Walk for Justice Oil on canvas © Robert Robideau

Heyoka Magazine: Can you please tell me when and how you first started painting and what inspired the painting entitled "Walk for Justice"?

Robert Robideau: Although, I have been drawing since grade school, it was not until being imprisoned at Leavenworth, Kansas for a conviction arising from the June 26, 1975 Oglala Shoot-out with federal law enforcement personel that I began to paint with oils. In 1986, after six years as the National Director for the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, I decided to return to school to finish my undergraduate degree in cultural anthropology which I had dropped out of in 1973 to join in the efforts of the American Indian Movement.

After finishing my undergraduate degree at Portland State University, I moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico and began classes at the Institute of American Indian Art (IAIA); but had to drop out after Leonard Peltier asked me to take over the National Office of the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee again. I have continued to work in my spare time with oil and various other art materials since Leavenworth.

The inspiration to execute the oil painting, “Walk for Justice,” (which was sold in San Francisco in 1992 at the Political Art Show, “Art in Chains,” ) came from many long years of participating in demonstrations organized around long walks to free Leonard Peltier from prison, which has become a life long work I continue to pursue, especially in my art, much of which is on permanent display at the American Indian Movement Museum in Barcelona. 

An Unforgiving Daughter Oil on canvas © Robert Robideau

 

HM: How difficult was it painting in prison and what kind of art studio or work space, materials were you provided with and what was your first oil painting about?

Robert Robideau:  There are very few federal prisons that allow oil painting. In Leavenworth, I was allowed to possess purchased art materials and paint in my cell. I used my steel seat as an easel and sat on my steel bed inches away from my canvas in a 9 x 4 foot cell to paint oils depicting scenes of our struggle and culture. The “Chief” and “An unforgiving daughter” ( a statement on the murder of Anna Mae Aquash) were two oils I painted while in Leavenworth prison.

HM: What kind of light did you have in the cell and how big was the window? Did you have a view of some sort that helped in terms of inspiration?

 

Robert Robideau: My light came from a 60 watt bulb hidden behind a dirty rectangle frosted plastic pane to paint oils depicting scenes of our struggle and culture. My only source of inspiration came from the news clippings and my own anger and pride that at times swelled up in me over the assaults, death and oppression that continued in Indian country.

 

HM: Was "Unforgiving daughter" painted from memory or a photo and what are the dimensions of this painting?

 

Robert Robideau: I used a black and white news-clip photo showing Kamook Banks and Anna Mae in handcuffs coming out of a court house in Portland, Oregon to do the 18”x24” oil painting of Anna Mae.

 

HM: Looking at the sun like shape around Anna Mae's head in "Unforgiving daughter" looks like a religious renaissance saintly halo or a light of some sort. But it also brings to mind a nuclear explosion. What does this shape represent to you and why the handcuffs?

 

Robert Robideau: The burst of splashing radiating red out of the circle over her head represents the emotions felt for the unjustified violent execution. The child looks out toward the viewer with angry, and accusing eyes for retribution. The handcuffs are symbolic of the oppressors who she dedicated her life to struggle against.

 

 

HM: Do you usually work from photographs and is the Beginning of the Storm a painting based on the Wounded Knee occupation?

Robert Robideau: Yes, the “Beginning of the storm,” with Banks and Means in the foreground and the church which is symbolic of the Wounded Knee occupation is a statement on the reign of terror that befalls the Pine Ridge reservation precipitating the Oglala shootout in June of 1975.

Many but not all of my ideas for the political oil paintings have been inspired from film and photography of the events of AIM and Peltier, but the finished work is an assemblage that depicts important personalities in AIM with the historic event either recorded or symbolized in some form.

 

As a photographer with long years of dark room experience I have used much of my own work. The ideas for many of my native American Indian religious oil and acrylic paintings have come from many years of participation and knowledge of our ceremonies. All of my etchings, and mono-prints are creations and assemblages of ideas from 35 years of experience as an activist.

