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JULY 11, 2000

The Minneapolis Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on MOnday released a report containing its findings on the deaths of 57 people in South Dakota.

Most of the deaths occurred on or near the Oglala Lakota Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota during the years of 1973 to 1975. Those years were a turbulent period on the reservation, a time when clashes between the American Indian Movement, the FBI, and members of the Guardians of the Oglala Nation (GOON), the police force of then Pine Ridge Chairman Dick Wilson, were common.

The era was also pivotal for the rest of the nation, as American Indians throughout the country were gaining more exposure politically. The events at Pine Ridge focused attention on some of the grave realities for life in Indian Country.

Some of those realities were reinforced with the release of a United States Commission on Civil Rights report issued in March of this year. The report came to the conclusion that American Indians in the state were treated by the justice system differently than others, with many deaths of Native Americans going unsolved or uninvestigated by authorities.

The FBI responded to Commission, along with years of criticism from Indian Country with the release of "Accounting for Native American Deaths, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota."

"We reviewed our records of those deaths and found that most had been solved either through conviction or finding that the death had not been a murder, according to law," states the report.

Included in the report, distributed by hand to locations on the reservation, as well as to members of the Commission, is the death of Anna Mae Pictou Aquash. The report lists allegations surrounding her death, including an FBI "attempt to conceal cause of death" and an attempt to link AIM to her death.

The report admits the coroner who performed her autopsy and died shortly after was never deposed. While it states that rumors alleging Aquash was a government informant are untrue, it does not directly dispel the allegation that FBI personnel were never deposed.

Such unanswered allegations have lead some to question the report. In today's Minneapolis Star Tribune, Mick Wicks, a co-director of American Indian Cultural Support, says the government is covering up many deaths by concluding they died of over-exposure.

"There's a whole lot...who died of exposure, even ones with bullet holes in them," Wicks told the Star Tribune. In the article, Wicks, however, does not state to which persons on the list he refers.

The list also includes deaths which occurred off the reservation. The FBI has no jurisdiction over these, but includes them, apparently to dispel rumors that have been circulated on the Internet and in Indian communities concerning the deaths.

But without comparing the FBI report to the so-called "death lists," there is no way to compare directly the report with the allegations. After searching the Internet, Indianz.Com was unable to locate any of the death lists.

The report also does not include the recent deaths of six Indian males and two white males in the Rapid City, South Dakota area. The eight were found drowned in Rapid Creek and were not thought to be murders until recently.

Since the crimes did not occur on the reservation but inside a town, the local police force has jurisdiction over these crimes.

If you have any copies of know of location of the "death lists," please let Indianz.Com know. Email Indianz.Com or write to The Talking Circle.

Related Story:
FBI 'Death List' (The Talking Circle 7/11)

Relevant Links:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, Minneapolis Division - www.fbi.gov/contact/fo/minn/home.htm
The American Indian Movement, Grand Governing Council - www.aimovement.org
American Indian Cultural Support - www.aics.org