Native American news and events that occurred in Indian Country in 2003.
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—Anna Mae Aquash (also known as Anna Mae Pictou Aquash or, legally, Anna Mae Pictou; first name also spelled Annie Mae; Mi’kmaq name Naguset Eask) (March 27, 1945 – mid-December 1975) was a Mi’kmaq activist from Nova Scotia, Canada who became the highest-ranking woman in the American Indian Movement (AIM) in the United States during the mid-1970s.
She was murdered in 1976. After decades of investigation and the hearing of testimony by three federal grand juries, in March 2003, Arlo Looking Cloud and John Graham (also known as John Boy Patton) were indicted for the murder of Aquash.
Looking Cloud was eventually convicted in 2004 and Graham in 2010; both received life sentences. Thelma Rios was indicted along with Graham, but she pled guilty to charges as an accessory to the kidnapping.
In 2008 Vine Richard “Dick” Marshall was charged with aiding the murder, but was acquitted of providing the gun. As of 2011, authorities continue to investigate the murder, as they believe that higher ranking AIM leader(s) ordered the execution in the mistaken suspicion that Aquash was an informant.
Last summer, in the countryside near Oglala, Leonard Little Finger held a lock of hair in his hands and knew the agony of Wounded Knee. He and six others had just returned from New England, where they had claimed a lock that reportedly had been cut from the scalp of his great-great-grandfather, Chief Big Foot, more than a century earlier at the Wounded Knee massacre. For decades, it had been part of a library collection in Barre, Mass. Now, as…
Spirits are being awakened for the first time in 60 years. I can see it in the faces of those around me, Blackfoot Indians from both sides of the border, gathering on Canada Day at a ranch in northern Montana to celebrate the return of a vital link to their past. The men sit nearest the fire, the women forming a circle behind them. Sweetgrass burns and turns to ash, filling the teepee with an ancient aroma. Expressions filled with…
Just wanted to let everyone know that our attorney, Dennis G. Chappabitty, just filed our response brief to the government’s “Motion to Dismiss” in Felter Vs. Norton on Monday, October 6, 2003 by electronic mailing. It was filed in Washington D.C.Continue to FELTER V. NORTON.. Response brief filed for Uinta Mixed Bloods of Utah →
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AUTHOR: James Hagengruber, Gazette Staff Writer “Today, I who have been called Chief of Chiefs, among red men, present to all the children of our Great White Father this land where the snows of many winters have fallen on my tepee. This park is not to be a memorial to me, but to the Crow Nation. It is given as a token of my friendship for all people, both red and white.”Continue to Festivities will honor Chief Plenty Coups ancestral…
There will be a meeting on June 28,2003at the “Holiday Inn” in “Heber, Utah” for all the individaul members of the Terminated Mixed Blood Uinta Band of Ute Indians, and the news media from 11:00am to 3:00P.M.Speakers will be: Attorney Dennis Chappabitty, Native American Federal Attorney and Attorney for Felter v. Norton and Bennie Earl LeBeau from Riverton, Wyo.We invite all to come and join us after the meeting in our “walk for Truth, Reconciliation, and justice.” We will be…