Anna Mae Pictou Aquash in her own words (1975)

_{Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, Mi’kmaq Nation}

Jails Are Not a Solution to Problems

“…it is very critical that these people, and myself, that we get a fair trial because it is something that has been involved here for a long period of time, it just didn’t start Friday, it is something part of the injustices that have been going on on the reservations here in South Dakota. They have been just continuing, and the only way I feel they think they can stop them is to arrest everyone, to throw them in jail and they feel that that’s the end of the problem, and I don’t think that’s the end of the problem, and I don’t think that’s a solution to any problem. Jails are not a solution to problems.

…the FBI certainly conducted themselves with the attitude that they are racist.”

– Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, Warrior of the Mi’kmaq Nation and the American Indian Movement, responding to her arrest and interrogation by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States government after a September 1975 raid of the Rosebud reservation (Lakota Nation) in South Dakota

Quoted from an interview by Candy Hamilton, printed in The Indian Voice, Vancouver, June 1976

_{Women with the Native Youth Movement of Vancouver show support for Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, Leonard Peltier and John Graham, outside the BC Supreme Court in Vancouver (March 1, 2004)}

Which Kind Of Freedom

“They offered me my freedom and money if I’d testify the way they wanted. I have those two choices now. I chose my kind of freedom, not their kind, even if I have to die. They let me go because they are sure I’ll lead them to Peltier. They’re watching me. I don’t hear them or see them, but I know they’re out there somewhere. I can feel it.”

Quoted by Mary Crow Dog and Richard Erdoes in the book ‘Lakota Woman’, 1990

We Are Indians

Our roots shall continue to push up your cement

Our blades of grass shall continue to sprout up between your sidewalks

Our rivers shall continue to run over their banks

When the last drop of my blood enters mother earth

(Which will be my children’s children)

Then we will be nourished into trees, grass, mountains, rocks

For we are mother earth

We are Indians

– Annie Mae Pictou

Naguset Eask (Micmac)

November 19, 1975

Killed February 1976 after being threatened with death by FBI Agent David Price

Text as it appeared in the newsletter “Crazy Horse Spirit”, Volume II, Number 1, Winter 1983-1984, International Office of the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, Seattle

_{Anna Mae digs bunker at 1973 armed liberation of Wounded Knee (Lakota Nation)}

Our Concept of Freedom

“While I was standing there with the group of women, waiting, I was being verbally harassed by some of the agents. They were implying that they had been looking for me for a long time and that they were very pleased that they finally found me, and then they were accusing me of a number of things that I have not done… They told me that I’d be in Canada by the afternoon, that they were gonna deport me, and I was in this country illegally. I tried explaining to them that I wasn’t and they just totally ignored me… […] They emptied medicine bags and threw about medicine pipes and confiscated eagle feathers, and varieties of beadwork, and those objects that are used in sacred ceremonies… They just didn’t seem to care…

“When they were trying to remove my medicine bag… I refused to remove it and they told me I could take it off, the boogeyman isn’t going to bother me. […] I think it’s a very serious matter. They have absolutely no respect for a religion or a belief that another nation has, and that’s… very racist. They don’t have the ability to just allow someone to believe in something else… […]

“I think that they most definitely want to destroy the Indian Nation if it will not submit to the living conditions of a so-called reservation. They definitely are out to destroy our concept of freedom.”

Excerpts from an interview of Anna Mae by Candy Hamilton, September 1975, from the book ‘In the Spirit of Crazy Horse’ by Peter Matthiessen, 1983

Bound to be Stopped by the FBI

“South Dakota is a very racist state, I am sure I will be sent up even though it is my first arrest… I knew that it would come… My efforts to raise the consciousness of whites that are so against Indians here in the United States were bound to be stopped by the FBI…”

– Anna Mae Pictou Aquash,Warrior of the Mi’kmaq Nation and the American Indian Movement, in a letter to her sister Rebecca Julian, after her November 1975 arrest in Oregon by State Troopers acting on FBI information

From the book ‘The Life and Death of Anna Mae Aquash’ by Johanna Brand, 1978

Neither Citizen Nor Ward

“I am not a citizen of the United States or a ward of the Federal Government, neither am I a ward of the Canadian government. I have a right to continue my cycle in this Universe undisturbed.”

– Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, Warrior of the Mi’kmaq Nation and the American Indian Movement

From the book ‘In the Spirit of Crazy Horse’ by Peter Matthiessen, 1983

They Want to Destroy Our Spirit

“They want to destroy our spirit. They want us to not understand our natural relationship to the earth and our relationship to our spirit. They want us to continue to give respect and validity to their forms of power…

…True power is natural. A blizzard is true natural power, a tornado and a hurricane and an earthquake. These things of natural power that come from earth are powers that man cannot control. The federal government does not want us to recognize that as people we carry this natural power within us.”

– Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, Warrior of the Mi’kmaq Nation and the American Indian Movement, Statement to the Court of South Dakota, September 1975

Anna Mae Pictou Aquash’s History of Resistance (actions and activities she took part in)

1969
– Aquash is arrested in Boston after jumping onto a group of police when they arrested a friend of hers who was assaulted at a bar.

1970
– Boston Indian Council and AIM demonstration against Mayflower II, Thanksgiving Day.

1972
– Trail of Broken Treaties leading to occupation of Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters in Washington DC.

1973
– Armed liberation of Wounded Knee, Pine Ridge, Lakota territory

1974
– Training in Karate at AIM gym.
– Armed re-occupation of Anicinabe Park in Kenora, Ontario, by the Ojibway Warriors Society.
– Research, teaching and creating programs for the Red Schoolhouse, AIM Survival School in St. Paul, Minnesota.
– Re-organization of Los Angeles AIM chapter, fundraising and expulsion from office of then suspected FBI informant Douglass Durham (later confirmed).

1975
– Armed occupation of religious building (Alexian Brothers’ Novitiate) in Gresham, Wisconsin, by Menominee Warrior Society.
– Farmington, New Mexico, AIM convention related to racist murders of Navajos.
– Security and health for traditionalists at Pine Ridge, South Dakota, Lakota territory.