The Death of Anna Mae Aquash

[Keith Millea]

http://lookingcloudpieces.blogspot.com/2...foras.html

Day One of Trial
news clips for KPFK radio

February 3, 2004
Rapid City, South Dakota
Hotel Alex Johnson

LOOKING CLOUD IN A WINDOWLESS ROOM
by antoinette nora claypoole

Three blocks from here there is a courtroom without windows which lives in the Federal Building of the United States government. Appropriate place for blind justice to occur. No sun can seep through dark walls. A little farther away there are Indians, People of the Black Hills, Crazy Horse country. Wide spaces of earth sky and snow which falls and sparkles like crystals which live in a hillside on the Warm springs Indian reservation in Northern
Oregon.

Where one of Annie Mae”s old friends still lives.
But this is South Dakota.
Where Indians have been murdered incessantly since the discovery of gold on Indian Land. And today yet another Indian is himself accused of murder. One that occurred nearly 28 years ago this month.

Today, February 3, 2004 Arlo Looking Cloud sat in that courtroom of the Federal Building in Rapid City, South Dakota looking straight ahead, motionless while an opening statement by the prosecution claimed he was a cold blooded murderer of a woman he knew back in the renegade days.

Claimed he was driving the car that took Anna Mae Pictou Aquash from Denver back to Rapid City. On one of those long bleak endless winter nights back in the times when Wilson goon squads made life for Indians on Pine Ridge something more infused with death cries than birthing ceremonies.

Today Looking Cloud sat silent and emotionless as he and a filled courtroom listened to graphic descriptions of the execution of Anna Mae, haunting images of her decomposed body and bloodied turquoise jewelry projected into all of us through an overheard screenÉlike some kind of surreal screening of a Peckinpah flick. Looking Cloud showed no response as the story was told yet again, this time by the feds "for the record."

The horrors of a trek from Troy Lynn's house in Denver to a barren apartment in Rapid City. The indictment of Annie Mae by AIM and the subsequent execution of her radical blue jeaned body was described by a dispassionate prosecutor, his showing images of death like a hoover sales man ready to be laid off.

There was nothing really new in the prosecutions claims.
We have all heard the story many times before.

About how the feds HAD to cut off her hands because her body was decomposed. And they really did want to know who this dead woman was. So they had to send her hands away. The old FBI lines about doing their duty and if they HAD had an xray machine when they did the first autopsy they would have found the bullet hole. In her head. Instead of burying her as a Jane Doe dying of exposure.

There has been up to this point no one called to testify regarding the blood found at the back of Anna Mae's neck. No testimonies yet from a nurse who tried to call attention to the wound in Annie Mae's head and was silenced. There are a lot of things which have yet been unspoken. And from the tone of this first day, one wonders if anything new will emerge at all. But then again it is only the first day.

And a few things were accomplished which merit notice:
The jury was chosen after only 6 hours. 7 women, one black man, 3 white men.
Perhaps one of them Indian.
So much for the jury by ones peers idea.

Still, the judge was thorough in instructing the jury to set aside notions of anti AIM politics and anti Indian sentiments in general. The defense made an opening statement which did little more than call Arlo a dumb Indian who had no idea what was going on with a woman tied up in the back of a Red Pinto. He was driving. The defense claims thus far that Arlo was just a young hungover Indian doing what an old bossy Indian woman, Thelma Clark, was telling him to do. Drive a car to Rapid. Don't ask questions.

The entire defense opening was filled with this poor guy "was just at the wrong place at the wrong time"rhetoric. So. Now John Graham is being made out by Arlo's own defense attorney as the bad guy with all the old karma . The man to watch out for is John Graham, according to Arlo's defense attorney, Timothy Rensch.

The first day of this trial left some of us wondering what Annie Mae would have said about this government, this "trial" these opening statements which never mentioned a word about how FBI repeatedly threatened her life. Some of us wonder whether Annie Mae would really trust a system who threatened her life and that of her children.

The answer to that lies in the way Annie Mae lived.

