Native Sun News: Graham sentenced for Aquash's murder in 1975

Wednesday, January 26, 2011  

The following story was written and reported by Ernestine Chasing Hawk. All content © Native Sun News.

RAPID CITY, SOUTH DAKOTA — The third person to be convicted in connection with the murder of Indian Activist Annie Mae Aquash was sentenced Monday by Seventh Circuit Judge Jack Delaney.

John Graham, a Southern Tutchone Athabaskan from Whitehorse, Yukon Canada was sentenced to life in prison without the possibly of parole. He will serve his sentence in a South Dakota State Corrections Facility.

In December, Graham who stood trial accused as the trigger man in the execution style murder of Aquash, was found guilty of felony murder committed during a kidnapping.

Aquash, a Mi’kmaq from Nova Scotia, a prominent leader of the American Indian Movement during their 1970’s struggle against oppression of Indian people, was found murdered in the Badlands on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in February of 1976.

Both daughters of Aquash, Denise Maloney Pictou and Debra Jean Maloney spoke to Graham prior to sentencing and told him that there is not a day that goes by since their mothers murder 35 years ago that they don’t think about her.

“Thirty-five years is an incomprehensible amount of time to wait for justice,” Denise Maloney said and it was people who she trusted, members of AIM “that delayed the hands of justice with their lies and oath of silence.”

The irony she said was that the injustices that her mother fought to uphold were in the end the injustices that were committed against her by her own people.

“Until you tell the truth you deserve what you get,” she said to Graham as she held up a picture of her mother. “This, John Graham, is what you stole from me.”

Debra Malony said to Graham that in Mi’kmaq speaking from the heart meant speaking the truth. She said she was prepared for everything she saw and heard during the trials until the last few moments of her mother’s life were revealed.

“What I wasn’t prepared to hear that in the last few moments of her life she prayed in Mi’kmaq. At that moment she became a warrior,” she said.

Debra Maloney read a poem to Graham in which she asked “Have you ever thought about me?” “I am confident that my mother did not die in vain,” she said. “Annie Mae Pictou Aquash stood for preservation of a Nation, equality, education, rights’ of indigenous women and for truth.”

John Graham turned the daughters of Aquash and told them that the truth about what happened to their mother had not come out yet. He said she was not murdered in his presence and that she was never tied up in his presence. He admitted that he rode with her in a vehicle to Rapid City but that the last time he saw her was when she was left at a safe house.

“That was the last time I saw her,” Graham said that the last 35 years those involved have spread rumors and speculated about what happened.

“I did not kill Annie Mae, I did not kidnap her. I did not give an order to kill her nor did I get an order to kill her,” he said just prior to sentencing.

Present for sentencing where Grahams son, John Thomas “J.T. Papaquash and his brother Harold Johnson both from the Yukon Territory in Canada.

John R Murphy attorney for Graham said his team will appeal the decision.

During the trial witnesses testified that the events leading up to her murder where fueled by jealousy and rumors that she was a government informant. Aquash was kidnapped from a home in Denver, tied up and transported in the trunk of red Ford Pinto to Rapid City where she was interrogated by leaders of the American Indian Movement several of the witnesses concurred.

Darlene “Kamook” Nichols, 1970’s common law wife of Dennis Banks founder of the American Indian Movement, testified that the day after an affair between Aquash and Banks became public, rumors about her being an informant became rampant. During an A.I.M. rally in New Mexico Aquash was confronted by Leonard Peltier who held a gun to her head asking if she was an informant both Nichols and Troy Lynn Yellow Wood testified.

A second woman with connections to Banks, Angie Begay, a.k.a. Angie Janis, testified that she was also the former girlfriend of Banks with whom she has a daughter. Janis said that she was Graham’s girlfriend at the time of Aquash’s abduction and that it was she who conveyed the message that Aquash was an informant and had to be taken to Rapid City to face A.I.M. leadership.

In January of 2003, Fritz Arlo Looking Cloud and John Graham were indicted by a federal grand jury on murder charges in connection to the death of Aquash. Looking Cloud was found guilty by a federal grand jury on February 6, 2004 and sentenced to life in prison.

In August 2008, another man, Richard “Dickie” Marshall was indicted on federal charges accused of providing the .32-caliber pistol used to kill Aquash. In April of 2010 he was found not guilty.

Graham, living in Vancouver Canada at the time of his indictment, fought extradition for years. In June 2006 the Canadian Minister of Justice ordered Graham extradited to the U.S. and in 2007 he is brought back to South Dakota where he faced murder charges in federal court.

Federal courts dismissed charges against Graham because they said U.S. prosecutors didn’t have jurisdiction to prosecute, because both he and Aquash belonged to Canadian tribes not recognized by the U.S. Government.

The South Dakota Attorney General pushed for prosecution of Graham in state court because some of the incidents surrounding Aquash’s death happened in Rapid City. In September 2009, Graham, along with Thelma Rios, were indicted on state charges in relation to kidnapping and premeditated murder. Graham was also charged with felony murder related to rape.

Rios plead guilty to accessory to kidnapping on November 8, 2010, and was sentenced to the maximum of five years with five years suspended and five years probation.

(Contact Ernestine Chasing Hawk at managingeditor@nsweekly.com)