The True Language of a Pow Wow Drum
Preserving language is an ever important task for Natives everywhere. This includes the language of the drum – a kind of communication that some fear few understand today.

ICTMN chronicles Doug Goodfeather’s (Lakota) knowledge of the language.

The Battle of the Little Bighorn is told in a series of six victory songs (called When the Battle Happened) sung in order, Goodfeather said, explaining that the songs tell of defending the women and children, what happened with Custer, events leading up to the battle, and the battle itself.

In addition to learning the words, drum groups singing those songs accompany them with three kinds of drumbeats—honor, round dance, and straight beat– which differ in pattern and tempo, he said, alluding to the complexity behind what appears straightforward to casual pow wow attendees.

Grannies with Gumption: Standing up to Corporate Giants in Canada and Ecuador
These indigenous women have made great strides for their people and the environment by not backing down to big corporations.

As ICTMN reports, it was their strength that helped curb big oil intimidation in their areas.

Chevron didn’t stand a chance before the ire of indigenous villager Maria Aguinda. Enbridge quailed before the determination of Saik’uz First Nation Chief Jackie Thomas.

Both women, 4,300 miles apart, refused to take no for an answer. They stood up to two corporate giants and won. Aguinda, 61, spearheaded rural Ecuadoreans’ fight against Chevron, accused of polluting the Amazon for decades, and helped them win a $9.5-billion judgment against the company. Thomas, 47, was instrumental in beating back Enbridge’s attempts to get several Canadian First Nations to sell rights of way for a pipeline to send oil from the tar sands to the Pacific coast. As the world celebrated the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day on March 8, these two women, both grandmothers, continued their respective fights for their people’s right to live on clean, productive land.

Tribe sues feds over reservation raid
The Yakama Nation is claiming in a lawsuit that the federal government violated the tribe’s treaty rights when it raided a reservation cigarette manufacturer.

The suit wants an order requiring the FBI to notify the tribe before it enters the reservation. It also seeks punitive damages, the Yakima Herald reports.

On Feb. 16, FBI agents swarmed King Mountain Tobacco, deep within the reservation, and seized company records and computer equipment.

Under the 1855 treaty, the Yakamas reserved their exclusive use of the reservation and authority over its land and people.

According to the lawsuit, the federal government violated those rights by conducting the raid without first contacting tribal leaders.

Jenna Cederberg

Tags: cigarettes, Douglas Cardinal, drumming, FBI, pow wow, saik'uz, Yakama, Yakama Nation

Here’s the story in full from the Missoulian:

EAST GLACIER – No charges will be filed in the death of a well-known Native American traditional dancer along a roadway just outside Glacier National Park, the FBI said Monday.

Clinton Croff, 30, of Browning died last month on the eastern edge of Glacier National Park. Park officials said only that he was “involved in altercations” near a road construction zone. Park staff said rangers had found Croff “combative and suffering from multiple wounds.”

Debbie Dujanovic, of the FBI’s Salt Lake City office, said Monday that the agency’s investigation – opened at the request of the National Park Service – into the incident was complete.

Maynard Kicking Woman, a cultural coordinator for the Blackfeet Manpower One-Stop Center, said after Croff’s death that “from the day he was born, Clinton was connected to this culture. He’s going to be missed in Indian Country, because a lot of people knew him.”

Croff’s mother was a champion traditional dancer and his grandfather was central to the Blackfeet Slick-Foot Society, Kicking Woman said. Croff’s funeral attracted a wide circle of drum groups, he said.

Tags: Clinton Croff, FBI, Native American dancers, Native American news, Powwow

Here’s more on last week’s mysterious death in Glacier National Park of Clinton Croff, a well-known Blackfeet traditional singer and dancer.

Friends of Croff tell Michael Jamison, in this Missoulian story, that they’ve been told Croff committed suicide inside his car, by way of multiple self-inflicted stab wounds, but park officials would not confirm those details. The FBI’s Debbie Bertram says the Park Service has requested a review by the agency.

Mostly, though, people talked to Jamison about how Croff lived, remembering him as a keeper of Blackfeet culture:

Clinton Croff (Legacy.com photo)

“That’s how I will remember him,” said Maynard Kicking Woman, “as a dancer, a singer, an eagle-bone whistle carrier. From the day he was born, Clinton was connected to this culture. He’s going to be missed in Indian Country, because a lot of people knew him.” …

Kicking Woman is well-known on the traditional powwow trail, and among Native American drumming and singing groups. Currently, he serves as cultural coordinator for the Blackfeet Manpower One-Stop Center.

Croff’s extended family used to travel the dancing and singing circuit with Kicking Woman, “and we were pretty much a family,” Kicking Woman said. “He traveled with us even when he was a very small boy.”

