Leonard Peltier and the murder of Anna Mae Aquash

Federal prosecutors have attempted to tie Indigenous political prisoner Leonard Peltier to the murder of fellow AIM activist, Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash. It is a frequent allegation that has relied on weak evidence and the charges of paid federal informants. In this episode, TRN Podcast co-host Nick Estes (@nickwestes) looks at several sources of information from key Indigenous activists who knew Leonard Peltier and Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash to the FBI’s own knowledge of her murder at the time it happened and federal prosecutors' initial hesitancy to take up the case.

Learn more here from a lecture by Ernesto Vigil at the University of Denver on May 6, 2023.

Watch the video edition on The Red Nation Podcast YouTube channel

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Below is the text of Hank Adams’ 2020 Facebook post, shortly before his passing:

Note: Adams is responding to a 2016 APTN article in which Assembly of First Nations Chief Perry Bellegarde apologizes to Anna Mae Aquash’s family.

December 14, 2020

Intellectually dishonest hate-monger Paul DeMain has reignited his campaign to assure denial of any Executive Clemency to LEONARD PELTIER, 76, at any time before Leonard's next scheduled Parole Hearing in Year 2024 with a continued misuse and abuse of the December 1975 gunshot death of ANNA MAE AQUASH and the unconscionable exploitation of Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash's children.

Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde makes significant points in this 2016 article in which the 1975 Aquash death became the center point in President Barack Obama's decision to deny Clemency to Peltier:

“I regret that my statement caused some hurt and pain and I apologize for the pain I caused her [Denise Maloney Pictou] and her family,” said Bellegarde. “That wasn’t my intent.”

Bellegarde said he still would like to see Peltier freed. He said the case is a separate issue from AIM’s execution of Aquash.

“I called for that (Peltier’s release) because there is an injustice there,” said Bellegarde. “So I will continue to advocate for that.”

Bellegarde said two previous AFN national chiefs have made the same call which is also backed by Amnesty International and prominent individuals like the Dalai Lama.

Peltier was extradited from Canada to the U.S. in December 1976. Warren Allmand, Canada’s solicitor general at the time of Peltier’s extradition, has since stated the F.B.I submitted false information to have Peltier extradited."

DeMain's posting of Aquash daughter Denise Maloney Pictou's December 12, 2020, renewed accusations against Leonard Peltier and DeMain's hated AIM organization [re-Posted here in Comment 1] are the beginning of a campaign to assure that 2020 President-Elect Joe Biden will not grant Executive Clemency to Leonard Peltier.

In death and posthumously, Anna Mae has been made a sainted heroine. But between 1972 and November 14, 1975, Anna Mae's ways were AIM's ways. AIM's ways - good and bad - were without qualification or reservation Anna Mae's ways, by choice.

At NCAI in November, American Indian Press Association's (AIPA) Richard LaCourse told me of his meeting with Dennis Banks, Leonard Peltier, Kamook Banks, and Anna Mae just before his coming to Portland for NCAI.. Anna Mae then had indicated no distress nor given any indication that she was being held prisoner or against her will.

On November 14, 1975, the four AIM "leaders" only broke apart because of the Ontario, Oregon stopping of their [Marlon Brando] recreational vehicle by armed Oregon police. A couple days later, Leonard Peltier was transported (through Franks Landing) from Portland into British Columbia (by associates of mine, who did not inform me then of their activity).

He spent the next month in the locale he was taken to and remained incommunicado with U.S. colleagues until later, at least until he traveled to Small Boy's camp in Alberta, Canada. That is where the RCMP and FBI picked up on Leonard - long after Anna Mae Aquash's death in the second week of December 1975.

Memorandum in the FBI's Denver Office dated as early as December 19, 1975 disclosed Anna Mae Aquash had been killed - although the FBI would feign ignorance of the death and the corpse identity for more than the next three months.

The December 1975 memos identified the killers as John "Boy" Graham, Arlo Looking Cloud, and Theda Nelson Clarke - although none of the three were indicted through the next 28 years. The Looking Cloud trial was held in December 2004; Graham's in 2010 - lapses of 29 and 35 years. Theda Nelson - a likely FBI Informant in December 1975 - (on mental competency findings) did not go to trial. Clark died at age 87 in 2011.

Although a lead prosecutor opened the Leonard Peltier trial in Fargo, North Dakota on March 16, 1977 declaring: "AIM is not on trial."; both AIM and Leonard Peltier were made the main 'defendants' in the 2004 and 2010 trials for the killing of Anna Mae Aquash! If there was ever a case where all parties - prosecution, defense and all witnesses - acted in friendly collusion to 'convict' undefended and absent non-parties [1st Leonard Peltier; 2nd AIM] - the Looking Cloud and Graham trials were such cases.

The fodder for the trial's conspiratorial claptrap largely was wrung from the mind and imagination of Paul DeMain in his relentless vendetta against AIM leaders and most creatively against Leonard Peltier. Many of his unsubstantiated claims were rejected by author Steven Hendricks when writing "The Unquiet Grave" (2007).

DeMain "Timelines" for Anna Mae Pictou have since focused on the AIM Convention in New Mexico just prior to the Jumping Bull Compound deaths of FBI Agents on Pine Ridge on June

26, 1975 leading to the 1977 life sentence convictions of Peltier. The design is intended to prejudice considerations against any grant of parole or clemency for Peltier.

Canada's Assembly of First Nation is correct in declaring the "execution" of Anna Mae Aquash and the pursuit of "freedom" for Leonard Peltier on compassionate and humanitarian grounds are "separate issues." They are correct in continuing their support for Executive Clemency through offices of both the Canadian Prime Minister and any U.S. President.

What satisfaction can President Elect Biden derive from side-stepping all humanitarian and compassionate considerations for Leonard Peltier through a first term, deferring any favorable consideration to the scheduled Parole Hearing in 2024?

The Pardons Office of a bureaucratic and prejudiced Justice Department housing the FBI has already failed the last four Presidents of the United States in this matter! Will retribution finally end if Leonard Peltier is still alive in 2024 and then 80 years old?

Indians of Western Washington who transported Leonard Peltier to Canada on or about November 17, 1975, and Indians of British Columbia who hosted and concealed him for the next month or until beyond when the FBI first was informed of Anna Mae's death and the identity of her killers can attest to Leonard's movements and communications (record) that wholly absolve Leonard Peltier of any direct or indirect role in the December 1975 murder of Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash.