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John Graham Trial ....sometime soon??


Thirty Five Year Lies     by antoinette nora claypoole

Oct. 17 2010.  Ashfield, Mass.  Inside the hands of time fate holds lives captive.  Especially when a world out of balance turns away from the heartbeat of Earth, when a world stricken with greed perceives love as something to dominate.

"Oregon Bust, 1975
Thirty five years ago this month, in fall 1975, Anna Mae Aquash was part of the American Indian Movement (AIM), a key brave woman. Proudly part of a wild time in history.  When people were in the  midst of reclaiming  being "Indian".  A dangerous road to travel.  She was part of the "Banks" gang at the time, hiding out in Oregon/Washington State, preparing an action with AIM to protest at all the bicentennial celebrations that were being planned around America for July 1976.  The idea was to remind the cities and towns around this country that First Nations people had some treaties that needed to be honored.  But I wasn't there.  It would be best to hear from Dennis Banks or LoudHawk or even Leonard Peltier...what were those plans and how far out as we used to say were they going to be...

We can't ask Annie Mae, even though she was part of the organizing group, because three weeks after being busted in Oregon---along with Dennis Bank's wife, Kamook, who later was found to be an informant for the U.S. Government --Annie Mae "went missing".

Most everyone in Indian Country by now, knows this story.  She was released without bail after showing up for a court hearing in Pierre, S. Dakota in Nov. 1975 and many people who loved her never saw her again.  She went to Denver and stayed in a "safe house" with AIM friends.  And then something went dark. Broken windows back of a van over the edge. Sometime in the next three months she was murdered.  And John Graham, held in a prison in Rapid City, S.Dakota, extradited from Canada nearly three years ago, is facing charges that he murdered his friend, Annie Mae.

According to John Graham in an interview I did with him after the Arlo Looking Cloud trial---another man indicted and sentenced to life for Annie Mae's murder---Graham explains he got a call from Annie Mae  "she needed help" when she was in Denver.  She didn't feel safe in that sketchy house and wanted to get out.  Annie Mae knew federal agents had threatened her life. She felt like they were there. In Denver. Maybe even at the house. She was probably right.

Graham agreed.
He picked her up and drove her North.

This much is true.

What happened after that is an awful, brutal mystery to some, while others feel they "know the facts".

Graham has said repeatedly that he dropped Annie Mae off at another 'safe house' in S. Dakota, on the rez.  That he never saw her again.  Many other people, including the FBI and Federal Agents who threatened her life, say that Graham took her to cold dark butte and shot her.  On the orders of "old AIM".  He has always said that's just not true. Despite the "mystery" tape recording.  It emerged after the Looking Cloud trial and claims  hold to a "confession" by Graham.

The courts recently released some, but not all, information about that tape.

It was part of the undercover work being done by yes.  Another informant, friend of Kamook Banks aka Darlene Ecoffey. This time the informant was Serle Chapman. He had quite a following of the old AIM guys in the 90's.  Posing as a "writer" of Indian books, which he did with quite a flair,  Chapman was at one point considered (and may still be)  the prosecution's "star" player against Graham.  Based on a tape  Chapman is said to have recorded when "talking with" John Graham.  A tape no one authenticated. Chapman may still be their stellar poster child. A man posing as a friendly to indians, working for the feds. That's an old billboard sign.

And yet.  There has never been a weapon found.  There are no witnesses other than Looking Cloud, whose story changes like the weather in the badlands on a "good day".  There is nothing the Feds have to go on with their claim against Graham except a threadbare yarn, a story told over and over in different ways to different people, by Arlo Looking Cloud.

WHen Graham's trial begins people will hear statements from "witnesses".  Some of them have been offered and given immunity from the Federal Government.  That is, they testify against Graham and the Feds promised not to indict THEM for Annie Mae's murder.  Everyone in AIM back then was suspect.  At one time or another.  That is, the Feds have claimed all along that they can indict any number of people, Robert Mandall U. S. Attorney shared that with me in a small interview I did with him a few years back.  So.  At Graham's trial there will be people who claim they know this and that about Annie Mae's murder.  Their stories emerge from Looking CLoud and the "investigation" done by Paul Demain and News From Indian Country.  But the stories don't involve anything but hearsay.  She said they said she did say he killed her.

As the trial looms, the 35 years since Annie Mae went "missing" pushes into our psyches.  THose of close us  to this case, this history, over the years, know there will never be "resolve" in Annie Mae's murder.  And that John Graham defied the Feds when they threatened him "you tell us names of old AIM who killed her or we will claim YOU did it".  He took the chance at telling his truth.  And now goes to trial. Despite the fact that there are FBI communiques which emerged stating "Anna Mae Aquash" seen in Oklahoma, Jan. 1976, weeks after she was said to have been murdered by Graham.

If this trial is anything like Looking Cloud's there will be a cast of characters which would make a Redford movie jealous.

They will all testify "for the prosecution" because the feds have their ways of threatening people and sending out subpoena's.   As this whole dog and pony show--as Russell Means described the Looking Cloud mess--goes forward, remembering Annie Mae is the best thing some of us can do.

She was murdered.  Someone claiming to be AIM was posing as an informant in AIM.

Annie Mae had discovered who they were.  While she was in Oregon, in that "mobile home" bust 35 Autumns ago.  Is it any surprise that a few weeks after she writes a letter to John Trudell that she has discovered who the informants are, she goes "missing".  Is hiding out, worried for her life.  Whoever those agents were,  I would imagine that at least one of them is still walking around out there in the world.

S/he will probably never be held accountable for Annie Mae's murder.

While John Graham-- who was a young man from Canada when he met Annie Mae and claims she taught him "so much about the old ways"--has fought.  And taken all the heat for this murder.



Yes.  Protection for he, his family.  And Anna Mae's People.

Remembering Annie Mae, her courage and strength, her "attitude" as Trudell once called it to me.  Remembering what she knew.  Remembering the people who hated AIM, who planned killings on Pine Ridge, who threatened Annie Mae with her life. These same people just might not  be trusted to conduct a "fair trial" and actually tell the truth about her murder.  That is something her husband Nogeeshik Aquash believed he had figured out.  The day before HE died msyteriously.  The story, the murders, the brutal loathing the U.S. Government has had for First Nations is ugly, twisted and persists.


photo of Anne Mae 
by Anne Pearse Hocking 
at Seige of  Wounded Knee, 1973, on her wedding day ...


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