I was a student at the University of Oregon when the 71 day occupation at Wounded Knee, that included running gun battles with the United States Army, FBI, Federal Marshals, and local law enforcement was going on. Many of my close relatives of Northwest AIM fought inside Wounded Knee. I became a member of Northwest AIM in the fall of that same year at the time Pedro Bissonette was murdered by the BIA police on Pine Ridge.

 

HM: What I find interesting is that this same Nixon/Kissinger administration (responsible for reign of Terror on Pine Ridge) were also secretly and simultaneously carrying out the menu campaign bombing of Cambodia.

Do you think the fact that the US didn't just start dropping bombs out of planes on you guys and really going ballistic - was because it was Wounded Knee, and that would not have allowed them to get away with this twice and was it Fools Crows idea to go there?  

Robert Robideau: The Nixon/Kissinger administration did order the United States Army into Wounded Knee with armaments used in Viet Nam. U.S. Army Armor piercing and tracer bullets, M79 rocket launchers, APC’S, helicopters, spotter planes, AR 15 fully automatic and light machine guns, etc. And high ranking U.S. Army Advisors. The Nixon administration was clearly fully prepared to repeat the 1890 massacre of men, women, and children that were inside Wounded Knee II. Hundreds of native American Indians were indicted but the federal courts condemned the use of military force resulting in all but a handful being thrown out of court.

The Nixon government did not stop here - on April 1975 it authorized the FBI to issue a memorandum/position paper calling for "The Use of Special Agents of the FBI in a Paramilitary Law Enforcement Operation in the Indian Country," fully authorizing the FBI to wage a deadly war against the American Indian Movement and the Oglala Lakota people. This action created wide spread offensive and defensive violence through out the reservation that lead to the Oglala firefight, the death of three men and railroading of Leonard Peltier into prison.

Fools Crows played a large role in supporting the takeover of Wounded Knee by AIM and Oglala Lakata people of Pine Ridge. It is native custom that the one (s) who first rally an idea lead the charge.

Ghost Dancer Anna Mae Oil on canvas © Robert Robideau

 

HM: Ghost dancer is a very powerful painting. Beautiful but equally haunting and moving and Anna Mae really looks like a religious martyr.  Especially the fact that she has no hands and appears to be levitating above the snow in which she was murdered. 

How did you come to paint this one? Did you see this vision of her like this in your minds eye and why do you think the FBI hastily severed her hands off and sent them to Washington to have them finger printed? 

Robert Robideau: Yes, Anna Mae has become both a martyr and ghost that continues to haunt AIM and the FBI. She has no hands because the FBI cut them off, a deliberate mutilation to express disrespect and to intimidate AIM. She has hand cuffs dangling on one severed arm and a rope hanging from the other that say both some members of AIM and the FBI were responsible for executing her in the winter of 1975. The ghost-like images over her right shoulder represent dead relatives who have come to her aid to seek justice for this “brave hearted woman.” Ghost Dancer is a 65x100cm oil I painted in Barcelona in 2004, the same time I in an angry frenzy painted five other large oils related to her killing. When the federal indictments of Arlo Looking Cloud and John “Boy” Graham were issued about one year prior to my work, I began another search campaign to bring out the truth of why and who killed Anna Mae. My findings lead me to not only paint this one and the others but also to write several angry published articles about my findings. All my research and findings will appear in a book written by Joseba Felix Tobar-Arbulu, a Basque professor. The book will be published in the Basque language this year and hopefully picked up and translated into English.

HM: Did you work from photos or from your personal memory of her and how did you psychologically approach this subject? 

Robert Robideau: No I did not work from a photo, this was a spontaneous painting derived from personal knowledge of the case and renewed anger over her unjustified killing. The face is an Indian woman’s I quickly sketched on the canvas, it is not Anna Mae's. I painted this in less then two hours.

This painting is one of my better expressions in art because the paint flowed quickly over the canvas with confidence because the details of her killing have become etched in my heart and brain.

 

HM: Is the title "ghost dancer" also alluding to the reason why the US government slaughtered all those people back at Wounded Knee in 1890, for practicing their religion and Ghost dance? What was this Lakota ghost dance about exactly?

