ANNA MAE AQUASH 53/ELEPHANTS…YEAH IT’S OFF THE PATH

All excerpts are in italics and from THE UNQUIET GRAVE by Steve Hendricks.

The FBI did a lackadaisical job of investigating the beating of the WKLDOCkers. The one thing that they turned up was an incident that was a prologue to the beating.

Earlier that afternoon Dick Marshall, an Oglala and low-level AIM leader, had an appearance in tribal court on a charge of disorderly conduct. (Marshal said he had only been resisting a goon attack, for which he was charged with a trumped-up crime.) Marshall came to court with a vanful of friends including Russell Means, and demanded a trial by jury rather than by one of Wilson’s judges.

The judge closed the court apparently intimidated by the show of support for Dick Marshall. There was a group of police and goons gathered in the parking lot in anticipation of a caravan from AIM two days before the second anniversary of Wounded Knee. Duane Brewer began challenging members of AIM  to fight and they all declined until he smashed Russel Means in the face with his fist.

The van that AIM was using drove away the BIA police captain Joseph Jacobs…

…radioed ahead for other goons to stop the van because when the AIMers neared the airport, a few miles to the east, a car emerged from the parking lot of the tribal planning building and blocked the highway.

“Let’s ram that sucker!” Means said, and the driver of the van, Tom Poor Bear, jammed the accelerator. The goons in the car reversed their makeshift roadblock off the highway in a hurry, and as the van passed, the AIMers threw open the sliding door and emptied their shotguns at the car….

Within the hour, the planeload of WKLDOCkers landed at Pine Ridge Airport, completely ignorant of these events.

In the meantime, Brewer returned to tribal headquarters and blackened the eyes of a court officer who had held him back when he was attacking the AIMers.

Now is the point where AIM starts acting like the FBI, the colonizers…I understand the frustrations that would lead to such actions but they will never work against the United States government….It didn’t before there were tanks, and planes, and machine guns…there is a never ending supply of men that are all to0 eager and willing to do the dirty work for the government.

AIM started firing potshots at people who drove by the mass grave of Wounded Knee and they set up a road block in Porcupine and threatened the townspeople.

The FBI continued its half- hearted investigation of the incident…when all was said and done Russel Means, and Dick Marshall, and Tom Poor Bear were indicted for firing on the goons from their van. Wilson and his goons walked.

This all reminds me of a show I watched many years ago on elephants. Colonizers removed the children…demoralized the adults and elders so they could be repressed continued this for a few century out of fear that minorities that they had wronged for so long would rise up and retaliate and now it has also spread to the colonizers…parents get divorced don’t have time to raise their children…too many single mothers…the effect on society is devastating. The show is sliced and diced into 3 minutes but after an hour of searching it was all I could find. If you ever have the opportunity to watch the whole thing it is well worth it!

Well behaved elders are so very important to our future generations.