When I first visited Pine Ridge Reservation, site of the Wounded Knee massacre, in 1976, it left an indelible impression on me. It is an eerily beautiful place of wind-swept plains that seems haunted by the voices of the dead echoing from the foothills of the Black Hills in the distance.
Home to the Lakota (Sioux) people, Pine Ridge was central in the 1970s to a concerted effort by Native Americans to demand their rights and reclaim their land from the occupying U.S. government.
The American Indian Movement (AIM) emerged as the leading voice of the activists in that uprising. The occasion for my visit to Pine Ridge was the mysterious murder of AIM activist Anna Mae Aquash, a 30-year-old mother of two and member of the Mi'kmaq tribe who traveled from Nova Scotia to join the rebellion.
Aquash was an articulate feminist who organized demonstrations and spoke out eloquently on behalf of native rights. She also was AIM co-founder Dennis Banks' lover at a time when AIM had been placed under FBI surveillance by President Nixon.
“These white people think this country belongs to them,” Aquash wrote in a letter to her sister at the time. “The whole country changed with only a handful of raggedy-ass pilgrims that came over here in the 1500s. And it can take a handful of raggedy-ass Indians to do the same, and I intend to be one of those raggedy-ass Indians.”
Violence haunted AIM and by 1975, more than 60 Indians had been mysteriously killed. Activists accused the U.S. government of waging a deadly war against their people. Tensions between AIM and the FBI on Pine Ridge reached a boiling point. In an armed battle with AIM members, two FBI agents were killed.
Afterward, authorities grilled Aquash about the killings and then released her, leading her AIM colleagues to suspect she might be an informer.
Five months later, she disappeared.
In February 1976, her badly decomposed body was discovered by a rancher working his property line; she had been killed execution-style by a single shot to the head.
For Rolling Stone, Lowell Bergman and I traveled to Pine Ridge to try and find out who was behind her murder.With investigative stories of this kind, sometimes you solve the mystery and sometimes you don't.
In Anna Mae's case, we discovered a lot of salient details but we did not solve the mystery. In that sense you could say we failed. But we did write a long story about the case, which perhaps helped raise awareness.
Over the years, the mystery bubbled to the surface from time to time until finally (in 2004 and 2010) authorities were able to convict two low-level AIM members in her killing.
According to a piece in the New York Times Magazine by Eric Konigsberg, these two were essentially the fall guys for the crime, which was engineered by a group of AIM women known as the Pie Patrol.
Almost certainly, according to Konigsberg, higher-ups ordered the Pie Patrol to have Anna Mae murdered. If so, the guilty parties apparently went to their graves with their secret. Dennis Banks died three years ago at age 80, leaving 20 children behind.
According to Lakota legend, when the body of a murder victim is moved, a strong wind will blow.When you stand out on Pine Ridge today, you can feel that wind and hear the voices of ghosts echoing around you.
One of those is Anna Mae Aquash.
(Thanks to Ann Donaldson.)
***
The news:
* Microsoft has identified more than 40 of its customers around the world that had problematic versions of a third-party IT management program installed and that were specifically targeted by the suspected Russian hacking campaign disclosed this week, the company said in a blog post Thursday.The tech company said that 80% of those victims are in the US while the rest are in seven other countries: Canada, Mexico, Belgium, Spain, the United Kingdom, Israel and the United Arab Emirates. (CNN)
* New infections in California surge 50 percent in a day, making it the U.S epicenter (WashPo)
* People Thought Covid-19 Was Relatively Harmless for Younger Adults. They Were Wrong. -- New research shows that July may have been the deadliest month for young adults in modern American history. (NYT)
* If Biden halts border wall project, U.S. would save $2.6 billion, Pentagon estimates show (WashPo)
* Winter storm dropped more snow in parts of the Northeast than all of last year's winter season (CNN)
* 'Losing A Generation': Fall College Enrollment Plummets For 1st-Year Students -- Researchers say the pandemic is largely to blame for this year's drastic enrollment declines, but college-going has also been on a decade-long downward trend. (NPR)
* As the coronavirus ravaged New York this spring, state officials faced a terrifying prospect: Casualties were mounting, and the reserve of ventilators and masks was dwindling. As doctors considered rationing lifesaving treatment, the state rushed into $1.1 billion in deals for supplies and equipment. Now, New York wants much of that money back. (NYT)
* On Jan. 6, Vice President Mike Pence will oversee final confirmation of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. Then he'll likely head overseas. (Politico)
* Joint Chiefs Head Meets With Taliban in Afghanistan (AP)
* Walgreens and CVS staff will soon begin vaccinations at tens of thousands of long-term care facilities. Some staff and residents are wary, and there are thorny issues of consent. (NYT)
* President-elect Joe Biden is expected to get his first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine as soon as next week, just days after thousands of Americans and frontline workers began receiving the shots. Biden will get his vaccination in a public setting in an effort to encourage eligible Americans to get vaccinated and to instill trust in the treatments. [HuffPost]
* E-Commerce to Total a Quarter of Global Retail by 2024, GroupM Forecasts (WSJ)
* As Mexico’s security deteriorates, the power of the military grows (WashPo)
* California lost more people to Covid-19 in the past year than became new residents. (NYT)
* When the history of the pandemic is written, one of the great mysteries will be what President Donald Trump was doing in the waning days of his presidency as the number of Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. soared past 3,000 each day, the virus spread unchecked and Congress dithered over the details of an emergency relief package that could be the difference between people being able to eat and being forced to sleep on the streets this holiday season.Trump ran for president pretending he was the consummate dealmaker, the chief executive who could make things happen with a snap of his fingers. He will go down in history as a president who worsened the grief and tragedy of the most consequential pandemic in 100 years by being contemptuous of masks and the safety precautions designed by his own administration -- a man incapable of empathy, who chose to remain cocooned in his White House bubble at a time when leadership would have mattered. (CNN)
***Is in a bank in the middle of Beverly Hills
In somebody else's name
So if you're dreamin' about California
It don't matter at all where you've played before
California's a brand-new game
Can scar a man forever right down to your soul
Living on the spotlight can kill a man outright
'Cause everything that glitters is not gold
Is in a bank in the middle of Beverly Hills
In somebody else's name
So if you're dreamin' about California
It don't matter at all where you've played before
California's a brand-new game
Is in a bank in the middle of Beverly Hills
In somebody else's name
So if you're dreamin' about California
It don't matter at all where you've played before
California's a brand-new game
A brand-new game
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