An Open Letter to the Green Anarchy Collective

An Open Letter to the Green Anarchy Collective

Hello,

I’m an anarchist living in Vancouver, Canada, and I previously wrote to the Green Anarchy collective about issue #19 of the Green Anarchy journal, primarily out of concern over the uncritical inclusion of writings by former American Indian Movement (AIM) spokesperson John Trudell in that issue. As I informed you in my last letter, John Trudell has testified as a primary “witness” for the US government in their case against Arlo Looking Cloud and John Graham, who in the 1970s were active in AIM and the life-and-death struggle of the Lakota people at the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota.

In the latest issue of Green Anarchy, #20, the collective refers to complaints received about the inclusion of Trudell in the previous issue, one of which was my earlier letter, but does not state the primary reason of the complaint: Trudell’s status as government collaborator. Instead the matter is watered-down to “disputes, factions, and political mud-slinging in AIM”, which is not at all the point of contention. So, I’ve made this an open letter to ensure that those who are interested may know what the actual dispute over Trudell is.

In February of 2004, Arlo Looking Cloud was convicted of aiding and abetting in the murder of fellow AIM member Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash, whose body was found in 1976 at Pine Ridge. In February of 2005, a British Columbia Supreme Court judge ordered John Graham to be extradited from Canada to stand trial in South Dakota for the murder of Anna Mae. Graham is appealing the decision, as well as Canada’s Extradition Act. He is presently under house arrest in Vancouver.

In both Looking Cloud’s trial and Graham’s extradition hearing, John Trudell’s testimony was the deciding factor, despite the fact that he only offered hearsay (second hand) information, claiming that Looking Cloud had confessed to him. Trudell’s collaboration with the US government is a matter of public record. During Looking Cloud’s trial, Kamook Banks, another former AIM member, admitted to being a paid government informant.

The murder of Anna Mae occurred in the midst of the deadly “COINTELPRO” counter-insurgency campaign waged by the FBI against AIM and the Lakota Nation, using Native paramilitaries and off-duty Bureau of Indian Affairs police who killed more than 60 Native people and assaulted many more at Pine Ridge between 1973 and 1976. When Anna Mae’s body was found, FBI agents, and the coroner they contracted, tried to cover-up her death, claiming that she died from exposure and quickly burying her body as an unknown Indian woman, before attempting to identify her. A second, independent autopsy requested by her family and comrades confirmed that Anna Mae had in fact been shot in the head. The FBI then claimed that AIM killed Anna Mae because she was a suspected informant. At the time of her death, Anna Mae was a fugitive from the law, having been previously interrogated and threatened with death by FBI agents. Many believe that the FBI carried their threat to its conclusion.

In 1976, AIM member Leonard Peltier was extradited from Canada to the US, based on the false testimony of Myrtle Poor Bear, who was threatened by FBI agents that she would end up dead like Anna Mae if she did not cooperate in the case against Peltier. In regards to the current case against John Graham, Leonard Peltier stated: “I fear that John will not receive a fair trial in the US anymore than I did. I must remind you, it is court record that the FBI lied to extradite me back to the US.” Peltier remains a prisoner of war serving two life sentences for the murder of two FBI agents.

On the case of John Graham, Arlo Looking Cloud, and Anna Mae, the indigenous anti-capitalist ‘Zig-Zag’ has stated: “At this time, the strategy of the FBI is to destroy anything positive associated with AIM (and by extension all Indigenous resistance), to further undermine the case of Leonard Peltier (falsely convicted in the 1975 killing of two FBI agents in S. Dakota), and to turn Aquash from a symbol of this resistance to one of injustice.”

Statements of support for John Graham have been written by the Secwepemc Native Youth Movement and by Secwepemce elder and Gustafsen Lake defender, Wolverine.

The Vancouver Native Youth Movement has issued two statements in support of John Graham. In their latest statement, the Vancouver chapter calls “on all those who support our people’s struggle to boycott the works & activities of John Trudell in particular, and to denounce all those who have collaborated with the government & police in this matter.”

Vancouver anarchists who have been working in solidarity with John Graham and the indigenous resistance movement were also more than a little dismayed to find Trudell’s writings pop up in Green Anarchy’s pages.

In the very same issue of Green Anarchy that Trudell was featured, William Cottrell was described as a state informant against two persons charged with ecological-related sabotage: “During the course of his trial in October, he ratted on his friends and comrades and, in our opinion, should no longer be supported."

Why does this standard of non-support for collaborators apply to the ecological and anarchist resistance movements but not to the indigenous resistance movement?


Sincerely,
Sam

Vancouver, Canada
August 2, 2005



An article about the case of Anna Mae, Arlo Looking Cloud, and John Graham, by the indigenous anti-capitalist Zig-Zag can be found here:
http://www.nativeyouthmovement.com/content/view/23/64/

The website of the John Graham Defense Committee can be found here:
http://www.grahamdefense.org