Graham Trial Date Extended to June 17, 2008

A bigger than life sculpture. Near the town center.  A controversial piece of the past.   South Dakota.  Climbing through time,  some realities deplete the senses.  Murder.  Arrests and life sentences. Toxic wastelands. Lost families and random repentance. For cowardly acts of death.  With one breath humans are born while the scorn of skin color or gender, land base or class defines or confines a soul.

The anticipated John Graham trial --revisiting the murder of Anne Mae Aquash--is like an old anti-nuke rally at Diablo Canyon "back in the day".  Stopping the industry that plans a power plant is as impossible as understanding why execution in the Badlands is still a mystery. Nonetheless, some of us persist.  John Graham with a tentative trial date set for Feb. 12, 2008 will now wait until Summer.  For his day in the sun of all things once young.  According to the U.S. Attorney's office in Rapid City, Judge Persol granted a motion for extension and the trial is now set for June, 17, 2008. 

Yet. it may all be continued again before lines of witnesses will be found in a low budget hotel near the courthouse. They won’t be wandering around. This winter. On the north side of that Bronze statue of a crying Brave.  A tribute to conquest.  That icon of all things gone

Anna Mae in handcuffs

All of this is Indian Country.

And today that landscape  is the place where colonizers cannot abide. By their own manifest doctrine.  They hide from the truth of their lies.  Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, M’ikmaq (Nova Scotia).   An Indian woman murdered.   John Graham, Southern Tuchone (Yukon Territory). An Indian man being held in a jail cell in Rapid City, S. Dakota.  For an execution committed 32 years ago. Canadian First Nations people.  Too many years later.  The whole world is watching. Nothing. And some wonder why anyone cares about these people.  Dead. Arrested. Accused and refused the rights to pray.

There are many ways to answer the question.

One-- is how land defines the place and depth of our existence.

And then. There is uranium.

But wait.

Back to the Graham trial. The courtroom will not be full of rallied media pressed into those wooden benches like Sunday morning Baptists. This winter. Because on Dec. 13th, there was that surprise motion by the U.S. Government. U. S. Attorneys Martin Jackley and Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Mandel  (part of the legal team who convicted Arlo Looking Cloud, 2004) filed a motion. 

Prosecution asked the Judge “for a 60 day extension, for discovery purposes”, according to Robert Mandel  (phone interview,12.18.07). Mandel confirmed what John Graham’s attorney expressed to me. Earlier in this week. The court may delay a trial date again,  per other emergent motions request from both the Defense and  the Prosecutors. Several motions from both sides, just in the past 10 days, make the current court records read like a manifesto on how to dot i’s and write run-on sentences.  This complex case reads like Chinese to a Texan. And  hovers over the law lives of everyone involved.  Like a red tail hawk screeching for a winter rabbit, far into egos the size of old growth

 

John Graham

 

“What do you plan, are you working with a team of lawyers?” I asked John Murphy, current lawyer for John Graham. He explained that he was instructed by his client to “make no comments to the media at this time.” (phone interview, 12.18.07).

Still.  We have Matthew Lien.  An old friend of John Graham and key figure in his Defense Committee, Lien rattles the shackles which bind this case,  From his recent letter  (Dec. 10, 2007) to the public:   “Now in Rapid City, South Dakota, John remains in good spirits. After the four years of house arrest and the more recent months of incarceration while awaiting the decision of the Supreme Court, John is eager to take the stand, speak the truth, and regain his freedom.”

Will that happen anytime soon? Most of the legal teams expect the trial to be continued “maybe as long as one year. Remember the Looking Cloud trial?  That’s what happened there” explained Mr. Mandel.

When I asked  Mandel if he and Marty Jackley had requested the extension because of the rumour in Indian Country.  That Arlo Looking Cloud has offered to testify against Graham, and may be seeking a government deal, Mandel’s reply was poignant, just a little telling:

 “No.  Not because of the Looking Cloud option.  We filed because we need more time to provide the defense with discovery, “

Mandel neither refuted nor confirmed the idea that Looking Cloud might be in the prosecution mix.  And like sand and granite blasting the side of some high plains Butte, sculpting dead Presidents, the face of these recent events reminds some of us of where we came from.  So we can get to where we need to be.  And that is not inside of a courtroom where nothing new is said.

If Arlo Looking Cloud is preparing to make a deal with the Feds, if John Graham is preparing a surprise statement naming old AIM names –as some people still believe he might do-- what will that mean to the price of electricity in the desert towns of Utah?  Or to the sacred cites near Yucca Mountain?

Okay this is a wild stretch.

Like old two laners through a Nevada desert. 

What does the nuclear industry have to do with any of this? 

Why IS this trial so closely watched by more than lookey loos?

And how does the extension of the trial date translate into law?

 

 

Try this.  In fact, what happens in the courtroom with John Graham will reflect a sentiment which the U.S. Government has held in her prayer meeting style credos.  For centuries.  Indians were either conquered, or need /ed to be.  And old activists, old AIM could still stand in the way of public sentiment regarding treaty rights. Which have often kept the nuclear powers-that-seize from gaining complete control over “natural resources” on Indian land.

Anna Mae herself was involved in preserving water rights as was the death by fire Tina Manning Trudell, wife of John Trudell. He was AIM Chairperson at the time BOTH women were murdered. And old AIM challenged not only Duck Valley and Pine Ridge water rights. But.....bingo....uranium mining on Indian land , as well.  Graham himself worked on anti=nuke campaigns in Canada. In the 1980’s. Casino distractions would come later. For the best of  us, 

In all seriousness. If a movement once responsible for demanding and obtaining freedom of religion for Indians (Jimmy Carter, 1978) is found guilty of murdering their own, why SHOULD anyone care what Indians say about mines in Window Rock, Az, the Dine (Navajo Land) Nation. 

If the dots are connected like night sky in a telescope of science the answer of why is easy.  Uranium. And greed.

That might be what  started this whole John Graham, American Indian Movement murder in the Badlands story.  Some Indian legends emerging out of Rosebud Indian Reservation (S. Dakota)  have talked for years about the 1970’s fight to keep the reservation from being mined for the death walk mineral.  Around the same time that all the Resmurs (see FBI, FOI) were happening.  When hundreds of Indians were killed for things like having an auntie who went to an AIM feast.

For instance, when Anna Mae Aquash arrived at the Siege of Wounded Knee (WK II as it is known in Indian Country),  when John Graham, her occasional driver tromped through the scene,   the Nuclear Industry was more than a dream. It was hot on the trail of claiming uranium as the drug of choice for greed machine addictions.  The paradox was/is, uranium is abundant on Indian Reservations and old AIM was part of movement to keep the Earth from being mined for an industry bent on placing toxic waste into our daily bread. An industry which is, as I write this, being revived in the name of sustenance. 

 Inside the other camp. Hungry for answers I ask. Mr. Mandel:

 “Are you finally happy to have Graham here to take to task? What is your statement about the case”

His simple reply resonates: 

“This case is what it says it is.  People can just look at it. It is clear.”  

 The verdict is not in yet.

On how the shattered landscape, the divide and conquered parking lots of Rapid City will hold the ghosts of her past. Captive.   While restless old friend humans who are bound to the future  converge to  free themselves from history.

To be continued.....

 

(this is part of an ongoing series dedicated to the memory and work of Anna Mae Pictou Aquash (1945-1975/6).