Jails are not a solution to problems October 1, 2007

“…it is very critical that these people, and myself, that we get a fair trial because it is something that has been involved here for a long period of time, it just didn’t start Friday, it is something part of the injustices that have been going on on the reservations here in South Dakota. They have been just continuing, and the only way I feel they think they can stop them is to arrest everyone, to throw them in jail and they feel that that’s the end of the problem, and I don’t think that’s the end of the problem, and I don’t think that’s a solution to any problem. Jails are not a solution to problems.

…the FBI certainly conducted themselves with the attitude that they are racist.”

- Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, Warrior of the Mi’kmaq Nation and the American Indian Movement, responding to her arrest and interrogation by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States government after a September 1975 raid of the Rosebud reservation (Lakota Nation) in South Dakota.

Quoted from an interview by Candy Hamilton, printed in The Indian Voice, Vancouver, June 1976

 

 

Native Youth Movement Vancouver supports John Graham outside the
Supreme Court in Vancouver, March 1, 2004

my kind of freedom, not their kind August 1, 2007

“They offered me my freedom and money if I’d testify the way they wanted. I have those two choices now. I chose my kind of freedom, not their kind, even if I have to die. They let me go because they are sure I’ll lead them to Peltier. They’re watching me. I don’t hear them or see them, but I know they’re out there somewhere. I can feel it.”

- Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, Warrior of the Mi’kmaq Nation and the American Indian Movement, responding to her arrest and interrogation by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States government after a September 1975 raid of the Rosebud reservation (Lakota Nation) in South Dakota

Quoted by Mary Crow Dog and Richard Erdoes in the book “Lakota Woman”.

Pressure For Investigation of FBI June 18, 2007

Canadian woman killed in U.S.

Bid to have Indian’s death probed fail

Globe and Mail, May 14, 1976

Efforts to have the Canadian Government request an investigation into the handling of the case of a murdered Canadian Indian in the United States have so far been unsuccessful, Gloria George, president of the Native Council of Canada, said yesterday.

The Native Council and five other Canadian organizations have been pressing the External Affairs Department to ask Washington for a probe into the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s handling of an autopsy and investigation into the death of Anna Mae Aquash, a Micmac from Antigonish, N.S.

Miss Aquash, belived to be 25 was found dead Feb. 24 by a rancher on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the scene of the 1973 Indian occupation of Wounded Knee and the subsequent slaying of two FBI agents last June.

During an autopsy under the supervision of the FBI, Miss Aquash’s hands were severed and sent away for fingerprints and cause of death was listed as exposure although an autopsy conducted at the insistence of friends turned up a bullet in her head.

Miss Aquash was a close friend of Dennis Banks, a leader of the American Indian Movement, who is being sought by U.S. authorities in the slaying of the two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge reservation.

Mrs. George said pressure for an investigation came because some people at Wounded Knee think she [Aquash] may have been killed by FBI agents or Bureau of Indian Affairs police because of her involvement with AIM members.

[…] Duke Redbird, vice president of the Native Council said that Canadian groups are upset at the “discrepancy in reported causes of death, the mutilation of her body and the disrespect shown her family, who were not informed of her death for nine days.” [...]

[Excerpts from article]

 

We Are Indians May 21, 2007

Our roots shall continue to push up your cement

Our blades of grass shall continue to sprout up between your sidewalks

Our rivers shall continue to run over their banks

When the last drop of my blood enters mother earth

(Which will be my children’s children)

Then we will be nourished into trees, grass, mountains, rocks

For we are mother earth

We are Indians

- Annie Mae Pictou

Naguset Eask (Micmac)

November 19, 1975

Killed February 1976 after being threatened with death by FBI Agent David Price

[Text as it appeared in the newsletter "Crazy Horse Spirit", Volume II, Number 1, Winter 1983-1984, International Office of the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, Seattle]

 

Anna Mae digs bunker at 1973 armed liberation of Wounded Knee (Lakota Nation)

Our Concept of Freedom May 20, 2007

“While I was standing there with the group of women, waiting, I was being verbally harassed by some of the agents. They were implying that they had been looking for me for a long time and that they were very pleased that they finally found me, and then they were accusing me of a number of things that I have not done… They told me that I’d be in Canada by the afternoon, that they were gonna deport me, and I was in this country illegally. I tried explaining to them that I wasn’t and they just totally ignored me… [...] They emptied medicine bags and threw about medicine pipes and confiscated eagle feathers, and varieties of beadwork, and those objects that are used in sacred ceremonies… They just didn’t seem to care…

“When they were trying to remove my medicine bag… I refused to remove it and they told me I could take it off, the boogeyman isn’t going to bother me. [...] I think it’s a very serious matter. They have absolutely no respect for a religion or a belief that another nation has, and that’s… very racist. They don’t have the ability to just allow someone to believe in something else… [...]

“I think that they most definitely want to destroy the Indian Nation if it will not submit to the living conditions of a so-called reservation. They definitely are out to destroy our concept of freedom.”

- Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, Warrior of the Mi’kmaq Nation and the American Indian Movement, responding to her arrest and interrogation by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States government after a September 1975 raid of the Rosebud reservation (Lakota Nation) in South Dakota

[Excerpts from an interview of Anna Mae by Candy Hamilton, September 1975, published in the book "In the Spirit of Crazy Horse" by Peter Matthiessen, 1983 ]

Bound to be Stopped by the F.B.I. May 20, 2007

“South Dakota is a very racist state, I am sure I will be sent up even though it is my first arrest… I knew that it would come… My efforts to raise the consciousness of Whites that are so against Indians here in the United States were bound to be stopped by the FBI…”

- Anna Mae Pictou Aquash,Warrior of the Mi’kmaq Nation and the American Indian Movement, in a letter to her sister Rebecca Julian, after her November 1975 arrest in Oregon by State Troopers acting on FBI information

[Published in the book "The Life and Death of Anna Mae Aquash" by Johanna Brand, 1978]

Neither Citizen Nor Ward May 20, 2007

“I am not a citizen of the United States or a ward of the Federal Government, neither am I a ward of the Canadian government. I have a right to continue my cycle in this Universe undisturbed.”

- Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, Warrior of the Mi’kmaq Nation and the American Indian Movement

[Published in the book "In the Spirit of Crazy Horse" by Peter Matthiessen, 1983]

They Want to Destroy Our Spirit May 20, 2007

“They want to destroy our spirit. They want us to not understand our natural relationship to the earth and our relationship to our spirit. They want us to continue to give respect and validity to their forms of power…

…True power is natural. A blizzard is true natural power, a tornado and a hurricane and an earthquake. These things of natural power that come from earth are powers that man cannot control. The federal government does not want us to recognize that as people we carry this natural power within us.”

- Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, Warrior of the Mi’kmaq Nation and the American Indian Movement, Statement to the Court of South Dakota, September 1975