One of her close friends, Troy Lynn Yellow Wood, herself a warrior woman, told me today Annie Mae would not have wanted things like this to happened. She believed that what a person did came back to them in some other way. She would not believe there is any justice in this system." Then there is the one perspective Indian juror who when asked today if he had any prejudices that would interfere with him hearing the case fairly replied: " Only that I know certain no Indian will every be given a fair trial in this white man's courtroom". That Indian man was immediately dismissed from consideration.

Tomorrow's another day in Rapid.

The witness ist for the upcoming days include Troy Lynn and John Trudell.
Those media and family who live in the room with no windows, the space with no vision, the Federal courtroom tomorrow may or may not hold the souls of Annie Mae's family, her daughters, her old lovers.

Today they were conspicuously NOT present.

Just like that horrendous day of her second burial. Nearly 28 years ago. Tomorrow is another day in the complexities of justice.
How we define that word depends on what we mean by mercy.
And the beat goes on.
Within us and without us.

(scroll down for days two, three and closing)

antoinette nora claypoolec
copyright 2004
all rights reserved

Feb. 5, 2004
Hotel Alex Johnson
Rapid City, S. Dakota

DAY TWO , Looking Cloud Trial
KPFK radio coverage



SIRENS IN THE NIGHT:
THE DEATH OF YET ANOTHER INDIAN WARRIOR

Kamook Banks turns Fed

By antoinette nora claypoole

There is a water shortage in many places on the planet.

Today in the courtroom of Rapid City's Federal building, that reality was a deception. Just like so many things about this complex and brutal murder trial. Tears were running like big rains into the arroyos of Northern New Mexico.

Which is where Darlene Nichols, aka Kamook Banks has lived over the past few years. From where she now flees, taking FBI relocation money with her, $42,000 in the past six months according to her testimony.

Perhaps just like a storm over desert she imagines she was arriving to help. But sometimes lightening kills and sometimes slides bury drive by cars. With drivers inside of them. This is what the courtroom was like today, in Rapid City. My eyes still aching from tears I never expected to shed. For the loss of yet another Indian warrior woman happened right there for Judge and family to see.

Darlene was one of a series of Indian women called to the stand today by the prosecution. She in her cry me a river presence she selected for the jury and observers a psychic connection to what it feels like to watch a warrior die. And that is what happened today. To Kamook Banks. She was no longer the AIM woman who claimed sovereignty for Indian people. She is now Darlene the woman dressed as a man in short hair and polyester blazers who with sullen resolve kisses into the schemes of a government she once knew would as easily murder her as any one of her best friends. Kamook spoke of her current relationship. With the FBI. Talked of how they help her out, spoke with disdain about Leonard Peltier and revealed she cooperated full heartedly with a wiretap of her good friend Troy Lynn.

With something like a mutant monotone voice Darlene said she believed her husband, Dennis Banks 'was involved in the murder of Annie Mae". Ever since he phoned her about it back in Feb. 1976. Finally , she confessed, she "had to do something." So she turned into the very thing that Annie Mae was accused of being. By the man who was lovers to them both. Kamook has bedded down with the FBI that threatened the life of her best friend, her children and lover.

Probably the intensity of this transformation of radical to FBI snitch/collaborator was only softened by the fact that the defense attorney,Timothy Rensch, rose to the status of thunder being as he continually objected to hearsay evidence (mostly to no avail). And then finally challenged Special Agent Wood, FBI agent who was involved in investigating Annie Mae back in the day when she was walking with us here.

What called this storm into the courtroom today?

It was a slow rumble which shook many of us like a 4.5 in northern California. The courtroom silenced, even the laptop keyboards of New York Times reporters quiet as Darlene revealed not a shred of Kamook left inside of her heart. Still. Kamook herself was as rain in a needed dry season when she delivered somberly the truth she believed necessary to speak. That she had turned to the FBI soon after her divorce from Dennis Banks. Dennis Banks was phoned by the New York Times during a court break for comment. He did not come to the phone today. Maybe tomorrow will be a better one for him.