Robert Robideau: Yes, the ghost dance represented hope for salvation and survival of nations of native American Indians. It was an attempt to renew the tribe, the spirit of a nation, at a time when their relatives the buffalo had been exterminated to starve them out and a great portion of the population had been lost through war and European diseases. The feeling was that the nation was dying. The Ghost Dance called on the generations of dead relatives to show themselves and help the living to survive. For Anna Mae, it is an out cry in defense of herself and AIM, a call on the old ones to help heal the internal confusion caused by her death so that the struggle she believed in will survive and continue.

HM: When did you paint "no regrets'  the style looks a little more photo realistic? 

Robert Robideau: Yes, this one, painted in 1993, was taken from a photo of Leonard of the same period. It was an attempt to show Anna Mae crying out to Leonard for help, the prayers are coming from a traditional medicine man who, with bowed head, stands before Leonard praying. The sweat lodge and tipi represent a way of life, long denied us by euro Americans, that we have as AIM members come to know again and practice in our struggles for self determination.

 

No Regrets Oil on canvas © Robert Robideau

Genocide of the Buffalo Mono Print © Robert Robideau

HM: "Genocide of the Buffalo" is a gorgeously spiritual mono print. Especially the abstraction and how the buffalo become a part of the landscape, the hills the earth.  Also the rusty ox blood reddish colours that bleed into the earth and sky. As if the sky is bleeding and raining blood. What inspired this piece and what is the situation with the buffalo today and have you heard about former "Braves" and CNN owner Ted Tuner's new chain of buffalo burger restaurants.  I read that there are about 40000 Buffalo that roam on Ted Turner's acres. He has 13 ranches in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Montana.   What are your thoughts on this?

Robert Robideau: “Genocide of the Buffalo” was done in the late 1980’s as a testament to their slaughter to near extinction by Euro Americans who wanted to starve the Plains tribes into submission. The old stories tell of the Buffalo nation coming from Mother Earth to help them to live. When a Buffalo was killed a prayer was spoken asking forgiveness. Everything of the Buffalo was used, nothing wasted. Their merging with the earth in this mono print is suppose to tell the viewer that they are of mother earth, as all living things are which make us relatives to each other. This is why native American Indian people refer to all living things as brothers and sisters. All things complete their life cycle by returning to mother earth to merge into one with it. Ted Turner, is simply a profiteer who’s view of the Buffalo is no better then the mentality that drove the Buffalo to near extinction.

Provocateur Oil on canvas © Robert Robideau

HM: Who is this provocateur with Anna Mae in his John Lennon sunglasses and what is the claws and feet of a bird hanging on his forehead and what does this bird's feet symbolize?

 

Robert Robideau: John Trudell, best known for his ability rouse a group to action as an orator, became well known in AIM for his participation in the occupation of Alcatraz in 1968. John never once placed himself in harms way in the defense of Indian people, which he has publicly admitted. After the exposure of Dennis Bank’s security chief Douglas Durham as a paid FBI informant provocateur, John Trudell began openly accusing known and respected AIM members of being FBI agents. And in the 1980’s accused several members of the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee of being agents. In a taped interview with him in 1994 and in 2004 it became evident that Trudell was involved in the bad jacketing of Anna Mae.

In 2004 John Trudell said in an interview with an attorney of Leonard Peltier’s that he told Dino Butler to publicly expose Mr. X as false. Why did he want to expose Mr. X as false at a time when the FBI were desperately seeking avenues to discredit Leonard Peltier who’s clemency request was before President Bill Clinton?

HM: When you use the word, provocateur do you mean like an "agent provocateur" an infiltrator, spy, double crosser,  agent, etc. or someone just being provocative in the literal sense?

Robert Robideau: Yes, the FBI under their counter intelligence program (cointelpro) included methods of disrupting political organizations in the 1960's and 1970's through paid informants and agent provocateurs who's job it was to pit the membership against each other with the use of false accusatory information designed to create bad feelings between its membership. The idea was to implode the organization. Kill it from with in its own membership by creating dissention.