The AIM war cry thunders across our lands
Igniting pride trampled by history
Gathering The People lost in cities
Survivors of Relocation Pogroms
Reservation politics got the rest
The BIA guards the sacred door to
education opening just a crack
Selecting a chosen few to squeeze through
To swim the holy waters reserved for
The rich and the privileged and the white
Nixon’s administration’s sponsoring
Blonde prostitutes for the NTCA
White kids, now fully awake, demonstrate
To stop the war,, and killing of all life
DB Cooper’s still missing, he got away
Dennis says he’s coming to Wounded Knee
Humor overcomes the cold and hunger
At dark time we watch the tracers come in
As if they were shooting stars to carry
our prayers higher, lighting the way home
It is the right time for youth, truth and dreams
Circled by US Marshalls I AM FREE
In Amerika Freedom of the press
is one of the myths of democracy
News blackouts hang over South Dakota
It covers deeds and deals of complicity
No one wants to hear angry Indians
Who refuse to live the lie anymore
Sober, articulate, young and angry
Long haired and armed, educated by you
Does the face of fear wear a red headband
We are Crazy Horse’s people come back
Joseph and Geronimo live in us
The Tribal Chairmen’s Association
Backed by the feds, playing GOOD INDIANS
Denounce the militants: troublemakers
Agitators, cover up the story
Heat up left over lies, serve it again
No matter. The vanished tell no stories
Survivors do, painted in poetry
MONICA CHARLES WRITES ABOUT THE ANNA MAE MURDER TRIAL
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….CONTINUE STORY AT STELLAR HEALING
CLASSIC COINTELPRO
(The story of Anna Mae Aquash
and
Arlo Looking Cloud)
I don’t have words to name the anguish I have carried for Anna Mae, Arlo and John. Thirty years ago hope was a luminous butterfly breaking out of her cocoon in my heart. The days of the old movement, the 1970’s brought out the best in us, and the worst.
We flew to the sun and stole light at the occupation of Wounded Knee 1973 as our rag tag band of Indians yanked our history and destiny from the hands of the United States government. Wounded Knee had been synonymous with the death of our way of life. Close your eyes and you can see Big Foot and his people, frozen where they fell, shot by American soldiers…..CONTINUE THIS STORY AT STELLAR HEALING
YOUR FBI $$$’s HARD AT WORK???
WOW! Is this an example of our Federal dollars at work? Not sure who SNAPPLE is but since he came to my house uninvited supporting Special Agent Joseph Trimbach. As a courtesy I put up a video that he thinks is relevant to the John Graham/Richard Marshall debacle trial. I think the trial is tearing apart Indian country but mostly the mainstream media does not report on it…another example of how the United States continues their ongoing history of racist beliefs and actions against the indigenous people population of this beautiful land.
Although I posted the video late last night with his name in caps he cannot seem to find it even though I also linked the post to his own blog LEGEND OF PINE RIDGE. Snapple is upset not only because he thinks I did not put up Two Elks video but because he mistakenly wrote on a previous post “the FBI is against Indians” He corrected himself but apparently he has no sense of humor. SNAPPLE claims I was making fun at his expense and that he is “older”…not sure what that means…at any rate he is an “older” person who quickly resorts to insults and tantrums when he thinks he has not gotten his way. On top of that I specifically told him that I would post it sometime…I was going to wait until the weekend but stayed up last night..
Mr. Snapple you need to read RULES FOR COMMENTING ON MY BLOG.
Here is one of several comments he left on my blog…I am responding in parenthesis
You are obviously a stupid little idiot who is not able to argue honestly if you choose to make something of an older person’s typing error. And lazy and dishonest not to post TWo Elk’s recent video.
I have given you the youtube link a few times.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zbkm1lMI0DU
Monica and Anna Mae both were both reportedly in a relationship to Dennis Banks, although he was married to Ka-Mook.(Noo….Monica Charles says she was not in a relationship with Dennis Banks and what is your source to such a claim? Do you just throw that stuff out there hoping a sex scandal will spice things up? You sound like the NATIONAL ENQUIRER!)
Monica’s brother (where do you get your information??? Do you think everybody with the last name of Charles is Monicas brother???) Norman was allegedly with Peltier when the FBI agents were shot.
Monica is pretty much at ground zero and spends a lot of time discrediting Indians such as Richard Two Elk and Ka-Mook, who have told the authorities what they witnessed so that there would be evidence to take to court.(Didn’t Ka-Mook get paid 49,000 for her testimony? She basically testified heresay and seven months later married one of the governments lead investigators in the Anna Mae Aquash case. From what I understand Richard Two Elk’s testimony is so bad and he has put out so many conflicting stories that he is not taken too seriously on the stand….or by PBS.)
Here is something Two Elk said about what Dennis Banks ordered boys to do during the occupation:
“I was there, at Wounded Knee. At the age of 19, I backpacked weapons and supplies into the village with my AIM brothers. I remember it was near Easter, because that’s when our leader, Dennis Banks, ordered us to ‘take care’ of a young white guy, suspected of being an informant. We knew what that meant. We strung him up on a cross in a mock crucifixion, and beat him. After we took him down, they led him away and I don’t think he was ever heard from again.”(Richard Two Elk has apparently written several different versions of this incident…If this is true why have the FBI not prosecuted him for murder???)
http://www.expertclick.com/NewsReleaseWire/ReleaseDetails.aspx?ID=26541
Agnes Gildersleeve testified that Indian people were held in a church and threatened with guns. AIM took over a disabled man’s trailer and other people’s homes.
Agnes recounts:
“[AIM] took complete control of the telephone service and local residents were not permitted to answer any of the phones. When my phone would ring, an armed guard would immediately answer the phone and direct the call over to [disabled Wilber Reigert's stolen] trailer house where Banks, Means, and Bellecourt were located…” (Trimbach p. 88) (The Gildersleeves were well known for taking advantage of Native Americans at their trading post…selling objects offensive to Native Americans. Here is Steve Hendricks talking about the Gildersleeves:
Tim Giago writes that I unfairly impugned the honor of the late Clive and Agnes Gildersleeve. The Gildersleeves owned the trading post at Wounded Knee, which was looted by militants who had seized the village to protest oppression on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and beyond. Sloppily lumping my book The Unquiet Grave with Peter Matthiessen’s In The Spirit of Crazy Horse, Giago writes, “In [the two books], you will read about a ‘white man’ and a woman often referred to as a ‘white woman,’ although Agnes Gildersleeve was an Ojibwa woman, who ‘ripped off’ the local Lakota people. This apparently justifies the attacks upon them and the destruction of their business.”
I did not write that Ms. Gildersleeve was white, did not use the words “ripped off” (though they are not far from the truth), and did not excuse the attack on them or their business. I did explain why many Indians hated the business:
“Its owners, the Gildersleeve and Czywczynski families, had strewn billboards for seventy-five miles that announced, SEE THE WOUNDED KNEE MASSACRE SITE, VISIT THE MASS GRAVE. POSTCARDS, CURIOS, DON’T MISS IT! The postcards showed slaughtered Indians, including Chief Big Foot, frozen in the 1890 snow. The traders enlivened their commerce with beadwork, quilts, and other curios bought low from Oglalas and sold high. A Catholic priest once watched Mrs. Czywczynski barter a beader to a stingy $3.50 for an exquisite work, then turn around and sell it for $12.00. The traders doubled as creditors, lending their Indian patrons $10 at humble interest of $2.25 a week. As village postmasters, they also offered a rudimentary auto-payment–opening the mail of customers who had run tabs, cashing their checks without asking, paying their bills at the post, and calling other shopkeepers across the reservation to see if debts were owed them too. There had been calls to boycott the post, but none had worked. The post was the only store for a dozen miles, and the many carless Oglalas of Wounded Knee had no choice but to buy groceries and other wares at its inflated prices. Years later Clive Gildersleeve was called to testify about his business practices, and he invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself ninety-nine times.”
