Anna Pictou Essay, Research Paper
Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash
(1945-1976)
Mimac Activist and Educator
April 3, 2000
Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, a Micmac Indian rights activist, was born on March 27, 1945 in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, the third daughter of Mary Ellen Pictou and Francis Thomas Levi. In 1949 her mother married Noel Sapier, the son and brother of traditional Micmac chiefs, and the family moved to Pictou’s Landing where the family was raised in poverty. Anna lived in a house with no heat, water, or electricity and subsisted largely on the wild turnips and potatoes harvested by her family. Although Anna’s stepfather was unable to improve his daughters’ financial lot, he provided them with other resources that Anna would treasure for the rest of her life. He taught the girls to value discipline and, most important, instructed them about the traditional ways of their people.
In 1962 Anna married fellow tribesman Jake Maloney and moved to Boston. She found work in a factory and gave birth to two daughters, Denise and Deborah. Pictou began to volunteer her time at the Boston Indian Council, and organization that provided support and services to Indians living in the city. Some of these new city dwellers had difficulty coping, especially when they were unable to find jobs or fell victim to drug and alcohol abuse. She counseled these troubled youths and, placed them in jobs or treatment programs. In the early 1970’s, she taught at the Teaching and Research in Bicultural Education (TRIBE) in Maine. This program provided Indian dropouts with a second chance at an education. Pictou helped develop a curriculum that aimed to instill confidence and cultural pride in the students by teaching them about Indian traditions and history. Anna enrolled in the New Careers Program at Wheelock College in Boston, and worked at the Ruggle’s Street Day Care Center in Roxbury. It was then that she was offered a scholarship to Brandeis University, because of her commitment to both her classroom and community, but she turned it down in order to care for her two daughters.
Despite her responsibilities, Pictou found the time to become involved in the growing Indian right movement. Composed of young urban Indians inspired by the African-American civil rights movement of the early 1960’s. This movement advocated a renewed respect for Indian traditions and sought to make the U.S. government live up to the treaty promises it had made to Indians throughout the country. Anna’s increasing interest in activism was shared by her boyfriend Nogeeshik Aquash, a Chippewa artist from Ontario, Canada. The couple traveled to Washington, D.C., in 1972 to participate in the Trail of Broken Treaties, a protest march that brought hundreds of angry young Indians to the capital. The demonstration drew national attention to their grievances with the federal government.
The most dramatic protest took place early the next year on the Sioux’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. The reservation’s tribal chairman, Dick Wilson, had been accused of corruption and of ordering violent attacks on his political opponents, many of who were elders dedicated to keeping old traditions alive. These traditionalists asked for help from the American Indian Movement (AIM), the most prominent organization in the Indian rights movement. AIM’s young leaders staged an armed takeover.
When Anna and her husband heard of the Wounded Knee occupation, they rushed to Pine Ridge to join the protest. By the time they arrived, the site was swarming with FBI agents, who were blocking all routes into the area. They hoped to force the demonstrators out by cutting off their access to supplies. To help the protesters, the couple spent days hiking through the hills and evading agents armed with rifles before they were able to sneak into the Indian camp with food ad medicines. While in the protesters’ camp, she married Aquash. For Anna, the Wounded Knee wedding was a public declaration of her commitment to the fight for Indian rights.
The Aquashes escaped from the camp and returned to Boston after several weeks, but the occupation continued. AIM surrendered after seventy-one days. AIM had won a clear moral victory. Through the publicity surrounding the event, the organization and its leaders succeeded in gaining substantial public sympathy for their cause. This support outraged the FBI, which felt humiliated by the standoff. Its agents set about punishing as many of the Wounded Knee protesters as possible; eventually more than five hundred arrests were made. The FBI possibly reasoned that if AIM’S leaders were tied up in litigation, the organization would fall apart.
After Wounded Knee, Anna Mae Aquash became a passionate and valuable member of the AIM leadership. She helped organize demonstrations at several reservations and worked at AIM headquarters in a number of cities. Aquash was particularly proud of her work at AIM’s “survival school” in St. Paul, Minnesota. The survival schools sought to raise a new generation of Indian leaders. Recognizing that most Indian history was written by non-Indians, she worked with a local historian to develop a program to teach young Indians to use sophisticated research methods so that they could tell their peoples’ stories in their own words.
