Like Leonard Peltier, U.S. authorities have extradited another innocent Canadian:
Free John Graham (2)
Public Forum, March 28, 2008 in Vancouver on the extradition of John Graham and the struggle for indigenous self determination against colonization, corporate control, and state repression
Video and audio from forum at Working TV
See also Free John Graham – August 2007
A highlight/trailer of the documentary film “Our Sacred History and white man lies”.
Former AIM member takes extradition fight to Supreme Court
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
CBC News
John Graham, a former American Indian Movement member who recently lost an appeal against his extradition to the U.S. to face a murder charge in the 1975 slaying of aboriginal activist Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash, is now making a last-ditch appeal to the Supreme Court to hear his case.
Lawyers for Graham, a former Yukoner who now lives in Vancouver, have asked the highest court to overturn a June 26 decision by the B.C. Court of Appeal ordering his extradition. However, there is no guarantee the Supreme Court will hear Graham’s case. His family told CBC News that Graham will remain in a detention facility on B.C.’s Lower Mainland while they wait to hear from the court.
“It could take up to three to six months before we hear anything,” daughter Naneek Graham said Tuesday. “It is frustrating having to wait and to go out to the institute to go visit him. You know, it’s really hard.”
On June 26, the court denied Graham’s appeal to overturn the extradition, allowing his extradition to the U.S. to proceed. Authorities there want him brought to South Dakota to stand trial in the murder of Pictou-Aquash, a Mi’kmaq activist from Nova Scotia.
Graham and Pictou-Aquash were part of the American Indian Movement (AIM) — members of which occupied Wounded Knee, a town on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, in a 71-day standoff over native rights in 1973.
American officials allege that Graham and another man, Arlo Looking Cloud, killed Pictou-Aquash on the Pine Ridge reservation in 1975. FBI investigators believe she was slain for being a suspected FBI informant inside AIM.
Naneek Graham said the Supreme Court’s decision could set an important precedent, since her father is not only being extradited for a murder trial, “but my dad is being extradited on hearsay evidence, so this affects everyone.
“My dad’s charter rights have been violated because of the extradition act, and I just want people to know that if they can do it to my dad, they’ll do it to you as well,” she said.
Looking Cloud, the co-defendant in the case, was convicted of first-degree murder in 2006 by a court in Rapid City, S.D.
Graham was arrested in December 2003. In 2005, the B.C. Supreme Court decided he should be sent to the United States to face the charge, and the federal justice minister issued an extradition order against him in June 2006. Graham then took his case to the B.C. Court of Appeal.
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Video interviews with Naneek Graham, daughter of John Graham:
Banners and chants calling for the freedom of John Graham were part of an Anti-Canada Day action in Coast Salish Territory, Vancouver, on July 1st, 2007. John Graham’s two daughters spoke at the event and recalled that Sitting Bull and Leonard Peltier were also made to leave Canada and return to the USA. Other people at the event spoke of Harriet Nahanee, an indigenous elder and warrior who strongly supported Leonard Peltier and John Graham, and who died shortly after she was imprisoned for opposing an Olympics-related highway expansion in West Vancouver.
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INDIGENOUS ANTI-CANADA DAY
INDIGENOUS DAY OF ACTION AND RESISTANCE
On July 1st 2007, over 200 Indigenous women, children, Elders and men (and non-native supporters) took the streets and the train tracks on a march and blockade to mark their resistance to Canada as an oppressive force against their people. The march began at Grandview Park and proceeded down Commercial Drive to Venables Street where the CN rail lines were occupied and blocked for over an hour.
During the blockade a Canadian flag was burned on the tracks by an Indigenous person, and several other Canadian souvenir flags that had been painted with the words “No Justice on Stolen Native Land” were burned by about 40 Indigenous people at the action.
The group stayed strong throughout the blockade in a show of force to let the Canadian government know that Indigenous people will not take state oppression any longer.
The march returned to Grandview park, again blocking traffic on the roads and intersections. The police presence was small, consisting of mostly bicycle units, and efforts to direct traffic were non-existent for at least an hour.
Actions of this nature will continue to happen, not only at every Anti-Canada Day but also at other events in the true spirit of Indigenous resistance!
U-Tube Video on its way!
photos of Anti-Canada Day in vancouver:
http://harrietspirit.blogspot.com/
photos of Anti-Canada Day in montreal:
http://photos.cmaq.net/v/anti-canada-day/
more photos & reports of continental actions:
http://wiinimkiikaa.wordpress.com
other links:
http://no2010.com
http://ourfreedom.wordpress.com
June 26, 2007 – John Graham surrenders himself to the BC supreme court, facing possible extradition to the United States.
EXCLUSIVE John Graham Interview
John Graham 18 minute interview while awaiting trial in Canada on house arrest. Hear him speak about his wrongful arrest and prosecution for the first time. Filmed by the Native Youth Movement Vancouver BC.
Incident at Oglala
The Indian Wars Continue
by Contributor
On June 26, 1975, FBI agents and Bureau of Indian Affairs police laid siege to an encampment of American Indian Movement members at the Pine Ridge reservation, killing AIM warrior Joe Stuntz Killsright and leaving two FBI agents dead. Leonard Peltier was later framed for killing the agents. One of the BIA police officers who took part in the attack on the AIM camp was Bob Ecoffey. He also testified against Leonard Peltier at his 1977 trial.
In the 1990s, Ecoffey became the primary “investigator” of the murder of AIM warrior Anna Mae Pictou Aquash. He videotaped a “confession” about the killing from AIM member Arlo Looking Cloud who stated during the interview that he was under the influence of alcohol. Looking Cloud later recanted his confession, pleading not guilty at his trial.
Ecoffey told a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television documentary that Arlo Looking Cloud and John Graham took Anna Mae across a fence to the edge of a bank on Pine Ridge.
“She was brought here by members of the American Indian Movement, and she was executed right on top of this hill. She was shot in the back of the head, fell over the bank, and then laid where she was found, and basically left to die. And I feel that it was a result of paranoia amongst people within the American Indian Movement that she was an informant,” said Ecoffey.
He later repeated this story at Arlo Looking Cloud’s trial, adding that Arlo had said that when Anna Mae got to the fence she knew what was going to happen. At the beginning of the same trial, the rancher who found her body, Roger Amiotte, said there was no fence there at the time. How could Anna Mae have known what was going to happen to her based on being taken up to a fence that did not exist? Perhaps Ecoffey made up the story and is simply continuing with his campaign against AIM. The BIA police force on Pine Ridge was instrumental in the self-proclaimed Goon Squad that carried our numerous assassinations and assaults against AIM members and traditional Lakotas at Pine Ridge in the 1970s. The BIA police were also instrumental in initially covering up the cause of Anna Mae’s death as “exposure” and having her buried as an unidentified “Jane Doe”, as chronicled in her biography, “The Life and Death of Anna Mae Aquash” by Johanna Brand.
After Looking Cloud’s trial, Ecoffey married Darlene Nichols (formerly known as Kamook Banks), a former AIM member who testified against Arlo Looking Cloud and admitted to being paid $42,000 by the US government for her “expenses”, and to wearing a wire to record conversations. Her testimony at Arlo’s trial mostly targeted Leonard Peltier, as she claimed he admitted to killing the FBI agents.