Giago goes on to paint me as an apologist for the American Indian Movement, which led the Indian rights struggle of the 1970s. This is rank distortion. Mine was the first book to describe AIM’s secret killing inside Wounded Knee of an activist named Ray Robinson, and the book’s centerpiece was AIM’s infamous execution of Anna Mae Aquash two years later. As Giago well knows, I condemned AIM sharply for these and lesser brutalities, and more than one AIM leader has threatened me for my pains. What riles Giago is that I also praised AIM (the overwhelming majority of whose members were peaceful) for fighting oppression, and I denuded the oppressors, from small-timers like the Gildersleeves to big-timers like the FBI, the latter of which persistently goaded AIM to just the sort of violence it committed. In Indian Country, the haves like Giago have long fought to keep the have-nots in their place. It is one reason the have-nots are still so multitudinous.
RICHARD TWO ELK FOR SNAPPLE
I have posted on this before. I thought maybe it was something new…Richard Two Elk the man who wrote the forward to AMERICAN INDIAN MAFIA also makes videos. This is being put up again for SNAPPLE who runs the THE LEGEND OF PINE RIDGE blog. After watching it again I still have the same opinion….after the video…
I have several problems with this video…Richard Two Elks supposedly owns and produces videos yet he doesn’t know not to wear a hat on camera…indoors either as far as I am concerned. I was raised that it is disrespectful. Another thing that bothers me is that Richard Two Elks never speaks confidently into the camera…he hides his face and is always looking down at a prepared statement he also mumbles and slurs. It was a bizarre video the first time I watched it and still is. Richard Two Elks was at Wounded Knee II he knows who everyone is and the history….I still get names confused…but I can tell you what I know and believe….looking you in the eye confident that I am true to my feelings and in my beliefs based on what I know…But as I said this might be a difference between whites and Indians?? I am not trying to be mean but the video lacks passion and conviction for the subject never mind that I do not agree with all that is in the video….
Because I have read many other things by Richard Two Elk….I have a hard time believing that these are his words…this is how Richard Two Elks usually writes in some weird voice. This is a comment to me for posting the SNAPPLE post on alt.native
so…why da hill ya postin it hear?…
not nuff room onyer Clog, i meanz…blog…?
please refrain from redundant posting of content which may be read
elsewhere, in it’s entirety, IF anyone should want…DUH!
and this
da mistake ya repeatedly recycle IS…ya seem to bleev we all wanna
play yer stoopid pre-adolescent games witya…
AxeUWally…we find sum sick entertainment in watchin you flop
roundabout…pass dat Popcorn puleez…
and this from another post
if’n ya kickout 9 or 10 o yer C&Pz dat outta move yer last act o
IDIOCY off da Front Page anywhoz…den ya kin maka neu face til Sizzle catch up witya N Cookya agin…
Dang…me Know ya Gotta B havin Bic Phun messin witus, eh?
Like I said it may be a difference between whites and Indians…but Monica Charles doesn’t speak like that…its weird like he has to create another personality for???
I could be wrong but I was raised in a very conservative home and while I am quite liberal in my political views…I mostly carry quite conservative values and this man really bothers me…
One of the other things that bothers me about Richard Two Elks is that he admits to hanging a man on a cross and beating him…I know he was young but he was never charged by the FBI and speaks of the incident in the forward he wrote(?) to Special Agent Joseph Trimabach’s book AMERICAN INDIAN MAFIA. I am a huge believer that all laws should be for all people….while I may not be happy with the prison system in the United States…I believe that run correctly it should be a place where people are held accountable for their actions…I think it is a necessary step to healing all parties involved.I think that people either rise to the occasion or remain unable to confront the horror of what they have done and thus are never able to be totally free. I do not believe that informers involved in crimes should get lesser sentences than those they have informed on…I do think that it should be a consideration after remorseful behavior and parole is being considered. Richard Two Elk reminds me of someone who is not proud of who he has become.
There are a lot of accusations flung about on alt.native and I try not to pay attention to the ones that are just insults being flung around…there are a lot….one of the accusations being hurled around for awhile was that the “real victims” of Wounded Knees were those whose homes were destroyed and that the occupiers of Wounded Knee should sew blankets. Some write like the people are living in cardboard boxes not with no blankets or food….Wounded Knee seems to be a very emotional and sacred site, there was a movement of Indians who were being repressed by the government State and Federal….they thought quite mistakenly that a group of individuals with a few rifles were a match for for the United States government…and like Japan-they were wrong.
The appropriate response after Wounded Knee would have been for the governor at the time to declare an emergency ask for Federal money in order for the owners to rebuild….if this was not done? Shame should be on our government.
The video is very one sided and while Richard Two Elk claims PBS neglected to tell the death of a black supporter at Wounded Knee.. he fails to mention that he hung someone on a cross and beat them to death…this person has disappeared and apparently he changes his story…AIM took him….the FBI took him…??? This is a man who the FBI has chosen as their spokes person on AIM and Wounded Knee. Further more this video fails to mention the abuse and murder of Indian children on Pine Ridge…a little girls eye was shot out. Houses and cars were routinely shot up….even some of the lawyers for the occupiers were beaten. A young woman named Jancita Eagle Deer was raped by the future Governor…He was disbarred by the tribal courts…but the FBI was so racist against Indians that they did not consider the tribal judge to be legitamate….because he was Indian?? There are so many twists and turns to this story I encourage all of you who are interested to read THE UNQUIET GRAVE by Steve Hendricks. He seems to be unbiased and often criticizes or praises both the FBI and AIM.
The fact of the matter is PBS could do a five part series on Wounded Knee II and never be able to cover all of the finger pointing and accusations. The murder of Anna Mae Aquash alone has more whodunnit theories than CARTERS HAS LIVER PILLS!
My solution to all of this is to either let it drop or to put every single person under sodium penethol or hook them up to lie detector tests…every FBI agent, BIA workers…all of the major characters on Pine Ridge…in AIM…FBI informants…even with all of that peoples faulty memories probably still wouldn’t be enough to find out what really happened.
ANNA MAE AQUASH 44/ THE FBI CONTINUES IT’S CAMPAIGN OF HARASSMENT4
All excerpts are in italics and from THE UNQUIET GRAVE by Steve Hendricks.
I finally watched the video produced by and starring Richard Two Elks (watch it here )it is a response to the PBS documentary WE SHALL REMAIN the WOUNDED KNEE segment. There are so many people involved in this case with so many opinions I am continually amazed at how many people are upset some houses are burned down and not concerned about a little girl being shot in the eye or a teenage boy being given alcohol and a moving vehicle by the tribal president. I detest people that step into public office or in a position of authority over other people and fail to set a good example whether it is popular or not. Your job as an adult is to set a good example to the younger generation. Period.
Getting back to the video Two Elks claims to be a professional but the video is poorly produced. If he were just a hobbyist I would say “It’s great!” In the video he is wearing a hat. Maybe that is an Indian thing but men should take their hats off while indoors much less while you are on camera. The hat is covering most of his face and he doesn’t really look in the camera….he is reading from something written that he is holding. Most professionals would have a teleprompter or someone holding up large cards so he could read the script. I say script because he does not seem to be familiar with the subject he is just reading something that someone wrote. This should be a subject that he knows so well that he can speak with authority, conviction and without having to write it down. It also lacks any passion for the victims of Wounded Knee it seems their purpose is only to further their propaganda. I mean are these victims of Wounded Knee sleeping on the ground? Or in a cardboard box? It has been over 30 years. I have heard nothing of any organization that either Trimbach or Two Elks has started to help these supposed victims. The video says nothing about their plight now or what you need to send them to get them back on their feet. The trading post didn’t have insurance??? What state lets you own a business without insurance? Even then. Like I said my impression is that neither Two Elks or Trimbach gives a damn about these victims because in the big picture it is a non issue. But once again why the continued outrage from so many about some possessions…take my house and everything I own…burn it to the ground…I would rather have my eye! Not one word about the little girl who was shot in the eye!!! People these days do not have their priorities straight. Children first! It is the only way our civilization will begin to heal from the cycle of abuse of any color.
Richard Two Elks has come forward and admitted that he murdered a person by beating him to death at Wounded Knee but he has never been charged or spent a day in jail. I think that under the circumstances none of the participants at Wounded Knee should be convicted it was a painful era in the history of our country. AIM and its members were understandably expressing their grief over the genocide and annihilation of their people for a few hundred years. Frustration and the feeling of powerlessness often lead to people going to extreme measures as evidenced by the rise in school shootings. On the other hand Richard Two Elks also claims to work tirelessly on the sexual abuse of children yet he continually taunts a woman who was sexually abused by her father on a native discussion group. The former FBI agent Joseph Trimbach apparently approves of this behavior as he remains silent about this behavior and whole heartedly supports everything Richard Two Elks does. As much as I admire and respect Anna Mae Aquash I am in no way as upset about her death as I am about a little girl getting shot in the eye. Right or wrong politics aside Anna Mae went to Wounded Knee knowing that involving herself in the situation could very well result in her death. She made a choice and should be admired for doing so.
The story of Anna Mae continues…
The harassment of the WKLDOC by the FBI did not end there, hours after the release of Feiten and Davies they ran into the FBI in the hotel lobby. the FBI agents commenced with harassment and the lawyers tried to put the FBI agents under citizens arrest the altercation moved to the street and when the police arrived they actually arrested one of the FBI agents.
...both agents were soon released, but three days later the city attorney charged Pearson with assault and issued a warrant for his re-arrest. Pearson left town the same day.
Joseph Trimbach, the FBI agent in charge of the Dakotas and Minnesota, said Pearson’s departure from Rapid City was just a coincidence; he was not fleeing an arrest warrant, only being rotated back to his home office in California. When reporters asked if the FBI would return Pearson to Rapid City to face the charge, Trimbach scoffed at the idea. “This is a trumped-up charge,” he said. “There is no basis for it….It is absurd on its face that FBI agents would harass the militant Indians or their representatives”. He denied that his men had been put under citizen’s arrest, although they most certainly had, and he added that the arrests of Davies and Feiten had been “valid arrests,” although they most certainly had not.
WKLDOC then began to experience mail being delivered late or not at all anonymous threats over the phone, and other such goings on. They assumed that they were under surveillance of the FBI
WKLDOC filed suit against the FBI for creating a climate that scared its clients from meeting with their lawyers: the FBI cast a pall over the constitutional right to a fair defense.
The case was heard by the ever so corrupt and racist Judge Bogue…
“It might be noted,” Bogue opined, “that many of the acts complained of by the Plaintiffs seem to have been occasioned by the activities of the Plaintiffs themselves. The incidents, occurring while investigating F.B.I. automobiles, photographing agents, and investigating the Defendants’ housing, seem to have occurred when the Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense committee was taking the action to the Defendants. It appears that many of these incidents may have been avoidable by Plaintiffs.” It was the same logic that held a woman need not fear being beaten by her husband if she did not raise her voice.
Bogue dismissed the case.
ANNA MAE AQUASH 43/A PARANOID GOVERNMENT
All excerpts are in italics and from THE UNQUIET GRAVE by Steve Hendricks.
I finally watched the Wounded Knee segment of WE SHALL REMAIN on the computer…now I see why Trimbach and his cheerleaders are upset. I was laughing through a lot of it because I had never seen any footage. Sometimes when I laugh it seems inappropriate but when the truth is exposed the world rejoices and no matter how bad the truth is it has been set free which brings me great joy….It is the lies that are causing so much damage.
The thing that struck me was the uproar the government gets its self into. You would think that Brezhnev himself had landed in America and taken over Wounded Knee their paranoia is so great!! Can you imagine living with such unfounded fears every single day?? This could have been settled by simply listening to the Indians no need for guns. They just wanted to be heard…to have their very valid complaints addressed. There was so much wrong about the whole thing. I think it must be like the mass hysteria that can sometimes be experienced by a crowd only it is stretched over a few generations….some fear that what they have done is going to be done to them. I am also reading a book called FBI SECRETS An FBI Agent’s Expose’ by M.Wesley Swearingdon. You know he was a Hoover guy like G.Gordon Liddy he turns his first name into an initial!
They could have easily done a five part series on just the occupation of Wounded Knee. There is so much that was left out. Somewhere on alt.native I think there was a thread with Richard Two Elks response and something about why they didn’t interview him…I will try to get to that on the next post. My time management is lacking these days! Also I need to watch the program again because one woman was talking about the Commission on Civil Rights which is the subject today but I was trying to clean my kitchen so I didn’t quite get what everybody had to say and who they were.
…the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights concluded its investigation and reported that there had been “massive irregularities” during the election, that nearly all of WKLDOC’s charges could be confirmed, and that in no way could the election be considered valid. USCCR heaped blame on the bureau of Indian affairs, which by law was required to supervise the elections but which steadfastly refused to do so.
…the BIA….said they had read USCCR’s report but declined to make a single counterargument and declared the election would stand.
WKLDOC appealed Bogue’s decision first to an unsympathetic panel of the Eighth circuit and then to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1976 declined to hear the case.
That the Oglala people might deserve a judicial accounting for the stolen election, or that those who might deserve a judicial accounting for the stolen election, or that those who stole it and those who let it be stolen should be held answerable for their deeds did not, apparently, impress the justices of America’s highest court.
Funny how our government only upholds laws on reservations when it benefits the governments cause…otherwise the Indians are left to their own devices…which is what Wounded Knee was all about to begin with.
WKLDOC prepared the defense of its clients from and office out of the spare rooms of a fraternity house of the National College of Business in Rapid City.
WKLDOCers noticed that their comings and goings at the frat house were being scrutinized by clean-cut men…Jeanne Davies and Fritz Feiten, spotted one of the unmarked cars. It was empty of occupants but had a two way, police-style radio inside, so Feiten wrote down the car’s license plate number. As he did so, two men stepped out of a car across the street and walked up to him and Davies. they flashed FBI badges. “H-u-g-h-e-s,” Davies copied into a notebook and started to write his badge number, but Agent Hughes detracted the badge, snatched Davies’s paper, and ordered them to put their hands on the car. The WKLDOCkers asked if they were under arrest.
More agents arrived.
When the WKLDOCkers refused to give any information beyond their names, the questions turned to taunts, then to arrests.
WKLDOC had them bailed out soon enough, but on their way out the door the FBI added a federal charge-interfering with witnesses to a judicial proceeding-and the pair were re-arrested. no federal witnesses had been involved in the incident on the street, save the FBI agents themselves,
and they were not the sort of witnesses the law contemplated. But because it was Saturday night and a federal magistrate was unavailable to review the complaint, Davies and Feiten were kept locked up over the weekend, which was the real motive behind the complaint. Come Monday, the magistrate immediately dismissed the federal charge, and the city attorney did the same with the municipal public-nuisance charge. The FBI never received a reprimand for what was clearly harassment of legal workers..
ANNA MAE AQUASH 40/LIFE AFTER WOUNDED KNEE
All excerpts are in italics and from THE UNQUIET GRAVE by Steve Hendricks.
To continue with a subject from the last post here is a good website that provides a good service, NEW AGE FRAUDS & PLASTIC SHAMANS They are the reason I didn’t get a post done last night. I am a reader of what people consider “new age”. My “new age” collection includes my personal favorite A COURSE IN MIRACLES which is a constant in my life except that I am not a true practitioner of any religion. Yogananda, the Dali Lama, Walsch, Tolle…a lot of book stores put the Buddhist and Hindu stuff with the new age cause it ain’t Christianity. I am not a Buddhist or anything else. I love “new age” music but not that Yanni or Celtic (sorry to those of you who like the Celtic stuff) crap. I am very particular about my new age music. But that’s another post.
What I would like to get to is that I had know idea how prevalent and damaging some of these charlatans are. I live in an area with a few people who claim to be Native American shaman or medicine men….some even have certificates from the Lakota tribe or so they say. I have never met a person who claims to be a spiritual leader that I had good feelings about. The same goes for those books by Mary Summer Rain whom I have never read and probably shouldn’t be critiquing her I just have an oogie feeling when ever I see her books and she has been around a long time. The good folks at the New Age Frauds website expose her for what she is. Oops I am getting off track again the point is that it is a wide spread problem with these “religions” not only do they disrespect the Native American ceremonies but apparently some of the herbs and plants that Native Americans use are becoming hard to find because of these “”. Some people even die because of these whack jobs. Luckily I have always been wary of guru type people. That is not to say that there isn’t the real thing out there….I’m just not a follower. So for those of you who are inclined to this sort of thing read some of the warnings. Just their fraud section has over 5,000 posts for inquiries. I’m still reeling at all the fraud..
And now from the poetess Monica Charles a glorious poem of rage…. cause and effect.
WOUNDED KNEE 1973
On with the story…
…the Aquash’s settled full-time in St. Paul. Indians by the score were doing likewise to support Banks and Means for the length of their eight-month trial. But the courtroom was so small that many could not get in, so anna Mae put the idle feminine fingers to work sewing ribbon shirts.
Aquash found other outlets for her energy at the overlapping AIM and WKLDOC offices, doing everything from clerical work to writing press releases to planning fundraisers. she also tutored students at the Red Schoolhouse, AIM’s school for Indian children who had either dropped out or been kicked out of public school. she was especially keen on teaching students how to use libraries to research their heritage.
The marriage started falling apart due to alcohol and fighting apparently Nogeeshik used to beat her too…I have never been hit by a man….I don’t get that nonsense…
After their separation, Anna Mae reverted to the name Pictou, or tried to , but the surname she had taken at the iconic wedding at wounded Knee would not be discarded so easily. To the small public who followed Indian affairs she remained Anna Mae Aquash, and would continue so even in death.
Apparently Dennis was a lothario back in the day and his attentions turned towards Anna Mae.
In 1974 Banks was married to a much younger Lakota woman, Kamook Nichols, a friend of Aquash. But friendship did not stop Aquash from falling in live with Banks, and they began an affair that summer.
After their rendezvous (Annie Mae and Banks) in Ontario, Aquash continued east to Nova Scotia to see her daughters and , on arriving, was enraged to learn that Jake Maloney had taken custody of them without telling her. There was no denying, however, that she had been an absentee mother for more than a year. If she wanted to regain custody, she would have to settle into a paying job and keep a stable household, which in practice meant giving up her activism. She agonized about what to do, but in the end she chose her cause over her family and prayed that someday her girls would grow to understand.
Yeah I kind of wondered that her daughters had a good reason to be pissed off at AIM…Mothers are so important and theirs chose AIM over them. I’m thinking they want nothing to do with what took their mother away. Aside from that I hope their father was good to them.
She returned to St Paul for a few illicit weeks with Banks, but he soon sent her to Los Angeles….Her brief was to revitalize AIM’s California office, a potentially lucrative satellite since many of Hollywood’s stars sympathized with the Indian cause from the bottom of their capacious pockets. Aquash came to Los Angeles a new woman: Joanna Jason. She meant the alias to fool the FBI, which she assumed, correctly, had penetrated AIM with informers and would be watching her, but the ruse did not work.
“Our biggest problem,” a spy quoted Aquash, “is that we don’t have the funding to call halfway across the country to find out who is representing who in the wounded Knee trials. There’s no money to pay for lon-distance calls. The phone bill last month was one hundered and ninety-two dollrs. The salary I make feeds us. We’re waiting for somebody to call us aobut eh government’s presentation in the trial at Lincoln because we can’t afford to call them. If we have any money, we’ll be able to put out a newsletter. but we have postage costs, printing costs, money for mats, and so on.”
The group’s hand-to-mouth existence did not stop the FBI from seeing in Aquash a threat to the republic.
ANNA MAE AQUASH 39/WEDDING AT WOUNDED KNEE/FAKE MEDICINE WOMAN
All excerpts are in italics and from THE UNQUIET GRAVE by Steve Hendricks.
Here is another poem by Monica Charles
WOUNDED KNEE 1973 #6
We had to empty our pockets of knives
Lighters, flashlights, all things unnatural
To enter the world of our grandfathers
An ethereal place where dreams and songs
are the language spoken by Spirit
They wrapped and bound Crow Dog in a star quilt
and laid him face down on the cold hard floor
All light was blacked out forcing us inward
The Spirits prophesied, preached like grampa
Our starving souls, baby birds, open mouths
for food foraged by our eagle mother
Drums, rattles, birds, deer, little points of light
whirred past like the rings of a hoop dancer
We spent the night in the realm of Spirit
Lost children finding our way home at last
Sounds like some good things came out of Wounded Knee II!
..not everyone at wounded Knee liked Pictou. Her friend Mary Moore (later Mary Crow Dog, wife of Leonard) wrote that Pictou fought with a group of women called the…..
Won’t even print that until I hear the same kind of reference towards the leaders of AIM these great warriors who were supposed to be protecting their people did they forget about those looking up to them? I’ll be damned if the colonizers didn’t teach Indian men the art of double standards! (I might be having a bout of pms)
Moore wrote of the Patrol, “They were loud-mouth city women, very media conscious, hugging the limelight. they were bossy, too, trying to order us around (and) getting all the credit and glory while we did the shit work, scrubbing dishes or making sleeping bags out of old jackets. Annie Mae gave these women a piece of her mind and I took her side.” Moore was too hard on the…..Many of the patrollers, like Madonna Gilbert, cousin to Russell Means, and Lorelei DeCora Means, wife of Russell’s brother Ted, did great amounts of work in the shadow of their more famous male relatives. But Moore was right that the patrollers did not like Pictou. Probably they resented that she was less retiring in front of the men, that she was toting a weapon and"manning" a bunker, and so on.A few weeks after Anna Mae and Nogeeshik arrived at Wounded Knee, Mary Moore delivered herself a son, whom she named Pedro for her friend Pedro Bissonette. Pictou was one of the midwives. The next day, Anna Mae and Nogeeshik were wed before the citizens of the Independent Oglala Nation.On April 25, a few days after Frank Clearwater was killed and a few days before Buddy Lamont would be, they walked out of the new nation and into the welcoming embrace of the BIA police. The police took them to the town of Kyle, north of Wounded Knee, where they were charged with breaking Dick Wilson’s law that banned three or more people from gathering inn one place. the next morning ” Annie Mae Aquash” and her husband were interviewed briefly-whether by the FBI or BIA is unclear-and released. Her interview lasted sixteen minutes, an indication of how unimportant she was to authorities. this would soon change.
I was looking for something more positive but came across this instead
No wonder Monica ain’t too fond of white women…. after watching a minute of this I’m a bit ashamed myself!!!
It seems to me that there should be some sort of registry to investigate whites claiming to be an Indian medicine man/woman.
God help me end this on a good note!
I looked up Indian women Oregon and found this…
Oregon is so awesome and Indians are sooooo….. not really visible here. In fact now that I think of it on my tour of Oregon a few weeks ago I ran into Indians from India but no American Indians….How does that song go…There’s something happening here…
ANNA MAE AQUASH 31/THE STORY OF NINE YEAR OLD MARY ANN LITTLE BEAR
All excerpts are in italics and from THE UNQUIET GRAVE by Steve Hendricks
Chapter4!!!!!! Page 81!!!!! I’ll still be doing these posts in 2012…..probably as a meteor is crashing onto my head.
Monica Charles graced me with her presence and let me know that the trial is starting in 16 days and that David Seals will be testifying. God Bless him! I am reading his book POW WOW HIWAY now and he is funny I have been meaning to do a post on it. No matter the outcome some people will not be happy unless by some miracle there is a plague of honesty and remorse. John Graham has children as does Anna Mae. Not sure about Richard Marshall. I know that based on the evidence presented at Arlo Looking Clouds trial I would not find comfort in his conviction had he murdered my parent. But I don’t walk in their shoes it just seems strange that they have no anger at the FBI. But may be they were also angry at their mother for not being around while they were growing up. My own father died so suddenly and there are things I still wish I could talk to him about. If fact one of our last arguments was about Indians. I must have just finished Russell Means book and he told me that there was only one tribe whose children were sent to boarding school…I don’t remember that much about it except that we were yelling. I barely remember the book….the only memory about Anna Mae was triggered by the post about her hands being cut off. Maybe I shut it all out. Maybe I have some form of white guilt, but I really don’t feel that I have that type of guilt. I have Catholic guilt. Not as much as I used to have. But I am more proactive now. I spent my early years partying and going to concerts…it wasn’t until the last year of Clinton’s presidency that I started paying attention to the state of the country. I have been wrong about a lot of things in life but have always had the gift of changing my mind when presented with a new idea or bit of information. I do not cling to my beliefs in the face of factual information. I don’t pretend that I am right because I have too much pride to be wrong.
Here is an interesting site that has interviews with mediators on Wounded Knee. FBI perjuring themselves….etc
And here is a photo of the U.S. Marshal who has a set of balls
U.S Marshal Colburn
Here is more information about him on the US Marshal website. The site also give an account of Wounded Knee that doesn’t disparage the Indians and even expresses regret that a few were killed. If only the keystone cops at AMERICAN INDIAN MAFIA would take some lessons from this man.(I hope he doesn’t break my heart in the next chapter) I hope Monica Charles isn’t having heart failure….
Chapter 4 starts with a little girl getting shot in the eye. What the fuck???? Did that Giago guy write any posts of outrage about that???? Seriously I really don’t know. And those Indians at Wounded Knee are they still homeless??? I remember some woman calling for Monica Charles to sew blanket for them….as if the Governor couldn’t have declared a state of emergency and gotten them housing. Not to belittle their plight or hardship but are they sleeping outside??? This little girl was shot in the eye!!! Take my house and everything in it…I would rather have my eye!!!! I can find another place to live have a ton of friends and family who would love to have me as a guest. Nine years old and someone shoots you in the eye??? Her name was Mary Ann Little Bear…Maybe I am getting ahead of myself and the FBI, Wilson the BIA did an investigation and the bad person who shot her is in jail next to Arlo Looking Cloud. Could it be true?????
Nope.
Well fuck it all I just Googled Giago and Mary Ann Little Bear nope not a mention but I only looked at the first page which should have brought up any diatribes he wrote about her.
I am listening to rap music which may not be a good idea when writing about Anna Mae…I usually listen to Eva Cassidy or play good new age music….emphasis on good new age music not to be confused with that Yanni crap..ok I am changing the music here we go Yo Yo Ma and Bobby McFerrin an awesome recording!!! I wonder if I can find it on youtube:
Ok on with Mary Ann Little Bear’s dilema…I truly hope that she did not let this get in the way of having a wonderful life.
The Police were called (this happened at midnight). Well after daylight, …BIA officers and FBI agents arrived at Paul Thunder Horse’s house. At least half a dozen adults had witnessed the shooting, either from one of the cars or from the nearby houses, but the lawmen spoke to only a few of them, and to those only briefly. They took no official statements nor even, so far as the interviewees could see, notes. Nor did they photograph the bullet holes in the cars or the houses, nor collect the lodged bullets.
The witness were unaminous about where the shots had come from: the property of the Francis Randalls, 250 yards up the way. The Randalls were goons; the Little Bears and Thunder Horses were AIM sympathizers. The lawmen made a brief visit to the Randall house and may have confiscated a couple of pistols, but these would not have been the crime weapons since bullets from pistols would not have carried 250 yards. No arrests were made.
The parents swear a complaint and the police do….nothing.
Now I am totally against the death penalty but under certain circumstances if the family of the victim really feels it will help them to recover by killing the perpetrater themselves. By all means…. I read a story awhile ago and bookmarked it because if I was the woman in the story I would have probably done the same thing:
MOTHER SETS FIRE TO HER DAUGHTERS GLOATING RAPIST
And then those motherfucking BIA police officers …
announced to the press that Mary Ann Little Bear had been maimed in an “exchange of gunfire,” the implication being that both sides were to blame. There was no evidence then-or now -that the victims “exchanged” a single shot, or even had a gun with which to do so.
Seriously I want to know how do these people sleep at night??? Someone please explain it to me.
When the BIA and FBI refused to arrest the shooter, AIM sent armed men to guard the Thunder horse house and WKLCOC sent a team of investigators. The government that barely stirred itself on behalf of Mary Ann Little Bear now mustered fourteen (FOURTEEN) BIA police, FBI agents, and U.S. marshals to threaten the AIMers with arrest.
Dear God let not Colburn be one of the U.S. Marshals. Thats it I have to take a shower and go to bed.
ANNA MAE AQUASH 29/FINALLY A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER WITH A SET OF BALLS!!!
All excerpts are in italics and from THE UNQUIET GRAVE by Steve Hendricks.
I don’t put a lot into race….never really think of myself as “white” of course I see color but I don’t base my friendships on it. I was raised a white American and am terribly proud of who I am. Not because of my color….I am one of the few people I know who isn’t afraid to look at myself honestly good or bad. I know me. I love being American this is the greatest land with the greatest people.
Having said that this Indian history is hard to swallow there are very few redeeming white people in THE UNQUIET GRAVE so far!! Monica Charles said awhile ago that the difference between her and I is that she fucking hates the police, and the whole “just us” system and I see them as public servants. My anger and horror of this isn’t that I have decided one way or the other who killed Anna Mae…but over the systematic corruption of our public servants who should be representing everyone!
Mark Thompson was bringing up the capitalist slave system a ways back and I have half dropped out of society for the most part. Everything going on with the government, economy, Anna Mae for that matter happens because we are a divided. We allow ourselves to be divided. I say this to everyone complaining about the state of the world. Collectively we have asked for it. The races can no longer afford to be separate in ideology. We will either choose capitalism or we will choose the good of the people and the earth. One will lead us to survival the other to destruction.
Indians of course are discriminated against but the only way out is for people to unite. Not meaning we lose our individuality or culture but uniting. It might not be fair but the fact is unless whites are swayed into a different way of thinking about Indians their situation will not change rapidly. Unless collectively there are more people uniting for causes that are for all people much will stay the same.