In the spring of 1975, AIM sent Anna back to Pine Ridge. She was put in charge of eliciting support for AIM among the women at Pine Ridge, who often were put off by the brash, aggressive style of AIM’s largely male leadership. Urging these women to join AIM’s battles, Anna told them about the personal sacrifices she had made in the fight for Indian rights. She gained their sympathy by explaining that because of he long absences from home, she and Nogeeshik Aquash had separated. Even more traumatic for her, she rarely saw her daughters because of her work. Without her consent, her ex-husband and his second wife had adopted the girls following Anna’s involvement in Wounded Knee.
On June 26, 1975, the tensions between the FBI and AIM exploded when two FBI agents were shot and killed near the town of Oglala, South Dakota. Determined to find the killers, hundreds of agents descended on Pine Ridge. Anna had been in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on the day of the shootings. When she returned to Pine “Ridge, she kept a low profile. She was convinced that the FBI intended to punish her for her participation in Wounded Knee and was frightened by what agents might do to her. Anna was also growing afraid of some of her old friends in AIM. Rumors had been circulation that she was secretly working for the FBI. She feared that if the more violent members of AIM came to believe what was said about her, she would become a target for them as well.
In September, the FBI raided a Pine Ridge home where Aquash was living. She was arrested on a weapons charge but released on bail. Afraid for her life, she chose to flee South Dakota rather that stand trial. Several months later, she was discovered in Oregon and arrested. As the police prepared to return her to the Pine Ridge authorities, she told a reporter of her terror. ” If they take me back to South Dakota, I’ll be murdered.” Before the trial was held, she was again granted bail and again took the opportunity to run from the law. Where she went at that point is unknown. For months, she did not contact her friends or family. Their concern about her turned to panic when no one received their customary call from Aquash on Christmas.
On February 24, 1976, the huddled corpse of a young woman was found by a Pine Ridge rancher on his property. The badly decomposed body was examined by a doctor employed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)-the agency of the government that overseas its dealings with Indian tribes. He ruled that the woman had died of exposure and on the order of the BIA had her immediately buried in an unmarked grave. Before the burial, the hands of the corpse were cut off and shipped to FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. Through the fingerprints, the body was identified as that of Anna Mae Aquash. Her grieving family demanded a second autopsy, which revealed that she died not of exposure but of a bullet shot point-blank at the base of her skull. Her body was then reburied with traditional Sioux rites as the AIM flag waved overhead.
Who killed Anna Mae Aquash?? Many Indians-including most AIM members-accused the FBI. To them, the inaccurate first autopsy and quick burial suggest a cover-up. Some have even speculated that her hands were cut off to hide evidence of her identity. The FBI has accused AIM of killing her because it believed she was working for the FBI. Another theory is that AIM killed at the request of the FBI. Despite the many theories of those who knew her and her story, the murder of Anna continues to be as much a mystery as it was a tragedy.
Conclusion
Anna is remembered as a young American Indian woman, for the selfless sacrifices that she made in behalf of the First Nations people. She found her way from her homeland in Nova Scotia, Canada, departing from children and family to set forth her dedication at the cry of the struggle in Oglala, South Dakota to protect and fight for the rights of those who could not protect themselves. She believed in what the American Indian Movement represented. She sought to bring back to her homeland that of which she believed was the kind of spirit that would uphold the integrity of all native people.
Anna Mae knew that she was strong and persuasive enough to challenge some of the most adverse conditions. She stood amongst hundreds of others like herself to make a difference for the welfare and preservation of the traditional cultures, languages, and constitutional rights of the native people. Anna did not settle for anything less than the highest of achievement that would represent herself and those she fought and braved for. And then, Anna Mae was killed.
Everywhere that she traveled, she took part in whatever work was at hand, whether it was joining local “street patrols” that saved many Indian runaways, prostitutes, homeless and drunks. Anna had no use for the disgusting concepts of individual rights or any belief in the sham that passes for democracy that most North Americans pretend to believe in. Nor did she have any use for the almighty dollar.
Anna was one of the first Indian women in North America to actively rebel and fight, really fight against the systemic efforts of the government to destroy First Nations by their ruthless attacks on the self-worth and dignity of Indian women and the bonds of family, land, and language. Anna Mae Pictou was one of the most coherent and incessant champions of truth. She pointed out the fact that the government was the state that has slaughtered more innocent human beings on this planet than all of the dictators and mass-murderers of history combined.
Resources
Brand, Joanna. The Life and Death of Anna Mae Aquash.
Toronto: James Lorimer, 1978
Chobanian, Arthur, producer. Incident at Oglala. Van Nuys, Calif.:
Live Home Video. Videotape, 90 min., 1991.
Matthiessen, Peter. In the Spirit of Crazy Horse.
New York: Viking, 1983.
Weir, David, and Lowell Bergman. The Killing of Anna Mae Aquash.
