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Anna Mae Aquash
This is dedicated to the First Nations Warrior, Mother and Wife
Anna Mae Aquash...
Whose Hands The Colonizers Took
"On the afternoon of February 24, 1976 Rodger Amiotte, a mixed blood rancher whose land was in the northeast corner of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation...found the body of a woman in a snow-covered ditch one hundred feet from the country road. She was wrapped in a blanket. The woman wore a maroon windbreaker, jeans, and blue canvas shoes. She had long fingernails. Her hands were adorned with fancy turquoise jewelry, including rings and a large bracelet.
"The body was taken to the Pine Ridge hospital, where Dr. W.O. Brown performed an autopsy in the presence of FBI agents. The doctor said the unidentified woman died of exposure. She had frozen to death. There was no sign of violence.
"During the autopsy, an FBI agent asked Doctor Brown, "I need her hands. Sever them at the wrist, would ya, Doc?"
"Over the next days, the government agents approached mortuary after mortuary, asking to have the handless body buried. According to one undertaker, the FBI agents wanted the woman buried under a fictitious name. 'Can't do it,' he said. 'You guys ought to know. That's illegal.'
"...on March 3, the body was buried, nameless in the Holy Rosary Mission on the [Pine Ridge] reservation. That same day, the FBI notified its Rapid City office that the dead woman was Anna Mae Aquash."
The Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense Committee (WKLDOC) demanded a an exhumation and a second autopsy. However, before this could take place, "The FBI filed its own request for exhumation and reautopsy. The reasons its affidavit gave were that Anna Mae might have been killed in a hit-an-run accident or that she might have been murdered by AIM as a suspected informer...there was no explanation as to how a person who might have been a victim of a hit-and-run accident could have been thrown one hundred feet from the highway, display no sign of contact with a vehicle, and end up in a ditch, neatly wrapped in a blanket." The autopsy was scheduled for March 11, 1976.
"Anna Mae's family, through WKLDOC attorney Ellison, hired Garry Peterson, an independent pathologist from St. Paul Hospital in Minnesota to observe. When he arrived, Dr. Peterson was the only Doctor there. The FBI had not bothered to have a pathologist at the autopsy it had requested. Peterson, who brought only the minimal equipment needed to observe, had to perform the procedure. It was not terribly complicated. An obvious bullet wound, surrounded by an even more obvious 5 cm x 5 cm discoloration, adorned the rear of Anna Mae's head, exactly where the hospital staff had seen the thawing body leak the week before. She died of exposure to a small-caliber bullet fired from a gun placed near the back of her head. She had been executed."
Loud Hawk - The United States versus
the American Indian Movement,
Kenneth Stern,
ISBN 0-8061-2587-X
"My sister's murderer, or murderers, will probably never be found. I believe the person or persons responsible may be connected with the FBI, perhaps not directly but indirectly somehow. Anna died as a result of ignorance on the part of the killers: she was one person against many of them. Who could she have hurt? They say the FBI is the most powerful body in the United States. Nobody can get near it. How could she have hurt it?
Anna was an educated person - a person with common sense. She worked for the American Indian Movement out of dedication, not for publicity or headlines. The real Indian people, those who are like her, should be controlling the movement.
My sister's death has taught me to foretell the events that will take place in this country. I have learned - from all she told me - to see what is happening. The same things will happen here as have happened in the United States. This country will become another South Dakota.
Mary Lafford...sister to Anna Mae
__________________________________________________ __
I MADE THIS POST SO PEOPLE CAN SEE WHATS STILL GOING ON TODAY. ITS A SAD THING......
:Cry
Anna Mae Aquash...
Whose Hands The Colonizers Took
"On the afternoon of February 24, 1976 Rodger Amiotte, a mixed blood rancher whose land was in the northeast corner of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation...found the body of a woman in a snow-covered ditch one hundred feet from the country road. She was wrapped in a blanket. The woman wore a maroon windbreaker, jeans, and blue canvas shoes. She had long fingernails. Her hands were adorned with fancy turquoise jewelry, including rings and a large bracelet.
"The body was taken to the Pine Ridge hospital, where Dr. W.O. Brown performed an autopsy in the presence of FBI agents. The doctor said the unidentified woman died of exposure. She had frozen to death. There was no sign of violence.
"During the autopsy, an FBI agent asked Doctor Brown, "I need her hands. Sever them at the wrist, would ya, Doc?"
"Over the next days, the government agents approached mortuary after mortuary, asking to have the handless body buried. According to one undertaker, the FBI agents wanted the woman buried under a fictitious name. 'Can't do it,' he said. 'You guys ought to know. That's illegal.'
"...on March 3, the body was buried, nameless in the Holy Rosary Mission on the [Pine Ridge] reservation. That same day, the FBI notified its Rapid City office that the dead woman was Anna Mae Aquash."
The Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense Committee (WKLDOC) demanded a an exhumation and a second autopsy. However, before this could take place, "The FBI filed its own request for exhumation and reautopsy. The reasons its affidavit gave were that Anna Mae might have been killed in a hit-an-run accident or that she might have been murdered by AIM as a suspected informer...there was no explanation as to how a person who might have been a victim of a hit-and-run accident could have been thrown one hundred feet from the highway, display no sign of contact with a vehicle, and end up in a ditch, neatly wrapped in a blanket." The autopsy was scheduled for March 11, 1976.
"Anna Mae's family, through WKLDOC attorney Ellison, hired Garry Peterson, an independent pathologist from St. Paul Hospital in Minnesota to observe. When he arrived, Dr. Peterson was the only Doctor there. The FBI had not bothered to have a pathologist at the autopsy it had requested. Peterson, who brought only the minimal equipment needed to observe, had to perform the procedure. It was not terribly complicated. An obvious bullet wound, surrounded by an even more obvious 5 cm x 5 cm discoloration, adorned the rear of Anna Mae's head, exactly where the hospital staff had seen the thawing body leak the week before. She died of exposure to a small-caliber bullet fired from a gun placed near the back of her head. She had been executed."
Loud Hawk - The United States versus
the American Indian Movement,
Kenneth Stern,
ISBN 0-8061-2587-X
"My sister's murderer, or murderers, will probably never be found. I believe the person or persons responsible may be connected with the FBI, perhaps not directly but indirectly somehow. Anna died as a result of ignorance on the part of the killers: she was one person against many of them. Who could she have hurt? They say the FBI is the most powerful body in the United States. Nobody can get near it. How could she have hurt it?
Anna was an educated person - a person with common sense. She worked for the American Indian Movement out of dedication, not for publicity or headlines. The real Indian people, those who are like her, should be controlling the movement.
My sister's death has taught me to foretell the events that will take place in this country. I have learned - from all she told me - to see what is happening. The same things will happen here as have happened in the United States. This country will become another South Dakota.
Mary Lafford...sister to Anna Mae
__________________________________________________ __
I MADE THIS POST SO PEOPLE CAN SEE WHATS STILL GOING ON TODAY. ITS A SAD THING......
:Cry
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