Croff was only 30 years old. You can read his obituary on Legacy.com.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Blackfeet, Blackfeet Manpower One-Stop Center, buffalo post, Clinton Croff, FBI, Glacier National Park, Gwen Florio, Maynard Kicking Woman, Native American news, Suicide

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Today, the Billings (Mont.) Gazette continues its special report on efforts to combat sexual abuse on Indian reservations with this story by Clair Johnson on steps being taken by the U.S. Attorney’s Office (see yesterday’s post about the previous stories here):

Dr. Thomas Schreiner, pediatrician at Lame Deer, talks about his work at the newly opened CARE Center there. He hands out stuffed animals to comfort children who are examined for signs of sexual abuse. (James Woodcock/Billings Gazette)

The Montana U.S. Attorney’s Office has a message to those who sexually assault children on Indian reservations: You will be prosecuted.

Gerhard Curtis Stern, a 33-year-old Ashland resident, was sentenced last fall to 40 years in federal prison for assaulting a child on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. A jury found Stern guilty of aggravated sexual assault for engaging in sex acts with a 4-year-old child over seven months. The FBI investigated after the child told a school nurse Stern had touched her inappropriately.

Severe penalties under the Adam Walsh Act are part of several changes in federal law enforcement that are strengthening prosecution of child sex offenders in Indian Country. Improved communications among charging jurisdictions, increased staffing and integrating law enforcement and social work initiatives are all part of the changing picture.

Two Billings-based assistant U.S. attorneys work child sexual abuse cases in the nearby Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations expressed frustratino at the fact that an FBI Indian Country lab is located in Virginia, making it tough to get timely analysis of physical evidence and leaving victims understandably skeptical that their cases were a priority. Now, two new labs in the West are being considered.

The series also includes a story, here, on a new center for child victims on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, and this list of recent prosecutions of such cases in Indian Country.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Adam Walsh Act, buffalo post, Crow Indian Reservation, FBI, Gwen Florio, Indian reservations, Native American news, Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, Sexual abuse, U.S. Attorney's Office

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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

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

Sifting fact from rumor was the challenge in yesterday’s testimony in the federal court trial of Vine Richard “Dickie” Marshall, charged with supplying the gun that killed American Indian Movement Anna Mae Aquash in 1975.

The trial is being held in Rapid City, S.D., near the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation where the killing occurred, and Heidi Bell Gease of the Rapid City Journal is covering it:

Anna Mae Aquash

Serle Chapman, a British writer who now lives in Wyoming, told jurors he was doing research for a book about AIM when he interviewed Marshall in 2000. Chapman contacted Marshall again the following year and asked him about a rumor that he had provided the gun used to kill Aquash.

“Did he respond to that?” asked prosecutor Rod Oswald.

“He just kind of said, ‘Well, back in the day, somebody asked you to do something … you didn’t ask too many questions,’” Chapman replied.

Defense attorney Dana Hanna sought to strike the testimony, but U.S. District Judge Lawrence Piersol denied that request.

But the most explosive testimony yesterday had nothing to do with Aquash’s killing, but centered on something that continues to be controversial more than three decades later — the conviction of AIM’s Leonard Peltier for shooting to death two FBI agents:

Leonard Peltier

Much of Monday’s testimony had more to do with AIM and rumors about Aquash than it did with Marshall’s alleged role in the killing.

Darlene “Ka-Mook” Ecoffey, formerly known as Ka-Mook Banks, longtime partner of AIM founder Dennis Banks, said the rumors were circulating on the heels of news that Doug Durham — once a close associate of Banks — was an informant for the FBI.

“I think (AIM leaders) were becoming quite paranoid,” she said.

Ecoffey told how she, her sister Bernie, Banks, Leonard Peltier and Aquash drove to Washington State in a motor home owned by Marlon Brando in November 1975, soon after Banks had failed to appear for sentencing on charges related to the 1972 Custer courthouse riot.

“Did Leonard Peltier talk about things that were incriminating?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Bob Mandel asked Ecoffey.

She said yes, that Peltier, had talked about the fatal shootings of two FBI agents in Oglala on June 26, 1975.

“He said the (expletive) was begging for his life but I shot him anyway,” she said. Peltier was later convicted of murdering the agents and is still incarcerated.

The alleged fractures within AIM relate to the Aquash case because of the contention that Aquash was killed because of suspicion she was an FBI informant.

Gwen Florio

Tags: American Indian Movement, Anna Mae Aquash, Assistant U.S. Attorney Bob Mandel, buffalo post, Dana Hanna, Dennis Banks, FBI, Gwen Florio, Leonard Peltier, Marlon Brando, Native American news, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Serle Chapman