Rolling Stone (Apri
Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash
(1945-1976)
Mimac Activist and Educator
April 3, 2000
Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, a Micmac Indian rights activist, was born on March 27, 1945 in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, the third daughter of Mary Ellen Pictou and Francis Thomas Levi. In 1949 her mother married Noel Sapier, the son and brother of traditional Micmac chiefs, and the family moved to Pictou’s Landing where the family was raised in poverty. Anna lived in a house with no heat, water, or electricity and subsisted largely on the wild turnips and potatoes harvested by her family. Although Anna’s stepfather was unable to improve his daughters’ financial lot, he provided them with other resources that Anna would treasure for the rest of her life. He taught the girls to value discipline and, most important, instructed them about the traditional ways of their people.
In 1962 Anna married fellow tribesman Jake Maloney and moved to Boston. She found work in a factory and gave birth to two daughters, Denise and Deborah. Pictou began to volunteer her time at the Boston Indian Council, and organization that provided support and services to Indians living in the city. Some of these new city dwellers had difficulty coping, especially when they were unable to find jobs or fell victim to drug and alcohol abuse. She counseled these troubled youths and, placed them in jobs or treatment programs. In the early 1970’s, she taught at the Teaching and Research in Bicultural Education (TRIBE) in Maine. This program provided Indian dropouts with a second chance at an education. Pictou helped develop a curriculum that aimed to instill confidence and cultural pride in the students by teaching them about Indian traditions and history. Anna enrolled in the New Careers Program at Wheelock College in Boston, and worked at the Ruggle’s Street Day Care Center in Roxbury. It was then that she was offered a scholarship to Brandeis University, because of her commitment to both her classroom and community, but she turned it down in order to care for her two daughters.
Despite her responsibilities, Pictou found the time to become involved in the growing Indian right movement. Composed of young urban Indians inspired by the African-American civil rights movement of the early 1960’s. This movement advocated a renewed respect for Indian traditions and sought to make the U.S. government live up to the treaty promises it had made to Indians throughout the country. Anna’s increasing interest in activism was shared by her boyfriend Nogeeshik Aquash, a Chippewa artist from Ontario, Canada. The couple traveled to Washington, D.C., in 1972 to participate in the Trail of Broken Treaties, a protest march that brought hundreds of angry young Indians to the capital. The demonstration drew national attention to their grievances with the federal government.
The most dramatic protest took place early the next year on the Sioux’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. The reservation’s tribal chairman, Dick Wilson, had been accused of corruption and of ordering violent attacks on his political opponents, many of who were elders dedicated to keeping old traditions alive. These traditionalists asked for help from the American Indian Movement (AIM), the most prominent organization in the Indian rights movement. AIM’s young leaders staged an armed takeover.
When Anna and her husband heard of the Wounded Knee occupation, they rushed to Pine Ridge to join the protest. By the time they arrived, the site was swarming with FBI agents, who were blocking all routes into the area. They hoped to force the demonstrators out by cutting off their access to supplies. To help the protesters, the couple spent days hiking through the hills and evading agents armed with rifles before they were able to sneak into the Indian camp with food ad medicines. While in the protesters’ camp, she married Aquash. For Anna, the Wounded Knee wedding was a public declaration of her commitment to the fight for Indian rights.
The Aquashes escaped from the camp and returned to Boston after several weeks, but the occupation continued. AIM surrendered after seventy-one days. AIM had won a clear moral victory. Through the publicity surrounding the event, the organization and its leaders succeeded in gaining substantial public sympathy for their cause. This support outraged the FBI, which felt humiliated by the standoff. Its agents set about punishing as many of the Wounded Knee protesters as possible; eventually more than five hundred arrests were made. The FBI possibly reasoned that if AIM’S leaders were tied up in litigation, the organization would fall apart.
After Wounded Knee, Anna Mae Aquash became a passionate and valuable member of the AIM leadership. She helped organize demonstrations at several reservations and worked at AIM headquarters in a number of cities. Aquash was particularly proud of her work at AIM’s “survival school” in St. Paul, Minnesota. The survival schools sought to raise a new generation of Indian leaders. Recognizing that most Indian history was written by non-Indians, she worked with a local historian to develop a program to teach young Indians to use sophisticated research methods so that they could tell their peoples’ stories in their own words.
In the spring of 1975, AIM sent Anna back to Pine Ridge. She was put in charge of eliciting support for AIM among the women at Pine Ridge, who often were put off by the brash, aggressive style of AIM’s largely male leadership. Urging these women to join AIM’s battles, Anna told them about the personal sacrifices she had made in the fight for Indian rights. She gained their sympathy by explaining that because of he long absences from home, she and Nogeeshik Aquash had separated. Even more traumatic for her, she rarely saw her daughters because of her work. Without her consent, her ex-husband and his second wife had adopted the girls following Anna’s involvement in Wounded Knee.
