American Indian Movement and
Community Education in the Twin Cities. Digital Commons @
CSB/SJU.2013. Web. 13 Sept. 2016.
Poliandri, Simone. Annie Mae Pictou Aquash. American National Biography
Online. October 2014. Web. 13 Sept. 2016.
The Wendigo Legend. Royal Mint Publishing LLC. Web. 13 Sept. 2016.
Wikipedia. Medicine Show. Wikimedia Foundation. 28 July 2016. Web. 13
Sept. 2016.
Wikipedia. American Indian Movement. Wikimedia Foundation. 18 August
2016. Web. 13 Sept. 2016.