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01/18/2006:

"Killing Anna Mae Aquash, Smearing John Trudell"

"Vernon Bellecourt made the phone call. Clyde took the call and issued the order for her murder."
-- Russell Means

"I personally will be overjoyed when the Canadian courts rule to return John Graham back to the US to answer for this brutal murder."
-- Robert Robideau

On February 24, 1976, the frozen body of American Indian Movement (AIM) activist Anna Mae Pictou Aquash was found wrapped in a blanket in a ravine on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Aquash was with the militants who occupied the town of Wounded Knee, SD for 71 days in 1973, the culmination of a reservation Reign of Terror that saw over sixty "traditional" Indians murdered. Anna Mae, the highest ranking woman in the male-dominated AIM, had disappeared from Denver in December 1975.

Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) pathologist, Dr. W. O. Brown certified that she had "died from exposure." In a very unusual move, her hands were severed and sent to the FBI for fingerprinting and, even more unusual, she was quickly buried in a pauper's grave March 3rd, before any identification was made or any burial permit issued.

That same day, the FBI announced that the body was that of Aquash, a 30-year-old Mi'kmaq from Nova Scotia. Her Canadian family was informed by the FBI that she had "died from natural causes."

At her family's request, an exhumation order and a new autopsy was gained. On March 11, a second autopsy revealed the true cause of death, an execution shot to the back of the head and the .32 caliber bullet was recovered

Of course, this led to charges of an FBI cover-up. To this day, many believe that the FBI had her killed. And, there is, of course, ample reason to believe this: Agent David Price, a maverick cowboy even within that lawless agency, had arrested Aquash June 25, 1975 and pressured her to cooperate with the authorities on a series of incidents; most specifically the famous shootout that left two agents and one Native dead and for which AIM leader Leonard Peltier is now serving time after being the sole person convicted. Price famously told Aquash that she'd "be dead within a year" should she not cooperate.
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