response to Trudell: Rock Garden Heart

Anna Mae and Nogeeshik, 1973

(photo credits below)

Rock Garden Hearts

by antoinette nora claypoole

And so there are a few things. Which keep the moon in her Sky and the leaves turning yellow. Red. Falling. Seasons. Of the mind and heart. Flash forward and back. 2012. 1975. Time, the coyote. The trickster. We have been together before. We will be together again. We are always here. The circle is like Northern Lights returned from the oracle at Delphi.

Now. Then. A jump start into a two lane road trip. Skipping truck stops and heading into an old Esso station. A paper map and three fingers clasping a Mars bar. The trip is full of sustenance. Shooting star reality. To keep the miles piling high. Like a Warhol painting it is the 1970’s. Bottled mountain dew, no pull top cans. And sand between the heels of his feet and stones scattered in the dusty parking lot. On his way to Duck Valley Reservation. Nevada. Home to the loneliest road in the west. Her guess is that he loved all women. A six year old boy losing his bandito mother is like etching petroglyphs of desire’s fire into his eyes when any woman walks by.

Maybe. John Trudell was Annie Mae’s lover. Maybe not. What we know for certain is that he loved his wife Tina on that road trip. That fall. And that Annie Mae was still alive. Trying to get help from the young AIM guys who found her ahead of her time. In some ways she is still alive. In their paradox of love her/fear her, is she really one of us? In those days with that wild sense of destiny undoing what all the daddies designed, Annie Mae was beyond time and place. Wrong place. Right time. Right place. Wrong time. Once we delete us and them, right and wrong, then we come to knowing something true. No matter what happens on the road, someone’s car wreck is everyone’s crumpled candy wrapper. Tatooed on an arm. For all the lovers to take home.

photo from Voices at Wounded Knee
Anna Mae and Nogeeshik wedding, 1973


But okay. Back to Trudell. And Annie Mae. She figured he was someone who could keep her from being murdered. They had that kind of connection.

Someone up in Canada said, not too long ago, that Trudell could even get you to kill someone, he was that powerful. Just by ….well just by being who he is. Pluto and the Moon. On his ascendant. Consider Hiroshima and how the world is never the same. After women and Sky meet uranium. Like that. Trudell now, so many years later, is on a road trip south. He has no “on Star” in his car. He is his own Milky Way big dipper following the skymarks to the answer. The mysteries like ancient Greece and Ariadne prevail. The minotaur awaits his freedom from their cages. It is woman through the ages who can save a man from death. Even half man half beast receives his reprieve, if like a magpie to the mesa he believes the Earth provides.

Okay. Trudell says. Graham. Once a friend, a brother in resistance. Was "told" to kill Annie Mae. By gov't infiltrators in the Movement. Great. Trudell's talking Feds. But. He is still assuming that guys who say they didn't kill anyone. Killed a sister. And I still ask. Who could have saved Annie Mae? Give me those names on some parchment or indictment sealed in a Rapid City envelope dated time out of mind.

Trudell, in his wild desire. To resolve the merciless past. Forgets to remember what I really do wish I could forget. An eerie screech, a winged howl. This. "Fact". That the accused murderers (and others) claim Annie Mae was alive that winter. After they left her at a house out on Pine Ridge. Trudell himself is known to have said "she died in Jan. or Feb. of 1976" . It hurts to write this. It has been over 10 years now. Books of once blank pages. Written at night. In the back of a car. On the side of that highway with no flashlight. My fingers cramp in the moth eatten mittens.

But it gets worse. Now emerges. Trudell's new theory that “Arlo couldn’t stand the guilt” and so had to talk about the killing. Confess. But Arlo Looking Cloud, following his conviction for the murder of Annie Mae requested an appeal. Based on new information. He says...he never saw Annie Mae shot.

Some say Looking Cloud sang in Lakota all night after he was convicted. And woke up requesting that appeal. Some feel. Looking Cloud. Was SAFE enough within the confines of a pressing life sentence in jail, to tell HIS truth. Like poetic epic passages from Sophocles. The underbelly of the beast. Is the mystery itself. Blown to the outer limits. Whose reality is the dream? Whose dream denies reality?

And then we have John Graham. Denying that he murdered anyone. AND, though it sounds convincing when Trudell suggests Graham will not be extradited because the “gov’t finds it best to leave him in Canada...so the infiltrators won't get named”, the facts are that the ruling to extradite John Graham happened 18 months ago. And the main reason Graham is still in Vancouver is. He has decent attorneys. And yes. The U.S. hired a new prosecutor. But wasn't it mostly because they never imagined Graham would have such a legal epiphany? A direct challenge tp the extradition laws in Canada. A unexpected delay in the courts addiction to racism. Getting a fix. In South Dakota.

So. Where does all this leave Trudell in his claims that the “boys” did it, but that the government is to blame?

He’s almost there. The wind stirs up a dust devil. The highway calls home. Duck Valley is still a night away. From where he longs to be. The government did send in agents.

Annie Mae did know who they were (see a letter written by her from jail, Fall 1975). Yes. Trudell’s got the turn in the road happening. But a narrow stretch is blinding. Could it be those agents themselves who killed Annie Mae, not the “boys” John Graham and Arlo Looking Cloud? It's like a repeated dream. That wondering. And I just want to hear Trudell's answer. His voice inside the concept. Why is that so hard to imagine? Because it is twilight now, the dust devil blocks the road signs. So many things get turned around and steering wheels jam when tightened in a fist. That is, as much as some of us are taken by Trudell's talk about gov’t operants within AIM, there are still some missing milepost markers.

So what do we do, without an oasis? People claim. To have seen Annie Mae AFTER Dec. 12, 1975, the alledged day she was murdered. And what about those who tell the story. About Looking Cloud being taken to several Federal prisons in the late 80’s. And told to talk about killing Annie Mae. If he ever wanted to live on the streets of Denver again.

There are many stories which pop up. Like road signs hammered into the desert of our longing. Ripped by the wind. Landing in the lobby of a casino the LA side of Vegas. The stories cannot be ignored. The stories become the bet. The hand. No one wants to fold. John still. A long way from home. Curved road rising. Up ahead. Sage and soda lids. On the dash. Almost eclipsed. Some of us remember he makes it back alive. While others die. To help him from the other side. This much of the story is all we really know. Annie Mae was killed because of gov’t operants. And some of her friends and lovers are haunted by her will to survive.

We’ll make up the part about someone driving to Denver to save her. We’ll remember that part about how she was called a fed. And that a caravan to rescue her. Might have been the death sentence. For anyone. And yet the final story washes these words. Like a monsoon rearranging arroyos. Some people say a carload of people tried. At the last minute. But it was too late.

Is there anything but painful destiny. In any of this. One thing certain. Coyote takes a fox and never looks back. These are the ravages of time.


(this piece is a response to “Who killed Annie Mae” John Trudell Interviews ....variation of Letter to the Editor sent to Indian Country Today, Sept. 24, 2006)

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copyright 2006
antoinette nora claypoole
All People are One