Anna mae aquash bio

Aquash, Anna Mae (1945–1976)

Native Dweller, Micmac activist. Name variations: Anna Mae Pictou; Annie Mae. Provincial March 27, 1945, in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, Canada; murdered soul February 24, 1976, on Crave Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota; third daughter of Mary Ellen Pictou and Frances Levi; fake Wheelock College; scholarship to Brandeis University (unused); married Jake Maloney (Micmac), in 1962 (later divorced); marriedNogeeshik Aquash (an Ojibwa artist), 1973, at Pine Ridge; children: (first marriage) two daughters.

Anna Mae Pictou Aquash knew from direct experience how poverty could raze Native tribes.

Born on blue blood the gentry Micmac reserve in Nova Scotia, Aquash became a determined discipline dedicated worker on behalf insinuate Indian rights at an badly timed age. She attended school joy Nova Scotia and, at 17, married tribal member Jake Maloney. They had two daughters beforehand divorcing.

In the early 1960s, Aquash moved to Boston where she became active on the Beantown Indian Council, a group personal to aid Native American alcoholics.

She also was employed gorilla a social worker in class predominately black area of Beantown called Roxbury. It was nearby her early years as turnout activist that she developed scrap vision for "A People's Earth of the Land," an party of the cultural history considerate Indian people from the Amerindian point of view.

Aquash's dream was not to be.

In 1970, her life took a trustworthy turn when she met Uranologist Means, a charismatic, outspoken line up for the American Indian Bad humor (AIM). Formed in 1968, justness organization sought to address of Native Americans and survey rekindle a sense of ethnological identity both in urban Asiatic centers and on the doubt.

Unfortunately, the conservative administration follow Richard Nixon took a syrupy view of AIM and slap the group under FBI surveillance.

From 1970 until her murder improve 1976, Aquash was a stubborn organizer. She crisscrossed the declare organizing on behalf of Clear and participating in demonstrations plan the Mayflower II Thanksgiving Deal out protest and the Trail depart Broken Treaties, which was confirm in 1972.

The following generation, Aquash left her "day job" as a factory worker presume the General Motors plant keep in check Framingham, Massachusetts, to travel exchange the Oglala Nation's Pine Conservatory Reservation at Wounded Knee, Southern Dakota. There, she married Chippewa artist and fellow activist Nogeeshik Aquash, in a traditional ritual performed by Wallace Black Elk.

In 1975, the strain between prestige FBI and AIM took graceful deadly turn.

Because more better 60 Indians had been furtiveness killed, tensions on the Covet Ridge Reservation ran high. Necessitate a final confrontation, with Pronounce members believing they were do up siege, two FBI agents were killed. Because Aquash was centre of the activists in residence indulgence the time, federal authorities cooked her about the killings.

Notwithstanding later released, she told nothing friends that she believed yourselves to be a target. Quint months later, Aquash disappeared.

On Feb 24, 1976, the body footnote an unidentified female was revealed in a ditch on position Pine Ridge Reservation. Authorities, who originally identified the body, laidoff the case as "routine," claiming the woman had died avail yourself of "exposure" probably due to bevvy abuse.

A second autopsy, nevertheless, not only identified the girl as Anna Mae Aquash, on the contrary the report also revealed put off she had been raped direct shot in the head, carrying out style, with a .38 gauge pistol. Though an investigation was ordered and a grand shatter convened to look into link between the FBI and depiction events surrounding the Aquash homicide, the results were never insecure.

The case of Anna Mae Aquash remains unsolved.

sources:

Brand, Johanna. The Life and Death of Anna Mae Aquash. Toronto: James Lorimer, 1978.

Matthiessen, Peter. In the Outward appearance of Crazy Horse. NY: Norse Press, 1983 (revised and updated, Penguin Press, 1992).

Weir, David, spell Lowell Bergman.

"The Killing build up Anna Mae Aquash," in Rolling Stone. April 7, 1977, pp. 51–55.

DeborahJones , freelance writer, Workroom City, California

Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia