Annie Mae Aquash – a Hard Life, a Harder Death

By Al Osorio

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On a cold February morning in 1976 a rancher telephoned the Pine Ridge tribal police to report his discovery of a dead body at the bottom of 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.

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Annie Mae Aquash was born in 1945 on New England’s Micmac Reservation, in a shack with no plumbing or electricity. Despite the obvious hardship she got straight As in school, drawing strength from her father, a Micmac Traditionalist. In 1956 the young girl’s life turned upside down – her father died of cancer, her mother abandoned the family and at the age of 11 she found herself being shuttled between family members. Working the fields to pick  potatoes and berries enable Annie Mae to pay her way, sporadically attending school between harvests. At 17, she went to Boston and entered into a short-lived marriage that produced two daughters. Her time was spent caring for her children, working at a daycare center and getting involved with Indian activism , an activism which eventually became all-consuming.News of the Wounded Knee occupation obsessed Annie Mae. She eventually quit a good paying  job with GM and left her daughters with family members to join the struggle, smuggling food and supplies in to the activists 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.

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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.

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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.

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In 2003, AIM members Arlo Looking Cloud and John Graham were charged with the murder. Both have been convicted and are serving life sentences, further investigations into the murder continue. Looking Cloud admitted to raping her prior to her death; 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 her pain and fear and loneliness. I don’t  believe 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 thru its FBI the US Government tormented and harassed Annie Mae, its agents using 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 at some point more blame will come to the surface; there is certainly much to go around. Annie Mae was interrogated by various AIM members, some female. This interrogation was performed at gunpoint and was violent, it is said she lost many teeth. When she begged for her life, the 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.

AL OSORIO is a senior contributing editor to The Greanville Post.