The father of Darlene's four children. Has muted their relationship. She spoke today like a Catholic girl to her confessor, kissing the ring of the bishop prosecutor, telling the sins of silence, selling the sacredness of woman strength to the white men who examined her life. When she spoke about Annie Mae the portrayal was one of a pitiful scared woman who was captured and overpowered by the people around her. Kamook Banks aka Darlene has become the snitch Annie Mae never was. The eerie paradox of this feels like some kind of a legend
written with the wrong ending.

Yet many of us know differently about Annie Mae, and though this trial has little to say of Annie Mae alive and brave, Troy Lynn Yellowood, another witness in the collection of Indian women "presented" today, Troy Lynn did her best to defy the prosecution and talk of Annie Mae as a woman who defied her accusers.

"Either kill me off or defend me" was what Troy Lynn remembers Annie Mae saying to her accusers, while Mathalene White Bear remembered Annie Mae as someone who cared deeply for her daughters, her family. And then relayed to us the story of the silver ring. Which might just top Tolkien's classic for mysticism and symbolic liberation. If it had a different ending. The courtroom and jury heard about how John Trudell came to get a silver ring, in Santa Monica near the sea. A ring Annie Mae had sent as a sign of distress.

But White Bear implied Trudell never bothered to protect Annie Mae from the death threats the ring was meant to signify:

"I hope the next time you see this ring it is on my finger. But if it comes to you any other way, you'll know I'm in trouble. Then you should call this phone number". Annie Mae's words to White Bear sometime in the Fall of 1975. "The phone number was that of John Trudell who was fine brother to us back then. I called him when the ring arrived in a small white box through the mail. No letter or anything. He came and got the ring within a day and I never heard from him again. I spent 28 years of hell waiting to find out what happened" .

Maybe we all feel that way today. But a worse nightmare would be that another quarter century goes by with the wrong person(s) accused.Today, having mentioned COINTELPRO and the 'operatives placed in AIM 'to set up Annie Mae " , the defense offered a sense that not everyone has forgotten the atmosphere of murder which pounded in the veins of agents back when Annie Mae defied them.

As some of those same agents sat in the back row of the courtroom today thinking they had taken yet another line of Indian women down as they testified against the movement they once believed in, I longed for just a glimpse of their souls.

Take a photo of their conscience.
Sell it to the National Inquirer.
Then give them mirrors to places which have windows instead of lying walls.

DAY THREE Looking Cloud Trial
for KPFK radio

February 4 , 2004
Rapid City, South Dakota
Federal Building

LIGHT FROM A WARRIOR'S DAUGHTER
by antoinette nora claypoole

"Annie Mae was extremely intelligent and I respect her intelligence. She used her intelligence intelligently. That is rare. And she had a strong heart to go with it. This is what attracted me to her."

--John Trudell
witness for the prosecution spoken in an interview
outside the courtroom Federal Building,
Rapid City, Feb. 5, 2004

One of the witnesses presented by the Prosecution on the third day of this trial was remarkably clear and striking, carrying herself with a demeanor of strength and sentiment. A kind of eerie flashback for those who knew Annie Mae.

Looking to see how it was that Annie Mae may have grown into her thirties had she lived.

The image of Denise Maloney--Annie Mae's daughter-- sitting in the witness stand remains with many of us as the long Dakota night devours our sense of whether an acquittal will necessarily happen, whether it is necessary to happen. And what reality this jury will bring to the lives of so many in Indian Country.

The abrupt ending to this trial means we carry the image of Denise with us into dreamtime. Hoping for whatever justice lives on for the family and people who loved Annie Mae. For late this afternoon the Defense rested its case, after calling only one witness.

Special Agent David Price. Who briefly, without sentiment of any kind, articulated for the Defense attorney that yes in fact the FBI trained operants and sent them into AIM.

In his final words he admitted Annie Mae was not one of them. As though somehow we needed the FBI to tell us that.

Then in the same self righteous incantation he confessed that he had probed, worked her for information about the shootout at Jumping Bull in 1975.But of course most of us know all this already.

In the midst of this strange and abrupt testimony all some of could do was imagine that of all the friends and family who came to testify and witness this trial, Annie Mae would have held one set of statements with a special motherly pride.

And so I share some of them with you.

