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PAINTINGS
By Robert Robideau

 

ROBERT ROBIDEAU

 

  
 

John LeKay: Steve Hendricks recently wrote a book entitled "Unquiet Grave", in which he states his reasons why he believes Ana Mae Aquash was murdered. This is what he said in an interview when I asked him about this:

 
Aquash was murdered for many complex reasons, some of which I think I know, others I definitely don't know. In overarching terms, she was murdered because (a) the FBI made AIM so paranoid with its infiltrations and provocations that AIM felt it had no choice but to execute the next informer it found, who happened (incorrectly) to be Aquash and (b) AIM wasn't smart enough to resist the urge to violence, and the group too often and too foolishly resorted to guns and fists to solve problems that guns and fists couldn't solve. As to why AIMers believed Aquash was an informer, I'm not entirely sure. There are all kinds of theories out there, many potentially credible: she knew that Peltier had bragged about killing the FBI agents at Oglala, and AIM feared she would talk to the feds; she was a powerful woman and made other women (and men) bitterly jealous; everywhere she went, it seemed, important AIMers got arrested, so people thought she was not merely an informer but a particularly effective one; and so on. I wasn't able to penetrate the minds of those in AIM who ordered her killing, so I can't say. Perhaps all of the above and more were at play, or perhaps none of the above and something else entirely

Robert Robideau:  A few months after the exposure of FBI informant Douglas Durham, Dennis Banks and Vernon Bellecourt who both suspected Anna Mae might be an FBI informant because of her close relationship with Banks had myself and others question Anna Mae. We came away fully satisfied that she was not. On September 4, ( one day before the FBI raid on Crow Dogs land on the Rosebud reservation) Anna Mae took me aside and asked if she could join my group, I took her in. From that day up until she was killed I considered her a member of our group.

 

 
 

Ana Mae Aquash

  

 
 

Robert Robideau

  

 

After my release from Leavenworth federal prison in 1979, many of those that participated in the killing of Anna Mae sought me out to tell me of the role each had played in the killing of Anna Mae. From these initial conversations it was clear to me that these individuals believed Anna Mae to be an informant. All had participated at various stages of the sequestering and questioning of Anna Mae to protect other members of AIM. To say that these individuals anticipated the ultimate outcome of their actions would be contrary to the truth; not one that spoke to me sanctioned her ultimate execution. There had been many informants before her and as a security member who had participated in their questioning, I can verify that never once had we considered executing them.  

From my investigations, she was killed by the order of one leader, to protect himself from prison. AIM should not be condemned for the act of one coward.

I would strongly disagree with the fantasy of some profiteering writers- their claim the FBI had injected an uncontrollable paranoia that sent AIM into a frenzy of violence. Civil rights investigators Shirley DeWitt and Maldrow’s reports of that era make it very clear that the Oglala people living on Pine Ridge reservation and members of AIM had been forced to take defensive actions in order to protect themselves from the waves of violence perpetuated against them by both the federal government and the tribal government under the leadership of Dick Wilson. As a member of Dakota AIM and Northwest AIM who witnessed some of this violence, I can attest to this. My acquittal in the death of Coler and Williams also makes it somewhat clear that the group of Euro Americans who heard our witnesses on this issue agreed with us.

 

 

JL: When you say from your investigations that Ana Mae was killed by the order of one leader; that AIM should not be condemned for the negative actions of one person who gave the order or the person (s) who carried this out.  But If this person, (AIM leader) hasn't come forward and its been 33 years, then it's inevitable this silence will cast a shadow of guilt on all AIM leaders and an organization of others who know who this is. This is still a catch 22.

What do you believe is the solution to this problem of wrongful condemnation of an entire organization, instead of one person? 

Robert Robideau: FBI reports clearly show that they knew 33 years ago who the shooters were yet chose not to prosecute. Why? Their reports strongly suggest that they took no action because they wanted to protect an undercover informant’s anonymity. It is also reasonable that the FBI chose not to reveal their findings for prosecution as strategy to stigmatize AIM with the killing to achieve our demise. Their Counter intelligence program ( cointelpro) used such tactics in attempts to destroy AIM by darkening the public's conception of us. Just as they have done to the freedom fighters of Palestine. Where the guilt properly lay with one person they manipulated it to infect all members. Dick Wilson is an example of someone responsible for many killings and assaults and the FBI turned a blind eye and did everything they could to place Wilson’s violence on AIM. The solution may have been lost 33 years ago, but all things must come full circle and perhaps by giving John Graham, the second individual indicted for killing Anna Mae, his day in court will open doors revealing a path to the truth. Part of the truth is the struggle to expose the FBI's culpability to the killing itself.

