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A TEACHER who was shot dead with a single bullet before her murder was “covered up” knew her killer was coming, her daughter claims.
Anna Mae Aquash was executed in the woods after being accused of being an FBI informant – and those complicit in her murder didn’t come forward for three decades.
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Hundreds of Native Americans, members of a coalition called the Trail of Broken Treaties, continued to occupy the Bureau of Indian Affairs Building
GettyFifty years on, Anna’s daughter Denise Maloney told The Sun how her mum sat her down and asked her to “look after” her sister just weeks before she was murdered.
Her brutal death left behind a “legacy of pain” that hasn’t dimmed, Denise said – and she is still fighting for another suspect to face trial.
On February 24, 1976, a badly decomposed corpse wearing jeans and a dark red ski jacket was discovered by a rancher in South Dakota.
A coroner determined that the body was that of a woman – and that she had been dead for two months.
She had a single bullet wound at the base of her skull – clearly shot at close range.
It took a week to identify the body as belonging to 30-year-old Anna Mae Pictou Aquash – a key player in the American Indian Movement (AIM), set up to challenge police brutality and the oppression of Indigenous rights.
At the time, members of the AIM didn’t want to speak to authorities about the mum-of-two’s death – claiming that the FBI were behind it.
They were convinced her murder was orchestrated to scare members of the movement.
No convictions were made and the group kept quiet about what they knew for an unbelievable 23 years – until one woman came forward and agreed to wear a wire to gather crucial clues.
Eventually, two men – Arlo Looking Cloud and John Graham – were convicted and sent to prison.
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YouTubeLooking Cloud admitted to pals that he was involved in the murder before confessing and taking the stand against Graham – who he claimed was the gunman.
They marched Anna Mae at dawn into grassland a put a pistol to her head to which she “started praying”, Looking Cloud told court.
He was tried for murder in 2004 and Graham in 2010 which resulted in both being convicted – but prosecutors refused to believe the pair acted alone.
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AP Photo/Carson WalkerFBI ‘links’
In the months leading up to her brutal death, members of the AIM had become suspicious of Anna Mae, Denise said.
Following arrests at protests, she was often quickly released – while others had to stand trial, sparking rumours that she was working for the FBI.
She expressed her terror after being released from jail – telling other activists that she was aware people thought she was an FBI informant.
Denise claimed there was multiple gunpoint interrogations by the AIM.
Denise told The Sun that her mum had intuition that she was going to get killed – and “hauntingly” gave “three sentences of advice”.
The daughter said: “Her last three sentences to me were to look after your sister – my sister, who’s 15 months younger than me.
“Of course to a young child, that’s like, ‘Oh, great. I get to be the boss’.
“You don’t think about the ramifications. Why are you telling me that I have to look after my sister? Because she was not going to be there.
“That didn’t resonate with me until obviously after she was gone.
“And then she said, ‘always speak the truth, no matter what. Always speak the truth’.”
Another ‘killer’
Denise has long believed there was another suspect involved in her mother’s murder – which is now the subject of a Hulu documentary called Vow of Silence: The Assassination of Annie Mae.
She alleges that Leonard Peltier – who was serving two life sentences on two counts of first-degree murder before he was commuted – was complicit.
Peltier’s conviction stemmed from a 1975 shooting in South Dakota in which FBI agents Jack Coler and Ron Williams were killed – around the same time Anna Mae was murdered.
At his trial, prosecutors said Peltier, 80, shot both agents in the head at point-blank range.
He admitted firing a gun from a distance but claimed it was self-defence.
Generations of Indigenous activists and leaders have been calling for Peltier to be pardoned.
And in a last-minute move before leaving office, former President Joe Biden commuted his life sentence, paving the way for his release and to serve the rest of his sentence at home.
Denise believes Peltier knew what happened to her mother and did not say anything for 28 years.
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AFPWho is Leonard Peltier?
LEONARD Peltier, 80, is a Native American activist and member of AIM.
He was convicted of murdering two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents ack Coler and Ron Williams in June 1975.
The shooting took place on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
Peltier has maintained his innocence.
There are various controversies associated with Peltier’s case.
There are no known witnesses to the FBI agents’ deaths, the gun that fired the deadly shots is not known and the identification of the vehicle that led the agents to the location still questioned, Britannica reports.
The FBI also admitted to withholding thousands of documents related to the case.
Supporters of Peltier spent decades lobbying for parole, as they consider him a political prisoner.
His life sentence was commuted by former President Joe Biden in January 2025, and was released from prison in February.
An official statement from the White House read: “This commutation will enable Mr. Peltier to spend his remaining days in home confinement but will not pardon him for his underlying crime.”
Peltier’s health was said to have been declining, with the move hailed by his attorney as “an act of mercy”.
Denise told The Sun that Anna Mae was “calling out illegal activity” and the “moral compromise” of the AIM when she was brutally killed by its members.
Denise claimed that AIM had a “dark side,” plagued with “hypocrisy”.
She claims that Leonard had “interrogated” Anne Mae about their FBI suspicions – which resulted in her sister “begging her” not to return to the group.
But according to Denise, her mum was “incensed” and wanted to “prove to them that I’m not this person who they say that I am”.
She added: “ What’s compelling around the justice part of this is that Leonard has never been confused in supporting my mother’s killers.
“He’s publicly gotten behind them and said that they’re innocent, knowing full well that there is a whole trial worth of testimony to indicate otherwise.”
While the decision to commute the life sentences has elated Peltier’s supporters, law enforcement officials who believe his guilt have been left rattled.
For many, his imprisonment represented systematic injustices for Native Americans across the US as he has always maintained his innocence.
But authorities have slammed the decision, with former FBI Director Christopher Wray calling him a “remorseless killer” in a private letter to Biden.
He wrote: “Granting Peltier any relief from his conviction or sentence is wholly unjustified and would be an affront to the rule of law.”
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GettyDenise continues her mum’s legacy through her advocacy work for women and girls in indigenous groups.
She told The Sun: “I understood her to be fierce in her advocacy, in her justice, and in her truth speaking.
“She always spoke the truth. Even if it was the ugly truth, she always was very clear.
“She really kind of set a fire in me to assert myself in a way that is always entrenched in the truth and justice.
“I am not telling people how to live their lives. I’m not a judge, telling people or holding people [accountable], but those that were intent to take her life, I certainly am.
“And it is how I’ve walked my life. [I] transferred into my adult life into the work I do in advocacy with missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.”
The American Indian Movement Group
AIM, founded in Minneapolis in 1968, took off the same year as the Black Panthers.
The movement looked to promote nonviolence towards indigenous communities.
They initially began as working towards bringing attention to systematic issues of poverty, discrimination and police brutality.
But it soon widened its focus from urban issues to various Indigenous Tribal issues that American Indian groups have faced at the hands of settler colonialism.
These issues include treaty rights, high rates of unemployment, the lack of American Indian subjects in education, and the preservation of Indigenous cultures.
AIM was initially started by American Indian men who had been imprisoned together.
The group hosted various highly publicised protests such as:
- The occupation of Alcatraz Island in 1969-71
- The Trail of Broken Treaties demonstration in 1972, where AIM members occupied the office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington DC
- The occupation of a site at Wounded Knee, South Dakota in 1973
- The Longest Wal protest of 1978 which ended up being AIM’s last major demonstration
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