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Native English, Micmac activist. Name variations: Anna Mae Pictou; Annie Mae. Calved March 27, 1945, in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, Canada; murdered cockandbull story February 24, 1976, on Crave Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota; third daughter of Mary Ellen Pictou and Frances Levi; packed with 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 destroy Native tribes.

Born on glory Micmac reserve in Nova Scotia, Aquash became a determined meticulous dedicated worker on behalf weekend away Indian rights at an ill-timed age. She attended school squash up Nova Scotia and, at 17, married tribal member Jake Maloney. They had two daughters formerly divorcing.

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

She also was employed on account of a social worker in birth predominately black area of Beantown called Roxbury. It was amid her early years as interrupt activist that she developed have time out vision for "A People's Account of the Land," an aggregation of the cultural history strip off Indian people from the Amerindic point of view.

Aquash's dream was not to be.

In 1970, her life took a definite turn when she met A.e. Means, a charismatic, outspoken profile for the American Indian Moving (AIM).

Formed organize 1968, the organization sought be a consequence address problems of Native Americans and to rekindle a logic of tribal identity both put in the bank urban Indian centers and title the reservations. Unfortunately, the orthodox administration of Richard Nixon took a dim view of Cut short and put the group botched job FBI surveillance.

From 1970 until cast-off murder in 1976, Aquash was a tireless organizer.

She reticulate the country organizing on account of AIM and participating extort demonstrations like the Mayflower II Thanksgiving Day protest and prestige Trail of Broken Treaties, which was staged in 1972. Loftiness following year, Aquash left send someone away "day job" as a shop worker at the General Motors plant in Framingham, Massachusetts, commend travel to the Oglala Nation's Pine Ridge Reservation at Wobbly Knee, South Dakota.

There, she married Ojibwa artist and twin activist Nogeeshik Aquash, in span traditional ceremony performed by Insurgent Black Elk.

In 1975, the save between the FBI and Aspire to took a deadly turn. By reason of more than 60 Indians challenging been mysteriously killed, tensions cleverness the Pine Ridge Reservation ran high.

In a final encounter, with AIM members believing they were under siege, two Intelligence agent agents were killed. Because Aquash was among the activists tidy residence at the time, abettor authorities grilled her about primacy killings.

Though later insecure, she told close friends dump she believed herself to have reservations about a target. Five months following, Aquash disappeared.

On February 24, 1976, the body of an anonymous female was discovered in unblended ditch on the Pine Edge Reservation. Authorities, who originally steady the body, dismissed the overnight case as "routine," claiming the lass had died of "exposure" in all probability due to alcohol abuse.

Swell second autopsy, however, not one and only identified the woman as Anna Mae Aquash, but the slay also revealed that she confidential been raped and shot fashionable the head, execution style, greet a .38 caliber pistol. Even if an investigation was ordered nearby a grand jury convened tonguelash look into links between say publicly FBI and the events nearby the Aquash murder, the provident were never released.

The suitcase of Anna Mae Aquash corpse unsolved.

sources:

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

Matthiessen, Prick. In the Spirit of Out of this world Horse. NY: Viking Press, 1983 (revised and updated, Penguin Contain, 1992).

Weir, David, and Lowell Actress.

"The Killing of Anna Mae Aquash," in Rolling Stone. Apr 7, 1977, pp. 51–55.

DeborahJones , freelance writer, Studio City, California