Arrests Made

[rfmcdonald]

My girlfriend Annie Mae talked about uranium
Her head was filled with bullets and her body dumped
The FBI cut off her hands and told us she’d died of
exposure
Loo loo loo loo loo

--from Buffy Sainte-Marie, "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee"

There have finally been arrests made in the famous 1975 slaying of American Indian Movement activist Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash.



She was a Mi'kMaq from Nova Scotia who got drawn into the nascent American Indian Movement, a radical First Nations political movement that was particularly strong in South Dakota, where the Sioux nation was and remains particularly strong. In the mid-1970s, the unreformed FBI was up to its old tricks in investigating this movement, with fatal results for Anna Mae, as one article points out:

The one thing all agree on - even those accusing each other - the FBI created the situation and climate where such a tragedy could occur. Paranoia over informers and very legitimate concern over the safety of AIM members, both fugitives and those still publicly active, had reached near terror by late 1975. It took little to see off arguments, fights and fears.

"It was hard to trust. Labeling separated people who were really on the same side," said Melvin Lee, who worked closely with Pictou in AIM. Almost no one, including Pictou, escaped occasional charges of being an informer.

Many believed this level of fear endangered people the FBI actually had planted within AIM groups - a documented situation with a number of people already identified as informers. Pictou became their scapegoat.

It's sad how this is ending. To be brutally murdered by people who were supposed to be your allies has to be one of the cruellest fates imaginable.