Deconstructing John Trimbach’s feeble rant against my book
By Stew Magnuson Ah, the inevitable smear campaign from John Trimbach, aka James Simmon. I expected this, of course. I’m only surprised that it took him so long and how feeble it was. Not to worry about me getting my feelings hurt by Trimbach or AIM supporters. If you want to write about the Wounded Knee Occupation or the American Indian Movement in the 1970s, you have to be prepared to be called all sorts of things. It’s part of the territory. For those who don’t know, John Trimbach is the son of former FBI Special Agent in Charge Joe Trimbach, and the leading voice in a small group of people who despise the American Indian Movement leaders of the 1970s, and the co-author along with his father of a book called American Indian Mafia. I am the author of two books on the same subject The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder and more recently, Wounded Knee 1973: Still Bleeding and a semi-regular columnist in this fine newspaper. Usually when facing criticism, I just let my reputation as a journalist and the work speaks for itself. Wounded Knee 1973: Still Bleeding is available in bookstores all over South Dakota, online as a paperback and an eBook for $2.99, and can be found in several Pine Ridge and border town libraries. Check out a copy at a library and decide for yourself whether it is worthwhile. You don’t have to spend a dime to read it. In this case, I feel I must respond to a few of his criticisms that appeared in the April 10 issue of Native Sun News and was rerun on the Indianz.com website. Those who remember the letter will see that he is very angry with me. I suspect the source of his true anger stems from a column in the Native Sun News that I wrote “Rumors of Unmarked Graves at Wounded Knee Still Alive after 40 Years.” The column questioned his “estimate” that six died in the occupied village of Wounded Knee that has never been publicly acknowledged. I granted him one strong possibility, the civil rights activist Perry Ray Robinson Jr., who has not been seen alive since he entered Wounded Knee. As for the other five, there simply is no strong evidence. Instead of countering my analysis with names, circumstances of these other five deaths, etc., he has chosen to attack my knowledge of the subject matter, and my skills and integrity as a journalist. Here are some of his accusations: First, that I used American Indian Mafia in my latest book without citing it. Not so. All the sources I consulted are listed in the final pages of the eBook, and on pages 141 to 144 of the paperback, including American Indian Mafia. Listing the sources consulted in the back of the book is a common practice in long-form and narrative journalism. That was what I did for The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder; a book John Trimbach told me at the Dakota Conference at Augustana College last year was “well researched.” Second, that the book was a rush job, implying that it was sloppily reported. The book was written between April and October in my free time. I don’t consider a 30,000-word piece of long-form journalism rushed in five months. In fact, my publisher, Now & Then Reader, didn’t release it until February. The book was accepted for publication by Now & Then Reader, an eBook publisher, and edited by Ivan R. Dee — a legend in nonfiction book circles, whom I can assure readers, was a very tough and hard-nosed editor indeed. He put it through the wringer, and I am grateful. Trimbach is absolutely correct in stating that I hadn’t read American Indian Mafia prior to the Dakota Conference in April 2012, which the book is based upon. I also knew next to nothing about the eight-month Leadership Trial of Dennis Banks and Russell Means. I freely admit this in the Acknowledgments section of the book. I regret not knowing more, but I am not embarrassed about that. American Indian Mafia came out after I completed work on The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder. I had no plans to revisit AIM in the 1970s as a topic, and had moved on to other projects. If I had come better prepared, I would have had some extremely uncomfortable questions for his father. I spent the summer of 2012 reading American Indian Mafia and a lot of other books in order to check the claims and accusations made at the conference by several participants. For example, did Joe Trimbach set up an illegal wiretap, as Clyde Bellecourt stated? Were there six unreported victims killed at Wounded Knee? Were Clyde and Agnes Gildersleeve, long-time owners of the Wounded Knee Trading Post, crooks, as Russell Means asserted? Did the Nixon administration conspire to extend the siege in order to “look tough fighting Indians,” as former Sen. James Abourezk said? I have never claimed to be an “expert” in any subject, as Trimbach asserts. Yet when I sat down to write the Wounded Knee 1973 manuscript, I think I had a good grasp of who was and wasn’t full of BS. That’s all that should matter for readers. Other quick points: Trimbach insinuates that I am an “amateur journalist.” Roughly 18 years I have been collecting paychecks as a reporter. And that I asked his father a “gotcha” question concerning the number of informants in the village during the two weeks he was there. I didn’t know the answer ahead of time. If it were a “gotcha” question, I would have whipped out a copy of American Indian Mafia, and in my best Daffy Duck voice yelled out, “Ah ha!” and pointed to page 118 and 121 and references to “our unidentified source.” John and I apparently have different definitions of the word “informant.” Since it is a minor historical point, I will leave it at that. He says I didn’t know J. Edgar Hoover was dead at the time of the occupation. Not true. I simply described the FBI at the time as “J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI,” meaning a leopard doesn’t change its spots overnight. He claims that I know that I could have requested an interview with his father at any time. Funny, because when I emailed him some uncomfortable follow-up questions concerning the circumstances surrounding his father’s departure from the FBI last summer, he didn’t answer. I even asked how old Joe was at the time of the conference. He declined to answer that, too. As for his father being honest and forthright, and me being “gutless,” I refer readers to Wounded Knee 1973 page 112 where Joe was asked about the aforementioned wiretap, and his response, to sum it up, was a big fat, no comment. The most laughable assertion he made is that I am some sort of AIM apologist, a supporter of the convicted murderer Leonard Peltier, and I am providing comfort to “rapists and murderers.” I should let that crazy accusation be, but I will point readers who don’t know me well to my two books, and two recent columns, “Wounded Knee Hostages Have Seen Their Stories Whitewashed from History” and “Hey Russell Means. The Jerk Store Called. It wants You Back!” and many others over the years that can be found at www.stewmagnuson.blogspot.com. Readers can decide for themselves. As for being soft on AIM, Trimbach didn’t make it to the lunch at the conference where I aggressively asked Dennis Banks about the disappearance of Robinson, and then went toe-to-toe in front of 100 audience members with Means. He knows about it, though. It was widely reported in the press. Readers can see right through John Trimbach’s twisted logic: If you criticize FBI leadership in the 1970s, you are therefore sympathetic to AIM leadership in the 1970s. It’s the same with AIM leaders. Question them, and you are an FBI dupe. That’s why Clyde Bellecourt called me the “new J. Edgar Hoover” at the conference. These potshots Trimbach and I are engaged in must seem rather odd to Native American readers of the Native Sun News. Here we have two middle-aged white guys arguing over events that happened 40 years ago when they were both children. I’ve come to the conclusion that few in Indian Country really care much about AIM and the FBI in the 1970s anymore — even on Pine Ridge. Judging from letters to the editor and social media, there are much more pressing issues: Indian healthcare, child welfare, suicide, violence against women, fighting cultural stereotypes, and overcoming drug and alcohol abuse. Yet I feel there are important lessons to be learned from the behavior of AIM and the FBI leaders in the 1970s. And I feel strongly, as the Trimbach’s do that murderers should be brought to justice, no matter how many decades it takes. Stew Magnuson (stewmag@yahoo.com) is the author of Wounded Knee 1973: Still Bleeding, published by the Now & Then Reader. It is available as an eBook on Kindle, Nook, Kobo and iTunes. Buy it in paperback at online retailers such as Amazon, Barnesandnoble.com or Mariah Press or bookstores such as Prairie Edge in Rapid City and Plains Trading Co., in Valentine, Nebraska. Related Stories:
John Trimbach: Responding to another Wounded Knee 'expert' (4/12)
Stew Magnuson: Wounded Knee 1973 hostages speaking out (03/22)
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