Final Associated Press write through: By NOMAAN MERCHANT

RAPID CITY, S.D. — A South Dakota jury returned a murder conviction Friday in the decades-old killing of an American Indian Movement activist whose death came to symbolize AIM and its often violent struggles with federal agents during the 1970s.

John Graham, a 55-year-old former member of the group, was convicted of felony murder during the kidnapping of Annie Mae Aquash. The jury acquitted him of premeditated murder.

Lead prosecutor Marty Jackley, the state’s attorney general, said the murder charge carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison. Jackley said he wasn’t sure whether parole was an option.

Prosecutors alleged Graham, a Southern Tutchone Indian from Canada, and two other AIM activists killed Aquash because they thought she was a government informant. The 35-year investigation `”has finally come to find justice,” Jackley said afterward.

As South Dakota Judge John Delaney read the verdicts, Graham gazed straight ahead without moving. His daughter, Naneek Graham, began to weep as jurors stood one by one to affirm the verdicts.

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Tags: AIM, American Indian Movement, Annie Mae Aquash, aquash, John Graham, Marty Jackley, Pine Ridge Reservation, Rapid City, South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley

The trial for the murder of a young woman 35 years ago on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge reservation finally opened in Rapid City on Wednesday.

Accused is John Graham, a Southern Tutchone Indian from Canada, for the shooting of American Indian Movement activist Annie Mae Aquash 35 years ago, the Belleville News Democrat reports.

The prosecution holds that Graham, also a AIM member, and several alleged accomplishes suspected Aquash of being a government spy.

Where and how the Graham would be prosecuted has held up the trial.

Aquash’s death became synonymous with AIM and its often violent struggles with federal agents in the 1970s, and family members and observers have said Graham’s trial could help to answer lingering questions about why Aquash died and who ordered her killing.

During his narrative about what the state believes happened, Jackley told jurors that Graham and two other AIM activists, Arlo Looking Cloud and Theda Clark, were told in late 1975 to take Aquash from Denver to Rapid City, to the apartment of Thelma Rios.

Looking Cloud was found guilty of his involvement in the murder in 2004 and will likely testify at Graham’s trial. Rios pleaded guilty last month in connection with Aquash’s kidnapping and may also testify.

Tags: AIM, American Indian Movement, annie mae, Annie Mae Aquash, aquash, Arlo Looking Cloud, John Graham, Pine Ridge, Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota, theda clark

The American Indian Movement’s Michael Fairbanks has this follow-up, in Indian Country Today, to his protest of a an episode of MTV’s reality show, “The Dudesons in America.”

The episode is called “Cowboys and Findians,” as Fairbanks says, its “redface” theme is as offensive to Native people as blackface is to African-Americans.

The “Cowboys and Findians” episode perpetuates very offensive stereotypes regarding Native American spirituality, ceremonies, culture and customs. On the MTV Web site, the episode describes these four young Finnish characters “Pursuing their goals of becoming honorary members of the tribe.”

Which tribe? The Tongva people of the Los Angeles region? Considering the damage done by non-Native people “pursuing their goals” of cultural and spiritual misappropriation, this is alarming. The commercialization of cultural and Native spirituality has been going strong now for a few decades, but it seems to have hit its pinnacle recently with people paying as much as $9,000 to participate in a sweat lodge ceremony.

The MTV statement above leaves the impression that it is okay to do so – that not only is it acceptable, but it is fun and entertaining to do so.

Fairbanks, who is head of AIM in Santa Barbara, Calif., likens the episode to broadcast personality Don Imus’ infamous description of female black athletes as “nappy-headed ho’s.”

And, he says, ” It is long overdue for that practice to stop.”

Seems like somebody was paying attention. MTV pulled the episode from its website after complaints from the Santa Barbara AIM chapter, according to Huffington Post.

Click here to view a photos of a protest of “Cowboys and Findians.”

Gwen Florio

Tags: AIM, American Indian Movement, buffalo post, Cowboys and Findians, Dudesons in America, Gwen Florio, MTV, Native American news

Steve Miller, recently retired from the Rapid City (S.D.) Journal, filed this column today about last month’s murder trial in the death more than three decades ago of American Indian Movement activist Annie Mae Aquash:

The trial of Richard Marshall in the Annie Mae Aquash murder left me with a sense of dread and sadness that didn’t have anything to do with the not-guilty verdict.

A federal jury on April 22 found Marshall not guilty of providing the gun that was used to kill Aquash, the American Indian Movement activist killed by other AIM members in December 1975. Marshall’s acquittal showed that a Native American can get a fair trial in Rapid City, said his defense attorney, Dana Hanna. U.S. District Judge Lawrence Piersol thanked Hanna, a court-appointed attorney, for providing a spirited defense.

It’s too bad Annie Mae didn’t have the same quality of defense against those inside AIM who accused her of being an FBI informant throughout 1975, a charge the FBI has consistently denied.

