Smoke Signals
Es Leonard PeMeE" Gallfly?
The Story Off A tVJan; The Sttoiry Off A People
8 AUGUST 15, 2005
LEONARD continued
from front page
ert Redford, the injustices at Pine
Ridge accelerated in the years fol
lowing AIM's 1972 arrival. "At the
time of Wounded Knee in 1973,"
wrote former U.S. Attorney Gen
eral and one-time Peltier attorney
Ramsey Clark, "there were only a
few FBI agents in the whole state
of South Dakota, and frequently
just one. But by 1975, there were
sixty. They were deployed over
whelmingly against a small Indian
population. During those two
years, more than sixty Indians on
the Pine Ridge Reservation some
say as many as three hundred
died violent and unexplained
deaths, overwhelmingly from activ
ity instigated by our own federal
government. And there is little
doubt about it."
By 1975, government efforts had
overrun the reservation with the
nation's highest murder rate, more
than eight times as many per capita
as Detroit, at the time the reigning
murder capital of America. These
government efforts targeted AIM
members from leaders to rank
and file who had come to Pine
Ridge in 1972 as defenders of the
reservation traditionalists.
As early as 1973, the F.B.I, had
classified AIM "an extremist organi
zation," according to Matthiessen's
book, and attacks on individual
members took many forms from
physical violence to political
cronyism to legal sleight of hand.
The feds coerced Myrtle Poor Bear,
a woman with a delusional back
ground, into testifying that she saw
Peltier commit the murders. They
used her testimony to secure Cana
dian extradition of Peltier for trial
when the rest of the evidence in the
case was not enough.
Poor Bear had given contradictory
evidence earlier saying that she
was not only not an eyewitness, but
not even on the scene at the time of
the incident but when Peltier's
defense team sought her testimony
to show that the government had
withheld exculpatory evidence, the
government convinced the court
that she was incompetent to testify.
But the story of the siege at the
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in
Oglala, South Dakota has a longer
history. On the most literal level, it
centered on the deaths of two F.B.I,
agents, wounded at long range in
the action on June 26, 1975, and
then killed close up.
No Credible Witness;
Peltier Denies
Pulling The Trigger
No credible source has come for
ward as an eye witness to the point
blank shooting and Peltier has de
nied pulling the trigger.
It is fair to take the history all the
way back to the Wounded Knee
massacre in 1890 because of AIM's
1973 occupation of Wounded Knee
in remembrance of that massacre.
It also is fair to take in the incred
ible list of injustices and violence
perpetrated on Indians in the inter
vening years - by civilians, by po
lice at every level, by courts, by the
collusion of the FBI's "contract coro
ner, W.O. Brown," according to
Ward Churchill, writing for the
Peltier Defense Committee. Brown,
it should be noted, performed an
autopsy on AIM member Anna Mae
Pictou-Aquash (Micmac) and failed
to find the bullet hole in the back
of her head.
Many in law enforcement at the
time were working on the assump
tion that AIM members and their
supporters were outlaws, and in
fact, many, including Peltier were
on the run from charges in many
states.
"When the colonized peoples at
tempt to resist their oppression and
defend themselves,
we're called crimi
nals," wrote Peltier
in his 1998 mem
oir, Prison Writ
ings. Much of the offi
cial hysteria about
AIM was fueled by
simple prejudice.
In the end, it all
came down on a
small group of
tough, angry, cou
rageous and even
starry-eyed Indi
ans who, caught up
in the optimism
and activism of the
Governor William Janklow, one of
two times that Janklow was accused
of raping an Indian woman. Since
the death occurred outside of FBI
jurisdiction, the FBI wrote, no inves
tigation was conducted.
The fear and loathing of that time
came at the hands of FBI infiltra
tors like Durham and grew as the
specter of infiltration flushed up to
the top of AIM leaders' agendas.
Before Pictou-Aquash became a
suspected informer by certain AIM
leaders, this same Douglass got him
self assigned to work with her. Her
subsequent assassination is now
believed to be the fruition of the
FBI's infiltration strategy.
DeMain Says Peltier Did It
None of this history, loathsome as
it is, exonerates Peltier as the killer
of the two FBI agents, and as the
v
1 1 ' t
mam
"The yearly murder rate on Pine Ridge Reservation between
March 1, 1973 and March 1, 1976, was 170 per 100,000 "By
comparison, Detroit, the reputed murder capital of the United
States, had a rate of 20.2 per 100,000..."