There is only one way to say any of this. The day was long, was emotional, was John Trudell emphasizing search for who ordered these people to take a gun to a mother warrior's head, images of a squash blossom bracelet around decaying flesh and still the legend of her strength and courage lives on. Through the blood of her strong daughters.

*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&

In the following paragraphs you will find "unofficial " transcript
as typed while I was in the Rapid City courtroom.

Federal Bldg, Feb. 5 2004.
(testimony for the prosecution,
Trial of Arlo Looking Cloud)

The testimony is from Denise Maloney, a remarkable and brave woman who follows in her mother's path of speaking "from heart while using her intelligence intelligently."

Denise was only 11 years old when she heard that her mother had been murdered.
Her mother, Annie Mae Pictou Aquash died and lived for her daughters.
As so many repeated in the courtroom today.

Denise Maloney Testifies

Prosecution: Did you travel with anyone to this trial??
Denise: Yes I brought my sister, my father and the Chief of my nation.

P: Can you tell us, is there a time when you talked to Arlo Looking Cloud?
Denise: Yes
P. Can you tell us when that was??
Denise: In early April 2002. I got a call from Paul Demain and he said that he spoke with Richard Two Elk who said that Arlo needed to speak with Annie Mae's daughters. At that time it was a big decision for us as we had not talked with anyone about this.

P: How does Richard Two Elk figure into all of this?
Denise: Paul Demain said Two Elk was his brother and that is all I know about him.

P: Did you get an opportunity to speak to Arlo Looking Cloud at that occasion??
Denise: Yes I did.

P: Who else was on the phone at that time?
Denise: My sister and that was all.

P: How was Mr. Looking Cloud?
Denise: He was very quiet. I don't think any of us knew what to say. My sister asked if she could record the conversation and he said no. We asked if this was something he wanted to do. He said yes. He said he felt bad that he hadn't done this a long time ago. We asked him to speak from his heart. And that we were grateful he was doing this. And that we didn't need all the details we just needed to know how my mother died. He said he had gotten a phone call .was instructed to go to rather THEY were to go to Troy Linn's house. He was emotional. I asked if he had been drinking that day He said no. Was my mother there?? Yes. What happened?? First day they went to Rapid City. The second day we went to Rosebud. Was my mother in the car?? He said no. We were trying to find out what her demeanor was for our own purposes. He said Theda and John Boy came out of the house and he felt bad that he did not know that was what they were going to do. He said that Angie and john Boy were calling her an agent. He said he did not know that they went out there to kill her. He thought they were just going out there to scare her. He was told to stay with the car. And Theda and John Boy went up over the hill with my mother. We thanked him for telling us And wished him well in his healing. And that was the end of the conversation.

P: When your mother was murdered how old were you
Denise: I would have been eleven. I found out just shortly before my 11th b birthday.

QUESTIONS FROM THE DEFENSE: (cross examination)

Defense: How long was the conversation?
Denise: It wasn't terribly long. I couldn't' put a time on it. Time stood still for me

Defense: Did Mr. Looking Cloud say he was sorry??
Denise: His words to me were that he felt bad. He may have said sorry but what I heard was that he felt bad that he hadn't phoned us in all this time.

Day Four
LAST DAY OF TRIAL/VERDICT

antoinette claypoole
wildembers@...
Feb 6,2004
Late in the evening
Rapid City , South Dakota

THE CAVES OF WINTER
by antoinette nora claypoole

"They violated so much court procedure, they had no common decency."
---Brenda Norrell

A jury deliberating the fate of Fritz Arlo Looking Cloud sat for nearly 7 hours and returned at 7:15 in the evening with a GUILTY verdict. This was little surprise to few in the half empty courtroom after hearing closing statements earlier in the day.

The defense, just as he had done the day before, failed painfully to speak to the jury of howlittle evidence there was against his client. And the prosecution continued with it's presentation that Arlo knew every step of the way that Annie Mae was going to be shot that late night in December.


In closing statements the Defense made no mention of how the video
tape of Arlo, which was presented as evidence the day before, found
Arlo admitting he was still drunk as they questioned him. What defense
in their efforts to help a client fails to question evidence which is
clearly beyond credible. The closing statements were certainly an omen
that the jury of 7 women 5 men, 1 black and potentially 1 Indian, was
going to have little trouble finding the defendant guilty.