Consider the Anna Mae case no matter your opinion there really is no evidence to convict anybody. There is a bunch of hearsay. Take a roomful of people divided and pointing fingers. You walk in and make 4 friends and decide that they are right and convict someone based on opinions. The general public fails to realize that the FBI could have easily picked another 4 people who have a whole different side. They could then pick another 4 people and yet a third opinion and would convict a whole different set of individuals. So far there is no evidence in this case.
Imagine being Arlo Looking Cloud behind bars and maybe he did it or didn’t….but the evidence is not there. He supposedly confessed. But under the influence of narcotics…If his last name was Kennedy he would be a Senator!!!!
There wasn’t one white person who liked me writing about this on alt.native. The Indians were divided. The FBI groupies don’tt like it. Most of my friends don’t like it. All in all I don’t give a shit even when I was in my teens I walked to my own drum. One Indian reading my stuff said that white people getting involved in Indian affairs makes things worse for them. I don’t believe that….I think if you are an Indian and you invest all of your hopes in some white people “fixing” everything you will be disappointed. The Civil Rights movement was successful because African Americans united and were able to also sway the majority of white people. It was successful because they were basically in charge of their own destiny. When the majority of people take action then things will change. Of course the majority of people can also do harm depending on what it is we want. Everything in the world is basically because that is what we collectively wanted. That is why I am beginning to admire reservation Indians they have the courage to not participate in the capitalist slavery system. I am sure that there are some who stay for other reasons….alcohol or mental problem. Just like in other poor areas where access to health care and education is lacking. I know a lot of white people who also choose not to participate in corporate slavery they live off the grid…grow their own food. I have a foot in each world. Woke up a bit late and can’t quite make the leap….either way!!!
I don’t have a tv in my house but when I am staying at the Red Lion I watch tv nonstop…lately everytime I am going past Nancy Grace the woman who does the crime stuff there has been no mention of the Anna Mae case. Its all about the white victims. Here is the CNN page for Nancy Grace e-mail her. No matter the side you are on the story deserves attention. See if they give a shit about an Indian woman who was murdered 30 years ago.
When someone complains to me now about the government I ask what have you done who have you written? ….nobody. My Mother does this and then uses the excuse that she doesn’t write good letters and her spelling is bad. Well guess what? America is made up of more than ivy league grads. And they aren’t too fucking smart either look at how much Harvard lost…8 BILLION DOLLARS
Everybody deserves to be heard and represented.
Anyway it still boggles my mind that the trial is being held in South Dakota. I just looked up what the percentage of people who voted for Barack Obama was in South Dakota – 45%. So the state is progressing in their issues of race. The worst states were Utah, Oklahoma and Wyoming all in the low 30′s. Can you imagine what those places are like?? I live in Oregon and we voted 57% in favor of Obama and we still have many many issues concerning race. If John McCain had picked a different running mate then there might be speculation whether people were voting based on race….
Anyway to get on with the story AIM has taken over Wounded Knee and the FBI has set up roadblocks and President Wilson and his goons have set up a roadblock to the roadblock. President Wilson will not allow the WKLDOC lawyers through to see their clients. They have sent a message to the FBI who has talked to Wilson who has denied the request and the FBI…
…agents offered WKLDOC their regrets. what could they do? The WKLDOCkers suggested that on occasion the FBI had been known to arrest lawbreakers, but their suggestion went unheeded.
Judge Andrew Bogue, one of the two federal judges in Sough Dakota and the judge of first resort for cases in the western half of the state, said he saw no reason why the goons should have to remove their illegal roadblock. Unfortunately, Supreme Court precedent left him no choice but to order the goons to let the lawyers through. The goons grudgingly let them pass.
The BIA and the FBI continued to support the goons anyway giving them shotgun shells, C-rations, two way radios,
Eventually the government parked an APC with the goons. the goons showed their gratitude by continuing to level their rifles at all travelers, federal and WKLDOC alike.
…one day the goons turned away mediators from the Justice Department on grounds that they were overly sympathetic to AIM. Wayne Colburn, the director of the Marshals Service, had by then grown tired of having shotguns pointed at him whenever he approached the roadblock. when he heard of the mediators being turned away, he grabbed tow of his marshals, puth the rest on alert, and sped to the roadblock to set the goons straight. FBI agents up the road had heard over the radio that Colburn was coming and tipped the goons who had rifles at hand..
Hoping not to inflame the Wilsonites any more than necessary, the marshalls left their guns in the van-a decision they soon regretted. Colburn gave the goons a choice: let the mediators through, or join him on a ride to jail. The goons said they intended to do neither….
“If there is going to be bloodshed,” one of the goons eventually said, “let it start here.”
Colburn later said he believed at this point that he and his men might well be murdered…..one of the marshals sidled back to the van on pretense of using the radio, grabbed a gun instead, and spun on the advancing goons. Colburn told them to get their asses up against the van.
As they did, an FBI agent appeared and told Colburn that tehre was really no need to arrest such good friends as these.
“If you’re3 not going to help,” Colburn answered, “you might as well get back up against that van yourself.”
The agent said he was under no obligation to follow the orders of a U.S. marshal.
“your ideas on jurisdiction,” Colburn said, “mean about as much to me as piss falling from the sky.” He told the agent to clear the hell out of the way, and the agent did.
Colburn took 11 goons to Pine Ridge for processing…
That night other goons reestablished the roadblock. Before Colburn could dismantle it again, FBI agents prevailed on the goons to temporarily disband it. They promised that higher-ups in Washington wre at that moment working on a deal to let the oradblock stand….
Colburn demanded the roadblock come down…an arbiter agreed with him. That afternoon Colburn took the negotiators on Pine Ridge through the roadblock but were stopped by a teenager with a rifle. There was a standoff between Colburn and the teenager but an FBI agent stepped between them. The teenager blew a hold in a car radiator a few days later. He was never charged.
In fact the government had just decided to train the goons and put them on the federal payroll.
Of course I wish Colburn had made a stand for WKCLDOC being denied access to their clients…but like I said I’ll take what I can get!! Most of us are not concerned with others problems until they begin to effect us.
I was looking for something on the goons at Wounded Knee and found this by a band called REDBONE who I hear on Sirius all the time they wrote COME AND GET YOUR LOVE. Who knew there was an Indian band that got airplay??? Maybe everybody except me!
Anyway here is their song WOUNDED KNEE
and then COME AND GET YOUR LOVE
ANNA MAE AQUASH 23/WHY DIDN’T THE FBI PROSECUTE THE OWNERS OF THE TRADING POST AT WOUNDED KNEE?
All excerpts are in italics and from THE UNQUIET GRAVE by Steve Hendricks.
This is such an emotional chapter so far. One part of me thinks that the Indians could have done so much more if they had done the Gandhi thing. I am a bit of a pacifist but then I have never been in a situation where I have been discriminated against to the extreme 24/7 that Indians experience day in and day out. They tried to win at a game we excel at-violence and oppression. You cannot win playing the game of violence and oppression against whites we are the masters of the game. However now there is another war being played. It is one of class and white people are just beginning to feel this way and more often they pick up a gun to get revenge on their oppressors at work, or the bank or society in general eating in a restaurant…. even our children bring guns to school in order to exact revenge on teachers and other students who they feel have been treating them unfairly. It is all relative. James Simon, Tom Giago and people of their ilk commit the greatest and most damaging crimes: DENIAL. They write letters about the victims of Wounded Knee but neglect to mention the crimes some of those people were committing against Indians. The FBI only prosecuted or investigated their point of view which was that of hatred and racism against Indians. We judge Indians with a double standard while the people who have sworn to uphold the laws and to protect and serve the people of this country are the worst criminals. “As for the Gildersleeves they are just sad people making a sad living off of oppression, stealing, slavery, of those less fortunate around them. Kind of like the CEO’S on Wall Street. What they have done is to tell them selves “everyone else does it”. The only moment of consciousness they displayed was pleading the fifth to save them selves. Unfortunately like most people they cannot even begin to think of the good of the people and only what is good for them. Some people claim that they were nice…of course they were….If I was opening up peoples mail and cashing their checks stealing their money and their art work I would be nice to them too!! Even serial killers can be nice to some people. Most people are a mixture of good and bad. But a nice person does not make a living off of those less fortunate. However these are the people who never see them selves for who they are. That should not be an excuse for the rest of us to begin committing crimes against humanity we must all be aware of how we are conducting ours individual selves. The time is coming on Earth when we are going to have to start paying for our past sins-no I’m not one of those armageddon freaks our sociedy is on the verge of collapse because of our wrong decisions collectively.