On June 26, 1975, the tensions between the FBI and AIM exploded when two FBI agents were shot and killed near the town of Oglala, South Dakota. Determined to find the killers, hundreds of agents descended on Pine Ridge. Anna had been in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on the day of the shootings. When she returned to Pine “Ridge, she kept a low profile. She was convinced that the FBI intended to punish her for her participation in Wounded Knee and was frightened by what agents might do to her. Anna was also growing afraid of some of her old friends in AIM. Rumors had been circulation that she was secretly working for the FBI. She feared that if the more violent members of AIM came to believe what was said about her, she would become a target for them as well.
In September, the FBI raided a Pine Ridge home where Aquash was living. She was arrested on a weapons charge but released on bail. Afraid for her life, she chose to flee South Dakota rather that stand trial. Several months later, she was discovered in Oregon and arrested. As the police prepared to return her to the Pine Ridge authorities, she told a reporter of her terror. ” If they take me back to South Dakota, I’ll be murdered.” Before the trial was held, she was again granted bail and again took the opportunity to run from the law. Where she went at that point is unknown. For months, she did not contact her friends or family. Their concern about her turned to panic when no one received their customary call from Aquash on Christmas.
On February 24, 1976, the huddled corpse of a young woman was found by a Pine Ridge rancher on his property. The badly decomposed body was examined by a doctor employed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)-the agency of the government that overseas its dealings with Indian tribes. He ruled that the woman had died of exposure and on the order of the BIA had her immediately buried in an unmarked grave. Before the burial, the hands of the corpse were cut off and shipped to FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. Through the fingerprints, the body was identified as that of Anna Mae Aquash. Her grieving family demanded a second autopsy, which revealed that she died not of exposure but of a bullet shot point-blank at the base of her skull. Her body was then reburied with traditional Sioux rites as the AIM flag waved overhead.
Who killed Anna Mae Aquash?? Many Indians-including most AIM members-accused the FBI. To them, the inaccurate first autopsy and quick burial suggest a cover-up. Some have even speculated that her hands were cut off to hide evidence of her identity. The FBI has accused AIM of killing her because it believed she was working for the FBI. Another theory is that AIM killed at the request of the FBI. Despite the many theories of those who knew her and her story, the murder of Anna continues to be as much a mystery as it was a tragedy.
Conclusion
Anna is remembered as a young American Indian woman, for the selfless sacrifices that she made in behalf of the First Nations people. She found her way from her homeland in Nova Scotia, Canada, departing from children and family to set forth her dedication at the cry of the struggle in Oglala, South Dakota to protect and fight for the rights of those who could not protect themselves. She believed in what the American Indian Movement represented. She sought to bring back to her homeland that of which she believed was the kind of spirit that would uphold the integrity of all native people.
Anna Mae knew that she was strong and persuasive enough to challenge some of the most adverse conditions. She stood amongst hundreds of others like herself to make a difference for the welfare and preservation of the traditional cultures, languages, and constitutional rights of the native people. Anna did not settle for anything less than the highest of achievement that would represent herself and those she fought and braved for. And then, Anna Mae was killed.
Everywhere that she traveled, she took part in whatever work was at hand, whether it was joining local “street patrols” that saved many Indian runaways, prostitutes, homeless and drunks. Anna had no use for the disgusting concepts of individual rights or any belief in the sham that passes for democracy that most North Americans pretend to believe in. Nor did she have any use for the almighty dollar.
Anna was one of the first Indian women in North America to actively rebel and fight, really fight against the systemic efforts of the government to destroy First Nations by their ruthless attacks on the self-worth and dignity of Indian women and the bonds of family, land, and language. Anna Mae Pictou was one of the most coherent and incessant champions of truth. She pointed out the fact that the government was the state that has slaughtered more innocent human beings on this planet than all of the dictators and mass-murderers of history combined.
Resources
Brand, Joanna. The Life and Death of Anna Mae Aquash.
Toronto: James Lorimer, 1978
Chobanian, Arthur, producer. Incident at Oglala. Van Nuys, Calif.:
Live Home Video. Videotape, 90 min., 1991.
Matthiessen, Peter. In the Spirit of Crazy Horse.
New York: Viking, 1983.
Weir, David, and Lowell Bergman. The Killing of Anna Mae Aquash.
Rolling Stone (April7, 1977): 51-55