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Tags: AIM, American Indian Movement, Annie Mae Aquash, Arlo Looking Cloud, Dana Harris, FBI, Gwen Florio, Leonard Peltier, Mi'kmaq, Native American news, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Richard "Dickie" Marshall, U.S. District Judge Lawrence Piersol

Yesterday’s acquittal of Richard “Dickie” Marshall in the 1975 slaying of American Indian Movement activist Annie Mae Aquash doesn’t end the case.

As the Associated Press reports here, another man is to go on trial this summer.

Marshall (shown above in the photo by Ryan Soderlin of the Rapid City Journal) was accused of supplying the gun that killed Aquash, who reportedly was suspected by fellow AIM members of being an FBI snitch. A federal jury in Rapid City, S.D., found him not guilty after only two hours of deliberation.

The trial featured a lot of contradictory testimony. For notes on its many twists and turns, see this story by Heidi Bell Gease of the Rapid City Journal, who covered it.

John Graham is to be tried soon as the alleged triggerman.

Norman Zigrossi, who was director of Rapid City’s FBI office in the 1970s, says the aquittal gives him pause.

“Well, it’s not very positive, that’s for sure, because you never like to lose them,” he says.

Another person involved in the case, Arlo Looking Cloud, was found guilty of murder in 2004 and sentenced to life in prison.

Gwen Florio

Tags: AIM, American Indian Movement, Annie Mae Aquash, buffalo post, FBI, Gwen Florio, John Graham, Native American news, Norman Zigrossi, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Richard "Dickie" Marshall

Here’s Dave Kolpack’s entire Associated Press story on today’s verdict in the Aquash murder trial The photo above of Marshall (left) is from Ryan Soderlin of the Rapid City, S.D., Journal:

RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) — A federal jury Thursday found a man not guilty of murder in a killing on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation 34 years ago, during the height of the militant American Indian Movement.

Richard Marshall was accused of providing the gun that was used to kill American Indian Movement activist Annie Mae Aquash in December 1975.

Jurors deliberated for less than two hours Thursday before reaching the verdict on the seventh day of the trial. Marshall hugged his attorney when the verdict was read, and cheering erupted in the courtroom. Marshall nodded and smiled at jurors as they departed.

One of Marshall’s relatives, Owen Marshall, said afterward he thought it was a fair trial.

“I think it was the right decision, the right verdict,” said Owen Marshall, whose father is a cousin of Richard Marshall. “This is justice. I feel bad for Annie Mae’s family as well. They deserve justice as well, but not by sending the wrong man to prison.”

Denise Maloney, Aquash’s daughter, attended most of the trial but left quickly after Thursday’s verdict. She did not return a phone message seeking comment.

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Tags: AIM, American Indian Movement, Annie Mae Aquash, Arlo Looking Cloud, buffalo post, Dana Hanna, FBI, Gwen Florio, John Graham, Mi'kmaq, Navajo Nation, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Richard "Dickie" Marshall, South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley, Southern Tutchone

This just posted by the Rapid City, S.D., Journal:

After less than two hours of deliberations, the jury in the Richard Marshall murder trial found him not guilty.

Marshall was accused of supplying the gun that killed American Indian Movement activist Annie Mae Aquash in December of 1975.

We will, of course, update with details.

Tags: AIM, American Indian Movement, Annie Mae Aquash, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Richard "Dickie" Marshall

Denise Pictou Maloney has spent the past several days listening to the testimony of the people accused of killing her mother 35 years ago.

Maloney is the daughter of American Indian Movement activist Annie Mae Pictou Aquash, shot to death on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, allegedly because fellow AIM members feared she was an FBI informant.

One of those people, Vine Richard “Dickie” Marshall has been on trial this week in federal court in Rapid City, S.D., accused of supplying the gun that killed Aquash. The Rapid City Journal’s Heidi Bell Gease has been covering the case, and interviewed Maloney:

Pictou Maloney said her mother believed strongly in AIM and its ideals at the movement’s inception — so strongly that she left two young daughters she loved with family and traveled from her native Nova Scotia, Canada, to South Dakota to take part in the 1973 Wounded Knee occupation.

“It was always about the truth for her,” she said. “She stood up for them. She protested.”

Pictou Maloney said it is painful to find that some in AIM have been more concerned about protecting the organization than about finding justice for Aquash.

“What became very apparent to me was the fear factor” involved, she said. “We are so grateful to those that have had the courage to stand up and come forward and speak the truth.”

She tells Gease that no matter the trial’s outcome, it’s been a step toward justice for her mother, who was killed when Maloney was 11.

And of her mother’s killers, she says, “I guess they underestimated my mother’s abilities … and her spirit. Because it will come full circle, as so it should.”

Gwen Florio

Tags: AIM, American Indian Movement, Anna Mae Aquash, buffalo post, FBI, Gwen Florio, Native American news, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Richard "Dickie" Marshall