Wasichu: The Continuing Indian Wars,
Bruce Johansen and Roberto Maestas
1960s, wanted to right the wrongs
of a century of abuse.
In 2000, fending off a Congres
sional inquiry into the case that
would have looked into federal mis
conduct, the FBI responded to alle
gations about 57 of the murder
cases between 1973-75.
"The yearly murder rate on Pine
Ridge Reservation between March
1, 1973 and March 1, 1976, was
170 per 100,000, according to
Wasichu: The Continuing Indian
Wars, by Bruce Johansen and
Roberto Maestas. "By comparison,
Detroit, the reputed murder capital
of the United States, had a rate of
20.2 per 100,000..."
The hit and run death of AIM mem
ber Jancita Eagle Deer "standing
in the middle of a remote stretch of
Nebraska highway," according to
Churchhill is a case in point. Last
seen in the company of federal pro
vocateur Douglass Durham, an AIM
infiltrator, Eagle Deer had six
months earlier testified about an al
leged rape by long time South Dakota
years went by, sources began to
open up to Paul DeMain (Oneida
Ojibwe), Editor of News from Indian
Country, and a crusading reporter
who had long supported Peltier.
DeMain continues to acknowledge
the crass insults to justice attribut
able to federal participation in this
case, but in 2002 in the first Indian
broadside against Peltier, DeMain
wrote, "it simply took a delegation of
people who were tired of all the de
ceptions, lies and dangers to step
forward and tell me the truth.
'Peltier was responsible for the close
range execution of the agents. . .' and
that was the end of that."
DeMain points to admissions from
trusted but anonymous sources.
Darlene "Kamook" Nichols, one
time wife of AIM leader Dennis
Banks and an admitted FBI infor
mant, added to the weight of evi
dence during the 2004 trial of Arlo
Looking Cloud for the murder of
Pictou-Aquash. Peltier boasted
about killing the FBI agents in Oc
tober, 1975, she said on the stand.
DeMain quotes Nichols saying, "He
said the (expletive) was begging for
his life, but I shot him anyway."
DeMain has also put together a
comparison of the many descriptions
that Peltier and others presented
from time to time about the incident
at Oglala that day, as well as time
lines to bolster his argument.
It is now nearly 30 years later
and the 3,500 documents that the
FBI produced at Peltier's 1976 trial,
indicating that these were all that
existed, have through Freedom of
Information Act requests, grown to
100,000, according to Peltier's De
fense Committee website.
While the question of who killed the
FBI agents continues to be argued,
the people that AIM came to protect
are still being picked off by Tribal and
federal agencies at Pine Ridge.
The stories today sound chillingly
familiar. Janis Schmidt, Co
founder of the Lakota Wawokiya
Legal Defense Organization and 14
years a resident of the Pine Ridge
Reservation, told one recent story of
two brothers.
On June 2, she said, young
Oglala Sioux Tribal members Dirk
and Dakota Gamier and a compan
ion were kicked and beaten with
bats and a variety of tools used as
weapons by some 30 "white guys,"
according to testimony they gave to
Schmidt for their defense. A police
car went by the beating once and
only stopped the second time
through. During the fight, one of
the white guys apparently got hit
with one of the baseball bats.. A
week later, the Garniers learned
from a reporter from the Rapid City
Journal that he and his brother
were being charged with attempted
murder and aggravated assault. At
press time, an effort was underway
to extradite the brothers from the
Pine Ridge Reservation so that they
could stand trial in state court.
"The situation that I described is
so silently desperate," said Schmidt.
"We figure 12-15 innocent Lakotas
are being sent off each month based
on the number of calls we receive."
According to RE-MEMBER, "a
faith based organization that exists
to recall our country's treatment of the
Indian people and to repair the bro
ken pieces of that relationship," the
Oglala Lakota Indians still face over
80 percent unemployment, a per
capita income of $3,400, eight times
the U.S. rate of diabetes and tuber
culosis, twice the national rate for sui
cide, three times the infant mortality
rate and a murder rate that is 2.5
times the national average.
"Our human rights as indigenous
peoples are being violated every day
of our lives," Peltier wrote in Prison
Writings, "and by the very same
people who loudly and sanctimo
niously proclaim to other nations the
moral necessity of such rights."
Thirteen years later, the atmo
sphere remains grim for the tradi
tional people of Pine Ridge. And the
question remains who now will
defend their rights? B