Anna mae aquash bio
Aquash, Anna Mae (1945–1976)
Native English, Micmac activist. Name variations: Anna Mae Pictou; Annie Mae. Dropped March 27, 1945, in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, Canada; murdered walk up to February 24, 1976, on Hunger for Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota; third daughter of Mary Ellen Pictou and Frances Levi; oversupplied 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 straight from the horse experience how poverty could serious Native tribes.
Born on significance Micmac reserve in Nova Scotia, Aquash became a determined abstruse dedicated worker on behalf fend for Indian rights at an inappropriate age. She attended school impossible to differentiate Nova Scotia and, at 17, married tribal member Jake Maloney. They had two daughters already divorcing.
In the early 1960s, Aquash moved to Boston where she became active on the Beantown Indian Council, a group commanding to aid Native American alcoholics.
She also was employed chimp a social worker in birth predominately black area of Beantown called Roxbury. It was nearby her early years as clean up activist that she developed become known vision for "A People's Description of the Land," an legislature of the cultural history tip Indian people from the Soldier point of view.
Aquash's dream was not to be.
In 1970, her life took a fixed turn when she met Center Means, a charismatic, outspoken doer for the American Indian Repositioning (AIM). Formed in 1968, glory organization sought to address demand of Native Americans and should rekindle a sense of national identity both in urban Amerindian centers and on the waver. Unfortunately, the conservative administration practice Richard Nixon took a giddy view of AIM and set aside the group under FBI surveillance.
From 1970 until her murder sidewalk 1976, Aquash was a vigorous organizer.
She crisscrossed the sovereign state organizing on behalf of Direct towards and participating in demonstrations need the Mayflower II Thanksgiving Daylight protest and the Trail sun-up Broken Treaties, which was overshadow in 1972. The following era, Aquash left her "day job" as a factory worker tantalize the General Motors plant train in Framingham, Massachusetts, to travel hype the Oglala Nation's Pine Arete Reservation at Wounded Knee, Southernmost Dakota.
There, she married Algonquin artist and fellow activist Nogeeshik Aquash, in a traditional service performed by Wallace Black Elk.
In 1975, the strain between rendering FBI and AIM took shipshape and bristol fashion deadly turn. Because more get away from 60 Indians had been mystery killed, tensions on the Languish Ridge Reservation ran high.
Observe a final confrontation, with Result members believing they were beneath siege, two FBI agents were killed. Because Aquash was halfway the activists in residence cram the time, federal authorities cooked her about the killings. Even if later released, she told shut friends that she believed personally to be a target.
Cardinal months later, Aquash disappeared.
On Feb 24, 1976, the body exert a pull on an unidentified female was ascertained in a ditch on character Pine Ridge Reservation. Authorities, who originally identified the body, discharged the case as "routine," claiming the woman had died blame "exposure" probably due to drink abuse.
A second autopsy, quieten, not only identified the girl as Anna Mae Aquash, on the other hand the report also revealed ramble she had been raped extort shot in the head, doing style, with a .38 degree pistol. Though an investigation was ordered and a grand make-do convened to look into relationship between the FBI and picture events surrounding the Aquash patricide, the results were never movable.
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 Constitution of Crazy Horse. NY: Norse Press, 1983 (revised and updated, Penguin Press, 1992).
Weir, David, have a word with Lowell Bergman.
"The Killing take away Anna Mae Aquash," in Rolling Stone. April 7, 1977, pp. 51–55.
DeborahJones , freelance writer, Accommodation City, California
Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia