Anna Mae Aquash: The Legend

ANNA MAE AQUASH: THE LEGEND

By
Monica J Charles

Anna Mae Aquash is the stuff of legends.

She died in her prime under mysterious
circumstances. She was only thirty years
old and the mother of two small children.
She was beautiful, smart and shined with
promise. She was friends with the
American Indian Movement leadership
and the rank and file.

The FBI through their informants started

rumors that she was one of their
collaborators. Only those that didn’t know
her, were jealous of her, or for some
reason didn’t like her chose to believe
that gossip.

Anna Mae represented the strengths and

weaknesses in Indian women. She lived
her life working for the good of all of The
People. It is rumored that she fell in love
with and had an affair with Dennis Banks,
AIM’s top leader and most famous
philanderer. Dennis was the common law
husband of her friend Kamook Nichols
Banks.

That love may have been her fatal flaw. It

made her a target. Men always
underestimate the strength and power of
Women. The FBI may have thought that
she would be the weak link into AIM’s
inner circle.

FBI SA David Price told her that if she

didn’t cooperate with the FBI that she
would be dead within a year.

Kamook said in her interview with Anna

Maria Tremonti that Anna Mae would be
arrested with everyone else. Then she
would be released before everyone else.
Kamook said she wondered why.

The suspicion had been planted and was

growing. It looked like Anna Mae was
collaborating with the FBI.

No one survived the FBI’s Counter

Intelligence Program. They sent out false
letters, started rumors about key people.
It was adolescent but worked well.

To find out more about the FBI’s Cointel

program read about the Black Panthers.
Bobby Seals has a book on the internet
for free download. There is a book by
Jack Olson about Panther leader
Geronimo Pratt. He served 27 years in
prison for a crime he did not commit. It’s
reminiscent of Leonard Peltier and Anna
Mae Aquash.

Simply googling “Cointelpro” will turn up

a plethora of articles and documents.
Paul Wolf has an excellent site on the
subject. That is the best place to start.

There is a movie called “Panther.” It cites

a FOIA document that states that the FBI
partnered with organized crime to
introduce hard drugs into the Black
communities. That was to take down the
Panthers base of support.

Panther leaders were suspicious and

jealous of a young Geronimo Pratt from
the Southern California Black Panther
chapter. They abandoned him when the
FBI charged him with murder. He was at a
Panther convention in Oakland. The FBI
had phone tapes and photos proving he
was in Oakland at the time of the murder.
Panther leaders could have testified that
he was in Oakland but didn’t.

The FBI played on jealousies and egos of

leaders and key people. They fomented
dissent where it hadn’t existed before.
Once you see how the FBI’s Counter
Intelligence Program took down the Black
Panther Party it will be easy to see what
happened to The American Indian
Movement, Leonard Pelter and Anna Mae
Aquash.

It is said that the Pie Patrol (influential

Sioux AIM women) was jealous of Anna
Mae’s beauty and influence with Dennis
Banks. Kamook was one of them. She
could have used her influence as AIM’s
First Lady to stop rumors about Anna
Mae but didn’t.

Someone was counting on the stereotype

of women’s jealousy of each other. The
powerful pie patrol was comprised of
Lakota women. They were loyal to their
own. Dennis Banks trophy wife Kamook
was one of them. She was his connection
into the tight knit Lakota community.
The Pie Patrol is the women being
accused by Demain and the FBI of
complicity in the murder of Anna Mae
Aquash. They were prominent and active
in their communities. Everyone is being
accused except Kamook that is. She wore
a wire to record her husband and Arlo
Looking Cloud.

There is a document on Leonard Peltier’s

site where the FBI is discussing revealing
to Kamook that Anna Mae and her
husband Dennis were having an affair.
They thought that they might be able to
recruit her as an informant if she knew of
the affair.

Anna Mae didn’t belong to a big political

family from a big Tribe nor did she belong
to a prominent AIM family. She was from
Micmac a remote Tribe on Canada’s East
Coast. She was alone.
AIM needed her organizational and
fundraising skills. While AIM’s
swaggering feathered warriors were
romantic and photogenic they were not
always politic or diplomatic. The touch of
a gifted dazzling woman was sometimes
needed. She could raise money from
America’s rich elite. She could get things
done. Dennis Banks said of her in his
autobiography “Ojibwe Warrior” Anna
Mae would never be a burden.

Anna Mae Aquash disappeared

sometimes during the winter of 1975-
1976. The FBI story says that she was
kidnapped from the Denver home of Troy
Lynn Yellowwood where she had been
staying. Others say she went of her own
accord. The FBI story says that Anna Mae
was killed by AIM on December 12 1975.

The FBI story makes her into a vapid

victim. They say that she was taken to the
house of Thelma Rios in Rapid City South
Dakota. There she was supposedly
beaten and raped.

Anna Mae was strong-willed and knew

karate. Would she have willingly allowed
herself to be beaten and raped? One of
her sisters told a story of a physical fight
between Anna Mae and her husband
Nogeeshik. She went to see what the
ruckus was about. She came back saying
that it was an equal fight. Anna Mae was
giving as good as she got.

That’s a different Anna Mae from the one

that allows herself to be dragged here and
there and walks placidly to her death.

FBI supporters flesh out the FBI story.

They tell lies to manipulate our emotions.
They say that Anna Mae was taken to the
top of a ravine and shot. They claim that
she was blinded by blood from her
wound. She tried to crawl for help and fell
off the embankment. She curled into the
fetal position in an attempt to keep warm.
She lay there for days before the
elements took her.

The second autopsy report says that the

bullet pierced her brain.

What kind of person would make her

death worse than it is? What kind of mind
could come up with a false story like
that?

A bullet piercing her brain would have

killed her instantly.

Paula Giese from Minneapolis said that

she had received a phone call from Anna
Mae on December 20 1975. Anna Mae said
that she would visit after the holidays.
FBI agent David Price filed a report that
Anna Mae was sighted on February 12,
1976. The report is heavily redacted but
describes what she is wearing and the
vehicle she is traveling in. The names of
the people she was with and their
destination is blacked out. The FBI will
not reveal the name of the person who
reported sighting her. They say it is to
protect their informant. Is that person still
an active spy?

The memo was discovered by journalist

Steve Hendricks when he sued the FBI for
release of all FOIA documents relating to
Anna Mae Aquash. It is cited in the
endnotes of his book “The Unquiet
Grave.”

Paul Demain bills himself as the person

who knows the most about the case. He
claims that Peltier supporters are using
this incident because Peltier was in jail in
Canada at the time. So he couldn’t have
been personally involved with her murder.

Demain claims that Anna Mae Aquash

was killed because she allegedly knew
that he was the executioner of Agents
Coler and Williams.

Demain is obsessed with proving that

Leonard Peltier actually did shoot FBI
agents Coler and Williams. The Federal
Government admits that they do not know
who shot the agents. There is no
evidence linking Peltier to the murder.

Demain claims that Peltier boasted to

Anna Mae Aquash, sisters Kamook Banks
and Bernie Lafferty that he shot Coler and
Williams as they begged for their lives.

Demain asserts that Anna Mae was killed

because she heard Peltier’s “confession.”
He does not explain why Kamook Banks
and Bernie Lafferty were not killed for
hearing the same confession.

Paul Demain’s timeline is silly. He wrote

me into it in an attempt to frighten me
away from this story. It didn’t work. It did
show me that he is so desperate to “get”
AIM and Leonard Peltier that he is willing
to lie to do it.

Anna Mae worked hard for the People.

She deserves real justice, not the
Amerikan Just Us of Arlo’s 3 ½ day trial.

There are descriptions of three different

girls in the crime scene report and the
two autopsies.

There is a memo on Peltier’s site stating

that the FBI was monitoring girls that
looked like Anna Mae. Were those girls
used to confuse and cover up the murder
of Anna Mae Aquash?
The body at the crime scene was
described as 5’6” and 20 years old.
Aquash was 5’2” and 30 years old. It was
determined that the body in the first
autopsy died from exposure. There was
no mention of a gunshot wound or blood
leaking from that wound. Organs were
removed, examined and weighed and
noted.

Again the body in the second autopsy

was different. It had blood leaking from a
gunshot wound at the back of the head.
The bullet was lodged into the front of the
skull after piercing the brain. There had
been no organs removed in the second
autopsy.

Was there a younger taller girl found at

the crime scene? Did Dr Brown autopsy a
girl that actually did die of exposure?
Was there a different girl in the second
autopsy that died from a bullet wound?

Either there were three different girls or

these are the worst cops and medical
examiners in the world. Or this was part
of a cover up.

Who were those girls? Their families

deserve closure. Was any of them Anna
Mae?

There are still many questions that need

to be asked and answered in the murder
of Anna Mae Aquash.

The FBI claims to have lost the clothes

that Anna Mae was wearing at the time of
her death. They could be tested for dna
with todays technology.

Richard Marshall is being charged with

being an accessory to murder. They FBI
says that he provided the murder weapon
to John Graham and Arlo Looking Cloud.
They claim that Richard Marshall owned a
pistol of the same caliber that killed Anna
Mae. Has it been test fired to match a
bullet with the one that pierced Anna
Mae’s brain? A similar pistol is not a
smoking gun.

The government has scheduled the trials

of John Graham, Richard Marshall and
Thelma Rios on top of each other. It will
be impossible to give each case the
attention they deserve.

Mainstream media and Native journalists

have ignored this case although it defines
the federal government’s relationship
with Indians during the fiery 1970s.

The American Indian Movement was

hunted down and disrupted along with
the Black Panthers and other Civil Rights
organizations during the FBI’s Counter
Intelligence Program.

Most people during the 1960’s and 1970’s

did not see how out of control the FBI and
other police organizations were. They
may have seen the aftermath and cover-
ups of assassinations of young Black
Panther leaders. They did not see the
cops kicking in doors and shooting
Panthers as they slept.

They did not see the FBI in paramilitary

uniforms packing semi-automatic
weapons on the Pine Ridge Resrvation
during the 1970’s. They did not hear SAC
Joe Trimbach requesting that the US Air
Force bomb us during the first few days
of the occupation of Wounded Knee in
1973.

FBI SAC Norm Zigrossi has said that AIM

was better armed than he. When I came
out of Wounded Knee a younger cousin
asked me what kind of weapons we
(Indians) had. I said 22’s and hunting
rifles. He said he saw that on the news.
He asked what THEY had. I said what they
are using in Vietnam. He said you were
lucky to get out of there alive. I agreed.

The FBI and their lap dogs brazenly lie.

Most Wounded Knee 1973 veterans are
afraid to speak up to object. You could be
arrested or written into Demain’s silly
timeline.

The FBI refuses to release key FOIA

documents because it would jeopardize
national security or expose their plants
that still exist today.

The question arises, if Anna Mae was not

killed on December 12, 1975 where was
she? There are rumors that she was on
Pine Ridge. Was she in hiding until she
was caught and killed in the middle of
February 1976? That was the time period
stated in the FBI’s first press release
about her murder.

Was she in FBI custody being

interrogated and threatened? Was she
tortured? Did someone kill her under FBI
orders?

There will be no justice for Anna Mae

Aquash until the FBI is held accountable
for their part in her death.

The trials of John Graham, accused

shooter of Anna Mae Aquash, Richard
Marshall, accused of being an accessory
to murder, and Thelma Rios, also accused
of being an accessory to murder, start in
February.

There is a book by Johanna Brand about

the life and death of Anna Mae Aquash. It
provides good background. Steve
Hendricks book The Unquiet Grave has
uncovered new documents. The
controversial “In the Spirit of Crazy
Horse” also covers the times. FBI SA
David Price sued author Peter Matthieson
to keep the book off the shelves.
Matthieson eventually won his case after
several years.

There is much information and

disinformation also available on the
internet. Paul Demain and his crew are
frantically trying to sway public opinion.
They even have a facebook site dedicated
to Anna Mae.

I was on it for a few minutes until I posted

the Price memo that Anna Mae was
sighted in February 1976. ALIVE! I linked
it to Steve Hendricks site. I was promptly
banned and my post erased. Demain does
not want people to know that there is
evidence that the FBI story is a lie.

The irony is that if Anna Mae was here

today she would be working for Truth and
Justice for Arlo Looking Cloud, John
Graham, Richard Marshall, and Thelma
Rios. Anna Mae saw FBI Just Us in action
on Pine Ridge during the Reign of Terror.
It may have been what killed her.
Posted by Monica at 1:41 PM

1 comments:

David said...

Outstanding analysis
Monica. I've tied to post
on here before but have
been prevented . . .

10:31 AM
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