General William Tecumseh Sherman had observed int he neneteenth century, ” a reservation is a parcel of land inhabited by Indians and surrounded by thieves,” but the trading post franchises brought the thieves onto the reservations.
The Wounded Knee Trading Post was a superior specimen. Its owners, the Gildersleeve and Czyweczynski families, had strewn billboards for seventy-five miles that announced, SEE THE WOUNDED KNEE MASSACRE SITE, VISIT THE MASS GRAVE. POSTCARDS, CURIOS, DON’T MISS IT! The postcards showed slaughtered Indians, including Chief Big Foot, frozen in the 1890 snow.
A Catholic priest once watched Mrs. Czwczynski barter a beader to a stingy $3.50 for an exquisite work, then turn around and sell it for $12.00.
The traders doubled as creditor, lending their Indian patrons $10 at humble interest of $2.25 a week.
That is an interest rate of 22.5% a week (not sure how to figure that over a month or year). Quite sure that in the 1970′s that would have more than exceeded the usury rates and should have been prosecuted as a felony under the Federal RICO laws. Today corporations have purchased the politicians, government, FBI…..so usury rates prey on the military, elderly, Indians and poor people and are no longer enforced…but back then this should have been prosecuted.
As village postmasters, they also offered a rudimentary auto-payment-opening the mail of xustomers who had run tabs, cashing their checks without asking, paying their bills at the post, and calling other shopkeepers across the reservation to see if debts were owed them too. There had been calls to boycott the post, but none had worked. But none had worked, the post was the only store for a dozen miles,a dn the many carless Oglalas of Wounded Knee had no choice but to buy groceries and other wares at its inflated prices. Years later clive Gildersleeve was called to testify about his business practices, and he invoked his Fifth amendment right not to incriminate himself ninety-nine times.
Yes that was 99 times refusing to tell the truth to keep from incriminating himself for the crimes he had committed against Indians. That is not the actions of someone who knows that they have done right who is proud of their behavior.
On arriving in downtown Wounded Knee, some protesters went first to the mass grave, wehre they prayed and begged their ancestors’ guidance in what they were about to do. Others, more secular, set about pillaging the trading post and museum. ( One side had been pillaging their community for years under the guise of “business” the other side weren’t so hypocritical!)Russell Means recalled later that among the museum’s displays was a ninetheenth-century ledger of cattle receipts on Pine Ridge: “The Cavalry captainin charge had made up names for the Indians who received that beef- “Shits In His Food,” She Comes Nine Times,” …..”
The occupiers burned the ledger.
The occupiers also took hostages this book says that they stayed willingly other sources namely Mrs. Gildersleeve(I have to make a point that Tom Giago in a response to a letter Steve Hendricks wrote says the hostages were not free to leave. Read the exchanges here. His main source is Mrs. Gildersleeve. I personally have to wonder about that. Giago doesn’t talk about what the other hostages experiences. Tom Giago is one of those people who only prints what will support his emotional stake in this whole mess. If someone has an opinion different than his he discounts them. James Simon is the same way will not answer any questions he just spouts mindless talking points.
Then they sent a list of demands toward Pine Ridge….
ANNA MAE AQUASH 22/WOVOKA/SLAUGHTER OOPS I MEAN BATTLE OF WOUNDED KNEE
All excerpts are in italics and from THE UNQUIET GRAVE by Steve Hendricks.
WOW!!!! Finally on CHAPTER 3…
In 1890, after the last of the nomadic Indians had been confined to reservations, there arose among the Paiutes of Nevada a new religion.
Its Prophet, Wovoka, said God knew his children were suffering and He was prepared to return them to Eden. All He required was that they live peacefully, work hard, and perform a dance, the ghost dance, which God had taught Wovoka.
The Indian Bureau, predecessor of the BIA, permitted the faith to spread (by golly that sure is nice for man to allow the WORD OF GOD to be spread) peaceful living and hard work were precisely what were wanted of the Indian. But as the religion crept eastward, it mutated. the ghost dance soon promised not merely an earthly Eden for Indians but also the annihilation of whites. (A perfect example of how corrupted the bible is today. Mankind no matter the race feels compelled to “help” God clarify His meaning!)
In its turn to militancy, the religion acquired an amulet: the ghost dance shirt, which , when worn by a person of faith, was said to make him impervious to gunfire.
On Pine Ridge the Oglalas called the superintendent Young Man Afraid of Indians. Addled by the dancers’ chants, Young Man Afraid wrote the army, “Indians are dancing in the snow and are wild and crazy….we need protection and we need it now.”
So General Nelson Miles seizes the dancer’s headmen Sitting Bull. There is gunfire and Sitting Bull is killed along with thirteen others. General Miles then rounds up all of the ghost dancing bands except one.
...led by a chief named Big Foot, whose group had been swollen with the survivors of Sitting Bull’s dancers In late December the Seventh Cavalry intercepted Big Foot in the Badlands. The Cavalrymen marched the few hundred Lakotas to Wounded Knee Creek where the next day, December 29, 1890, Colonel James Forsyth had them encircled. Forsyth mounted Hotchkiss machine guns on the surrounding hilltops and demanded the Indians weapons. the tense surrender of guns was barely underway when a shot was fired.
Neither the shooter nor his motive will ever be known, but his shot was followed by a bloodletting the likes of which the Plains had never seen.
The cavaliers loosed their Hotchkisses on the Indians…Abdomens and skulls were exploded like so many watermelons. The bullets severed limbs like leaves from trees, Great pools of blood seeped over the snow as men and women, infants and the infirm fell in heaps. what the big guns missed, scores of carbines picked off. Long after the Indians stopped firing, the soldiers continued. Fleeing children were pursued for miles through frozen creekbeds before being shot in the back. The ghostdance shirts offered a thin defense against Manifest Destiny
The Army said the mass grave it dug the next day held 146 Lakotas, of whom 44 were women and 18 children. One of the muirdered was Big Foot. the army reported another 51 Indians wounded, 7 of whom eventually died, the Lakotas said their dead numbered more like 3590.
On the cavalry’s side, the army claimed 25, killed and 39 wounded. Most (perhaps all) were killed by their comrades’ crossfire.
The army said then-and says now- that what happened at Wounded Knee was a pitched battle among equals, and it awarded twenty Congressional Medals of Honor to the Seventh for bravery at the “Slaughter Battle of Wounded Knee.”
In 1975, Senator James Abourezk of South Dakota proposed that the government compensate the heirs of the massacre’s victimes with a niggardly $3,000 apiece-a total burdenon the treasury of about %600,000. the army fought the bill, and Congress sided with the army. The press gave the matter the smallest blip of attention,and the nation left the Indians to their open wound.
What can you expect Indians are not white….. CEO’s who have stolen trillions from the people are rewarded with a few more trillion!! Not because of racism no siree!! (just ask dem white folks over at alt.native.)
On a more serious note. The mass grave at Wounded Knee should belong to the Indians whose ancestors reside there. To me a dead body is a dead body and the soul no longer lingers in it. But I think that the Indians believe something different and it hurts them to have their ancestors are disturbed. Can you imagine how many white people visit the grave site with a mean spirit and to gloat? White people should only be allowed to visit if they are a guest.
THANK YOU MONICA CHARLES,THOSE TOOTHPICKS WITH CELLOPHANE ON TOP,AND WHY I LOST FAITH IN THE GOVERNMENT
My first real job was in the kitchen at the Hilton in Reno, Nevada. It was my first time off the goat farm in Eddyhell, Oregon. I was eager to do a good job since it was so hard to even get an entry level job as the recession of the 1980s was in full swing. I had to beg for a job EVERYDAY for about 2 weeks before they would hire me.
I remember being stunned that the hard boiled eggs came in big white five gallon containers containing preservatives. Sort of shocking when you grow up on a farm. I saw homeless drunks passed out on the street I would leave them money because I thought they would need to eat when they woke up.
One day while I was in one of the pantries I was unpacking a carton with many white boxes. I opened one and it was filled with those pretty toothpicks with the colored cellophane on top. I just stared at it awhile in shock…..
I had NO idea they were mass produced….
I THOUGHT THE WAITRESS AT THE SIZZLER LOVINGLY GLUED THAT COLORED CELLOPHANE TO MY TOOTHPICK AND PUT IT IN MY BLT TO MAKE MY DAY BETTER!
Seriously! Still upsets me in a funny sort of way.
Two weeks ago I started a blog,about a week later I put up a link to a Wickipedia page about Anna Mae Aquash. I didn’t put any thought into it just sort of like looking it up a word in a dictionary. I didn’t care in the sense that it happened long ago.
Monica Charles posted it on a discussion group for Indians. Monica was very passionate and I felt what she was feeling… not all the Indian stuff, but as a woman in a battle. My impression of her was that she was a young woman in her mid twenties who was probably going to get worn down from a battle that she could not control and would lose eventually.
I e-mailed her not sure if I was going to incur her wrath because I wanted her to approve of a post that I had linked to her website THE DAUGHTER OF TSE WHIT ZEN. And she responded with such kindness and encouragement I was taken aback. There are many people that I like instantly and many people I hate instantly and I liked Monica Charles.
So there I was giving this young woman advice and support. She in turn was providing me with links and books to read encouraging me to keep writing… I had some relatives staying with me for a few days. So I wasn’t doing my usual curiosity that killed the cat thing. After they left I sat at my computer and Googled Monica Charles. Good lord. This woman who I thought was a young girl had been demonstrating since I was probably five….
She was at,
Wounded Knee II
The occupation of the BIA
She writes poetry:
WOUNDED KNEE 1973 #5
We walked out past government sentries
Victorious and frightened in one breath
Flares popped bloomed and fell but never found us
An armoured personnel carrier loomed
A mammoth dragon tracking us through bad dreams
We collapsed in the hardened fluffs of snow
Hundred year old frozen ghost dancers
Two young white men jumped down, lit cigarettes
City eyes blind to Indians in the night
Their cigarettes glowed like serpent eyes
The snow crunched as they drove to their next post
We rolled and exhaled and stretched our stiff joints
We walked all night to…
You can read the rest at her blog THE DREAMER’S JOURNEY.
Recently she was involved in a fight for the rights of Indians to hunt whales. You can read about that hair raising tale here
Currently she is a warrior fighting for the truth to come out about Anna Mae Aquash’s murder and cover up by the FBI. Here is the SUPPORT LETTER FOR JOHN GRAHAM FROM MONICA CHARLES that she sent to OUR FREEDOM blog.
THAT IS WHAT YOU CALL A FUCKING HISTORY
Unbelievable! I actually started crying because she has to be such a brave person and I felt like an idiot… So I e-mailed her again to ask if she was the SAME Monica Charles I had been reading about and to express horror at my stupidity.That’s me. Monica wrote back once again with an encouraging e-mail.
I was raised in a Republican household and held those views most of my life, except that I was more compassionate. The death penalty didn’t make sense to me, I believed in support from government for women with children…Basically I was a RINO (Republican in name only).
The company I used to work for employed a lot of illegal immigrants and then they would treat them like shit. This had been going on for sometime but I didn’t know about it because I do not speak a word of Spanish. There was a young lady who was half El Salvadorian and half Peruvian that I worked with. One day I made a comment that some of the Hispanics were not too friendly. She told me it was because they knew I was some sort of Hispanic and they thought that I viewed myself as too good to speak my language. My mother is Portuguese and I do not speak a single word. I wish I did.
Being the seasoned employee and having learned to fight for my rights I was always helping people because I had to learn the hard way. If you came to me I could tell you what your rights were and who to call in the company to get what you deserved.They would fuck everyone over.The inhumane resource officer would lie about EVERYTHING. I was a thorn in their side but they couldn’t really touch me because they had made too many mistakes and I documented everything. But the Blacks and Hispanics were another story they would go out of their way to discriminate. Deny their days off, not pay for their holidays, only pay them for part of their day. So I spent about a year collecting pay stubs I had friends in the office who would copy me stuff and alert me of illegal things the company was doing. I looked at these crimes and considered them to be the same as a robbery or shoplifting. I REALLY TRULY BELIEVED MY GOVERNMENT…. THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES would care. I decided that we needed a Union and called the AFLCIO they were nice and gave me the number to the UFCW I swear I called them EVERYDAY 26 days in a row and left messages. They would not return my calls. So I went to their office in Maryland and they said Do you have an appointment? No! But I have been calling you for 26 days in a row and you won’t answer my calls. There was a discussion and I just sat down on the floor and cried. Finally they found someone to come and talk to me. Basically they told me I was fucked because I worked in Virginia which is a right to work state. BUT I AM AN AMERICAN AND THIS SIMPLY CANNOT BE HAPPENING!!! WE HAVE LAWS!!!!
During all of this I had filed a complaint at the Department of Labor in DC…now the nice people at the AFLCIO who I knew quite well by then tried to tell me that labor laws were not being inforced. I refused to believe them….Well I swear months later when I finally got my appointment with the Department of Labor evidence in hand they started off by yelling(no exaggerating) at me saying that my complaint was not valid. I showed the fucking bitch where it said that if I knew of persons being discriminated against I could file a complaint. Too bad they need to all file separate complaints. I walked to the AFLCIO and cried on their couch while they consoled me.
That fight lasted about a year. I lost. I was devastated to learn that what I had believed about my country was completely false. I’m fucking pissed off about my government and what it has become. What we have allowed it to become. I hope it gets better with Obama in office. I campaigned for him. I write my Senators and Representatives. But remember that song by the Who? Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.… We’ll see.
But getting back to Monica Charles. I am in such awe of her strength. I cannot put my year of hell into a perspective that could compare the two. Monica Charles has been fighting for the rights of her people in a way I cannot begin to imagine….SINCE 1972 AT LEAST!! As fucked up as my childhood was I had the luxury of being so naive to think that the waitresses put cellophane on my toothpicks….to make my day better. I had the luxury of blissful ignorance that my government had the welfare of its people in its best interest.
I don’t imagine that Monica Charles was ever able to afford the luxury of being naive.
I don’t imagine that there was ever a time that Monica Charles was unaware of the government’s nefarious ways.
After at least 37 years fighting for the most basic rights of her people she still has the time, energy and grace to encourage and inform others.
THANK YOU MONICA CHARLES, I TRULY WISH YOU SUCCESS IN ALL YOU DO!!!!
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