 

 
 

J Edgar Hoover

 

 

JL: Also, why would someone carry out this "order" to begin with? Please correct me if I'm wrong but from what I have gathered, AIM is not the US military where someone takes an oath to follow orders from a higher official - otherwise face court martial, imprisonment etc. I mean where was this person'(s) free will and conscience?

 
Robert Robideau: Even though the FBI attempted to paint AIM as a military terrorist organization, we were not. The family was the heart of many of our AIM Chapters. Northwest AIM’s heart beat came from brothers, sisters, cousins and close friends. What is important to know about that segment of history is the federal government’s success in instilling fear through the violence of this period, tagged as the Reign of Terror. William Janklow’s pronouncement that ’ the only way to deal with AIM is to put a bullet in the head of its leaders compounded a real threat of imprisonment and/or death that was felt in our leadership; and it also instilled a deep sense to protect our leadership from harms way. Once a body guard for Russell Means, I know that it would have been easy for me to have killed to protect him without orders. Perhaps, if he told me that someone represented a grave threat to his life I too might have killed to save him. The state of mind that was created here was protection.
 
John LeKay:  What do you believe was the motive for U.S. Attorney McMahon, in Arlo Looking Clouds trial, to raise the issue of Leonard Peltier, putting witnesses like Kamook Banks Nichols on the stand and allowing her testimony to stay on the record?  
 
Robert Robideau: Cloud's  trial to get things into the court record that they hoped would once and for all condemn Peltier for the killing of Coler and Williams; and damn any further attempts to free Peltier through Parole or Presidential clemency. The government’s admission on several occasions in open court that it had no credible evidence Leonard Peltier killed the agents, that it could not prove who killed the agents was the rational for introducing Kamook’s $42,000 worth of testimony to the witness stand. Not only did Kamook provide the FBI with the disparately sought after culpability to the killing of their agents, her allegations went further in an attempt to condemn Peltier further by inferring that he may have played some role in the killing of Anna Mae simply by having Kamook state that Peltier did not trust Anna Mae.

 

 

Arlo Looking Cloud

  
 
 

Kamook Banks Nichols

  

 

Bernie Lafferty said that, “Leonard treated Anna Mae no different than the rest of us, “… “I never once heard Leonard accuse Anna Mae of being an informant.” Bernie also stated, “We was always real close to Anna Mae…well, we had to be…I know deep in my heart that she was no FBI agent. She would never say anything to anybody” (taped phone conversation, August 4th, 2004). Why would anyone in their right mind continue to include a person they believe to be an informant in their group which was allegedly involved in criminal offenses. The allegation is as absurdly ridiculous as Peltier’s alleged confession.

Kamook claimed to have spoken to Anna Mae at the Farmington AIM Convention about her “interrogation,” while in fact she was at no time present at the AIM Convention, which had known but later confirmed in a taped interview with her sister Bernie Lafferty, whom also commented, “ I did not approve of what my sister did.”

 

JL: What do you believe Kamook had to gain from doing this?  

Robert Robideau: For love, money and friendship…. According to Kamook the FBI gave her $42,000 for ‘moving expenses.‘ Soon after the Looking Cloud trial Kamook married, Robert Ecoffey, a Pine Ridge goon during the reign of terror. Both Candy Hamilton and Bernie Lafferty complained to me about being in a room complete of FBI agents. Shortly after the trial she and I exchanged several e-mails in which she blamed her ex husband, Dennis Banks, for her behavior. John Trudell, who I had confronted in 1994 about his participation in the killing of Ann Mae, testified that Arlo Looking Cloud had confessed to him, stated in a taped interview with a member of the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee that he had given Kamook "strong words of support" to encourage her to take the witness stand.

John LeKay: Why do you think it is that no one has investigated the lives of 60 or more human beings that were murdered by Dick Wilson's GOONS?
Robert Robideau: According to one Wilson Goon, Duane Brewer, in a video taped interview with Kevin McKiernan, the FBI provided him and other members of Wilson’s vigilante goon squad with armor piercing ammunition, arms and intelligence to wage war against his own people and AIM. Brewer, with smiles clued to his lips, expressed the whole period as some sort of Disney Land adventure. The FBI made public claims to have investigated many of these Oglala and AIM murders, claiming to have solved some, while making other claims that their investigations were hampered because they did not get cooperation from the communities. It is as evident as the April 1975 FBI Memorandum/Position paper calling for "The Use of Special Agents of the FBI in a Paramilitary Law Enforcement Operation in the Indian Country," that the FBI were on the Pine Ridge reservation to wage a deadly war against the American Indian Movement and the Oglala Lakota people who supported us.
 
