Law | National

Native Sun News: Murder of Anna Mae still leaves open questions

Thursday, March 3, 2016

Family members mourn at the gravesite of Anna Mae Pictou Aquash. Photo courtesy of Denise Pictou Maloney

Murder of Anna Mae still leaves many questions unanswered
By Richie Richards
Native Sun News Staff Writer
www.nsweekly.com

NOVA SCOTIA –– Initially told that Anna Mae Pictou Aquash was killed by the FBI and honored with a traditional burial worthy of a woman warrior, the actual truth is members of the American Indian Movement assassinated this Mi’kmaq activist, educator and mother.

“It was calculated. It was intentional. It was premeditated. And in my eyes an act of hate – to hear stories of how she was begging for her life and asking to pray for her daughters before they shot her,” Anna Mae’s daughter told Native Sun News.

The tragic life and death of Anna Mae Aquash, as she is commonly known, is that of a young woman who was lured, kidnapped, tortured and murdered by a social justice organization and disposed of for allegedly knowing too much.

NSN interviewed Anna Mae’s daughter, Denise Pictou-Maloney, regarding her family’s search for answers and pleading for acknowledgement and truth.

In 2004, Anna Mae was returned home to Nova Scotia, Canada for a proper burial in her homelands, after being buried on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation since 1976. Her funeral services were held on June 21, 2004 which is National Aboriginal Day in Canada.

“We were told all these wonderful, glorious stories of how (AIM members) prepared her for the other side; how they gave her all the things she would need in the after-life. Well, when we went and exhumed her body she was naked, wrapped in a plastic morgue sheet. This is how (AIM members) prepared her for the after-life,” Denise says of her mother’s body once it finally arrived in Canada in 2004.

Anna Mae met members of the AIM while living in Boston, Mass. Following the Trail of Broken Treaties in Washington, DC, she came to South Dakota to support AIM and Wounded Knee ’73.

After Dennis Banks ordered her to help with kitchen duties upon her arrival, she answered “Mr. Banks, I didn’t come here to wash dishes. I came here to fight.”