Pine Ridge warrior treated as 'just another dead Indian'

Does anyone remember Anna Mae?

Anna Mae Pictou Aquash was a Micmac Indian from Shubenacadie, N.S. Her dream was to assemble an entire cultural history of the Indian people. By the time her life ended on a bleak winter night in Feb. 1976, she had touched the lives of hundreds of people with her dedication to the culture, tradition and spiritual survival of the Indian nations. She had been married during the stormy occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973.

Anna Me prided herself in being a "female warrior" and had participated in the occupation by digging bunkers and doing nightly patrols around the village. To the FBI she was an agitator. To the Indians she was an the first of a line of strong, dedicated female activists who emerged following Wounded Knee.

They discovered her body at the bottom of the cliff on the Pine Ridge reservation. The initial autopsy, by an FBI-friendly pathologist, cited a slight head wound possibly sustained in a fall and no evidence of foul play. To the authorities it was just another dead Indian on a reservation. They termed the death "routine."

On March 2, 1976 "Jane Doe" was buried. On March 5, the Pictou family in Nova Scotia were informed of the death of their daughter. The delay in identification of the body was due to the hands being cut off during the initial autopsy. The pathologist indicated decomposition made fingerprinting impossible at the time and he'd cut off the hands so the FBI could continue the effort.

No one on the reservation was allowed to view the body for possible identification. A nurse and a doctor at the hospital recalled the victim was wearing a very distinctive bracelet and ring. These have somehow disappeared. Somehow the FBI was able to discern fingerprints from the decomposed body where the pathologist could not.

At a second autopsy demanded by the family and conducted by an impartial doctor, it was determined Anna Mae had been executed by a .38 bullet to the back of the head from pointblank range. Somehow the bullet, which was still lodged in the skull, was missed at the initial autopsy. That Anna Mae had been raped was overlooked as well.

None of the officers present at the death scene was able to identify the victim even though Anna Mae was on the FBI's most wanted list for her American Indian Movement (AIM) activities at that time. The officers must have been distracted by winter conditions in order to miss the identification.

A grand jury set out to investigate the mysterious circumstances of both the death and the investigation in May 1976. The results have never been released.

Anna Mae Aquash was a warrior. The Indians and their supporters believe she died at the hands of the government whose policies she'd struggled against all her life. They desecrated her body in the same manner they have desecrated Indian society through 400 years. They emerged unscathed.

The Indians must suffer the loss of one whose spirits strengthened their circles by its presence and resonates hollowly in its absence. But there are many Anna Maes. They lie in graves the length and breadth of North America. It's not just the conquering heroes of this island that become martyrs. To borrow a line from Sesame Street, history is where you put your eyes. The history of North America is the history of struggle. The problem is we've all been told where to put our eyes.

Many are the warriors. They have strange-sounding names like Sophie Football, Charle Wenjack, Nelson Smallegs Jr., Helen Betty Osbourne, J.J. Harper and Jack Wagamese.

Two names are familiar. That the other four are not is mute testimony that even modern history distracts the eye. Their deaths too were routine. Their cases, too, were treated as just another dead Indian.

Just another dead Indian.

Indians die. They die in higher numbers than others in Canada. They die in the midst of higher rates of illiteracy and unemployment than other Canadians. They die with undefined rights in the Constitution and they die with long ists of unfulfilled government promises.

That's why the barricades exist in Oka. The warriors of 1990 aren't exerting apparent militant pressure to cause problems, they're protesting the lack of solutions.

The very next time an Indian dies in this country as a result of neglectful government attitudes is the very next time the moral fabric of Canada is torn again forever.

Does anyone remember Anna Mae? you can bet the Mohawks do and you can count on the memory of her life and death still glimmering at the edges of every rustle warrior. They are part of the rain and they are always with us.

EAGLE FEATHERS: To all non-Native supporters who are helping teach others where to put their eyes.

(Richard Wagamese is a full-time reporter with The Calgary Herald. He is also an associate producer of Spirit People, a Native documentary program produced by CFRN-TV in Calgary. His column is a weekly feature in The Herald and The Toronto Star. Wagamese was recently nominated and finished as runner-up in the National Newspaper Awards for column writing and was nominated for the President's Prize for column writing for the Southam newspaper chain.)