 

John Trudell

  
 
 

Leonard Peltier

  
JL: Why do you think there has been so much focus on Ana Mae and not so much on the others?
 
Robert Robideau:  Anna Mae Aquash was a leading member of the American Indian Movement (AIM) from 1970 to the time of her death and although known for taking part in the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, she is best known for her involvement with Dennis Banks and Leonard Peltier during the aftermath of the June 26, 1975 Oglala shoot out with the FBI on the Pine Ridge reservation.
 
The motives underlying the FBI’s focus on Anna Mae's death were planted and nursed along for 33 years as part of its cointelpro efforts of the 70‘s to destroy AIM. In the last analysis, the FBI viewed the Anna Mae case as an opportunity to give the final killing blow to both AIM and Peltier.  In the Anna Mae's  case, the FBI maneuvered in a very calculated fashion to destroy AIM and it’s popularity in Indian Country. Some like Steve Hendrick’s have contributed to this effort in their writings and propaganda by mimicking that which the FBI wants to hear, “AIM is dead.” The FBI’s ongoing efforts to “get Leonard Peltier,” was frantically spurred on after an almost successful bid for freedom through Presidential clemency in 2001 at which time one of their own, Don Edwards, stated in opposition to the FBI campaign against Peltier‘s clemency, "As a former Congressman from California for over thirty years, a former FBI agent and a citizen committed to justice, I wish to speak out strongly against the FBI's efforts in opposing the clemency appeal of Leonard Peltier. I served as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights in the U.S. House of Representatives."
 
The Anna Mae case has witnessed in recent Kafkesque trial of Leonard Peltier for the death of Anna Mae Aquash in the media. In July of 2005 a four page February 1993 FBI memorandum was discovered in documents received by Peltier’s attorneys through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that outlined the FBI’s conspiracy to destroy Peltier's Executive clemency campaign. The memo urged their agencies to "Get the story/pictures out publicly through...magazines or other publications which have worked closely with the FBI over the years". Paul DeMain, Editor of News From Indian Country, fully aware that the FBI had begun their efforts to stop Presidential clemency for Leonard, sold the FBI an advertisement to recruit Native Americans into the FBI in August 1995. In 2006 DeMain published an article deriding AIM by Joseph Trimbach, Agent in charge of the Minneapolis bureau during the 1970‘s.
 
In recent headline news, “President Bill Clinton's Decision Not to Pardon Leonard Peltier Lost His Wife a Key Supporter -- and Helped Gain Barack Obama a Friend,” David Geffen, a key Democratic supporter, chastised Ex President Bill Clinton’s frailer to grant a pardon to Peltier stated, ''Marc Rich getting pardoned? An oil-profiteer expatriate who left the country rather than pay taxes or face justice?'' "Everybody in politics lies, but they [the Clintons] do it with such ease, it's troubling," Geffen concluded.

 
JL: How are these sensational matters connected to the larger issues that the main stream media won't touch with a 10 foot barge pole like the violation of treaties, the mining of gold, uranium, silver, copper, minerals in the the Black Hills, the pollution and contamination of aquifer's, wildlife etc. The cancer and high infant mortality rates, birth defects, severe poverty, lack of jobs, alcoholism, suicide, racism, etc please see this
 
Robert Robideau: The role of main stream media is disseminating official propaganda to assist in the process of theft and silent genocide. Racism and systematic isolation is historically characterized by land theft and control of our destinies, humiliation and murder being the final objective.

Racism is the basic motivation for containment and isolation. These are the basic methods used to oppress and control a targeted group of people. From the beginning Europeans have systematically stolen our Lands, and natural resources through various methods, including policies of genocide to remove us from our traditional lands. The Reservation system insures white control over the political, and economic existence of Native American Indians. The Pine Ridge reservation is not only one of the poorest but has the highest destructive environments that a people exist in these United States, with the highest rates of cancer, infant mortality, birth defects, poverty, suicide, etc. The environmental pollution and contamination has become an International concern as a result of and continuation of multi national exploitation of mother earth. For the most part mainstream media has ignored this critical issue.