There was however one very enigmatic rather eerie moment near the end
of the Defense closing arguments which held some of us captive. And
rather stunned the entire courtroom. Timothy Rensch, as though he had
to get something off his chest after failing so miserably to
effectively cross examine-- or even present-- witnesses, Atty. Rensch
closed with a metaphor about the prosecution. Saying that it is like
the prosecution has "taken a lightening rod of prejudice and they
swirled it in the sky and they touch the fears we have against the
American Indian Movement and they have brought that rod down and held
it over Arlo's head."

The defense was emotional at that point and it seemed a desperate
gesture to nearly confess that he had been working on a case which from
the on set was bias and ridden with hidden agendas. It felt to some of
us in the courtroom as though Rensch was finally being able to get off
his chest the box he felt he had been trapped in since he was assigned
this case months ago.

First the Prosecution was demanding a plea bargain. They were wanting
names of others, big names, from Arlo in exchange for lessening his
sentence. The defense could not make his client cooperate. At one point
it is court record that Rensch tried to remove himself from being
Looking Cloud's attorney. But it never happened. He stayed with Arlo
and the demands of a prosecution which was insisting on Arlo giving up
names of the American Indian Movement continued.

Clearly the agenda has been all olong to take down a movement which was
highly effective in turning around the policies and attitudes of the
U.S. regarding Indians. And some people are very disturbed that that
movement is STILL effectively infused with a new generation of
warriors. The U.S. wants to destroy the only radical movement/group
left from a time in the late sixties and early 70's when challenging
the government was necessary and effective. AIM has survived because
it is the only group from that era which had/has a spiritual component.
And it will continue to be effective for that reason. It was that
reality that Arlo Looking Cloud may have touched as he sobered up after
his arrest last March. Perhaps he realized he would no longer cooperate
with the authorities as he had been doing for the past decade.

Arlo in that jail cell refused to name names. And the prosecution,
the FBI , were very upset. So they continued forward with their plan
to destroy AIM by putting AIM on trial this week.

The life and death of Annie Mae meant nothing to them. That admittedly
when FBI Special Agent David Price said he had worked and probed Annie
Mae, and as Annie Mae said to John Trudell, "he threatened to kill me
if I did not cooperate". Well Arlo has not been killed he has been
found guilty of a brutal crime where there was no evidence present
that he killed Annie Mae. No weapon, no witnesses, no bloody socks, or
souvenirs in trunks of cars. Hearsay from witnesses is all they had.
And those witnesses changed their stories right there on the witness
stand.

Even John Trudell had to admit to the defense that he was "making
assumptions about things" as he tried to look credible to a courtroom
wondering why he was working so hard at insisting that Arlo knew Annie
Mae was going to die. He was not there. How did he know? From a
conversation in a car, in a hotel room, after a Midnight Oil concert
where he and Bad Dog opened. Ever been hanging out after a concert???
How much do any of us remember at 3 in the morning? John admitted he
wasn't even sure WHERE the conversation with Arlo took place. When
Arlo told his Annie Mae story. Which changed as often from Arlo as it
does with anyone else.

None of the witnesses were there when Annie Mae was executed.
The stories from people in court about those days leading to her death
changed like weather in high desert towns in a summer some of longed
for in the midst of these chilling events.

Russell Means said of the verdict last night "It is appalling that
South Dakota still functions at this level of Neandrathalism".

And I say that it is a pitiful and painful day that finds us listening
to wails from a Lakota Auntie in a white man's courtroom. Where
racism and murder are condoned. By the same system that stole land,
massacred women and children. These badlands breathe brutality. These
Black Hills belong to a nation of courageous warriors who will not be
destroyed by such things as dominance and corruption. It only makes
them stronger. Just as Annie Mae's family deserved so much more in
their desire for resolve, so does Arlo's family know that he did not
in any way have the fair trial a dominator nation promises.
There is no justice in rooms without windows which reach to the sky.
There is more to do for everyone. Including staying awake to how
darkness does not need to prevail.

a. nora claypoole
all rights reserved
copyright 2004