 
The media has waged relentless propaganda campaigns against the Pine Ridge reservation to build fear and hysterical sentiment toward our people to assist in achieving the final objective of control and isolation. We witness these same outrageous crimes being perpetuated against the Palestinian people and others groups, such as the peoples of Iraq, who possess rich resources. North American Indian people are no longer seen as human beings, instead it is taught to view and fear us as Savages, just as the Palestinian people have been taught to be seen as terrorists.
Today, we are free to leave our reservations and come and go as we please. However, just as it has been made illegal for the Palestinians to freely move about, it was illegal for an Indian to leave the reservation. We were once considered illegal aliens off the reservations.
Despite treaties recognizing our rights to self determination the United States government continues to maintain an occupation force to control reservations through the Major Crimes Act and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA); and impose Congressional Acts that have and continue to impose policies of genocide and take away our sovereign rights. To this day all Indian lands are maintained under the jurisdiction of the United States Government through the BIA and/or State governments that impose their will over the lives of native American Indians.

 

JL: What do you see as ways that people can heal some of the wounds from that time and what are your thoughts on native spirituality and traditional medicine etc?
 
Robert Robideau: Healing is a process that must begin through re=-education with a vision for equality and well being for all. Euro American people, who have historically been the aggressors must begin the process of healing by educating themselves about our true history and the process of silent genocide that has and continues to take place against native American Indian people in North America. Most people in the United States, including President Bush, have no idea about native American Indian treaties and sovereignty simply because there has been a concerted effort on the part of Euro Americans to exclude our true history from academia. Instead Euro Americans are taught by educators that we are the “vanishing race.”
Little or nothing is taught about the concerted effort to make us vanish and why. Euro Americans created special schools of indoctrination with the objective of stripping our children and future generations of their culture and heritage through a long process of brainwashing techniques. Through Congressional Acts like the 1887 Allotment Act racial discrimination became institutionalized. Racism touched every aspect of social life, sanctioning containment. Just as the South Africans during Apartheid would be in 1948, all native American Indians were racially classified into categories: Full Bloods, Mixed Bloods and White for the purpose of valid rights or claims of any persons to reservation lands.
 
The Act not only institutionalized racism through a Blood quantum classification that has served Euro Americans in their efforts to further cut our population levels. The Act divided existing reservation areas into 160 acre plots, one plot for each head of household. The practical results of this Act were that some sixty million acres of treaty land (almost half) were stolen and opened to white settlement.
 
We were forbidden, with threats of imprisonment and death, to practice our traditional religion and medicines. The massacre of over 300 men, women and children in 1890 at Wounded Knee was the final act that told us to give up our “primitive” ways. It was not until the birth of the American Indian Movement that many Plains tribes began to openly practice native spirituality and medicine. About 1990 a proposal for Native American Freedom of Religion bill was introduced to Congress which I apposed. I wanted to know why this special bill was being introduced when the United States Constitution guaranteed all whom resided in the United States the right to practice their respective faith.
In a final note much of the critical medicine and healing methods used today by doctors has come from Native American medicine. Yet, we  have benefited the least.

Mass grave for the massacre at Wounded knee

 
 

 

                Contact  robertrobideau@yahoo.com 

  

 
 

JL: What are some ways that people can learn more about the Free Peltier campaign and the reasons why he should be free?

 
Robert Robideau “Silence is the voice of complicity, an injustice committed against one is an injustice to all.” Recognizing that Peltier has been imprisoned for decades for a crime he did not commit, various governments and dignitaries from around the world have called for Leonard's release.
 
"Amnesty International considers Leonard Peltier to be a political prisoner... Amnesty International believes that Leonard Peltier should be immediately and unconditionally released."
 
Former FBI agent and member of Congress, Don Edwards, in 2000 condemned the FBI's opposition to presidential clemency for Peltier, stating "The FBI used Mr. Pelteir as a scapegoat and they continue to do so today. At every step of the way, FBI agents and leadership have opposed any admission of wrong doing by the government, and they have sought to misrepresent and politicize the meaning of clemency for Leonard Peltier. ..”
And
The National Congress of American Indians stated in a letter to President Clinton," Now is the time to make a strong statement to the American public, and the world, reflecting this important ideal that injustice towards this country¹s indigenous peoples will no longer be tolerated, nor sanctioned by a just U.S. government."
Visit us at www.leonardpeltier.org often to learn more about efforts to win Leonard's freedom and find out what you can do to help. 

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