Some 12 West Coast writers have pooled their talents to put together Tamahnous Theatre’s The
Writers’ Show, scheduled to open May 30 at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre where it will run
through June 17 as part of the Heritage Festival 78. Some of the writers here are (I to r), John Lazarus,
Alex Pauk, Jeremy Long, Tom Cone, Jackie Crossland, Cherie Thiessen, Brenda White, Joe We-
sienfeld, Chris Bruyere, Doug Bankson, Glen Thompson.

— David Cooper photo

Who murdered Anna Mae?

Do you remember some two
years ago hearing or reading about
a Canadian Indian woman who was
found murdered on the Pine Ridge
Indian reservation
Dakota? The one whose hands
were ghoulishly severed at the
wrists and sent to the FBI in
Washington for  finger-print
identification?

Here for the first-time in book
form we have a comprehensive
account of that tragic event, or at
least as much as is known now,

_based on obviously thorough and
well-documented research and told
with feeling and understanding.

It is not only a biography of Anna
Mae Aquash. It is the story of the
heroic struggles of the Indian
people of South Dakota for social
justice led by the American Indian
Movement. As such it includes a
description of the occupation of
Wounded Knee in 1973; the reign of
terror and killing of AIM leaders
and supporters that followed; the
program and actions of the FBI
aimed at physically destroying
AIM; the collusion of the RCMP
with the FBI against AIM; the
spying and interference with
Canadian Indian movements by
the RCMP, and the shameful role
of the Canadian government in
supinely acting as an apologist for
the FBI and the U.S. government.

Anna Mae Aquash, a Micmac
Indian, was born in Shubenacadie,
Nova Scotia, on March 27, 1945, and
grew up in poverty. At 17 she ex-
perienced the life of a migratory
worker in the blueberry fields and
potato harvests of Maine. Later
she worked as a packer, also in a
sewing factory in’ Boston. She
married a Canadian Indian, they
had two children and in 1970 were

ANNA MAE AQUASH...
murder probed in new book.

in South,

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF
ANNA MAE AQUASH. By
Johanne Brand. Toronto,
James Lorimer and Co.,.1978.
Cloth $12.95, paper $6.95.

divorced. Later she again married
only to be separated once more.

In 1970 she helped establish the
Boston Indian Council and this
marked the turning point in her
life. For the next six years until her
death in 1976, she devoted her
energies to the welfare and
struggles of the Indian people. This
included participation in the oc-
cupation of Wounded Knee (where
she slipped through police lines to
help her people) aid for arrested
AIM leaders; and help for the
Indian people on the Pine Ridge
Reservation who were being
subjected to a campaign of
genocide by punitive police forces.

Her life was an example of how
an ordinary woman, when she
becomes involved in serious social
struggle, matures, grows and
develops to the point where she
makes the social struggle the
centre of her life.

The chapter of the book titled
“The FBI’s Secret War Against
Dissent”’ is a searing indictment of
a powerful national political police
force which considers all dissent
treasonable and subversive and
which, like its counterpart the CIA,
employs every unlawful means to
destroy dissent movements and
eliminate their leaders. Included in
the FBI list of subversive
movements as_ targets for
“destabilizing actions’? are the
United Farm Workers led by
Caesar Chavez, the Quakers, the
women’s liberation movement, the
Boy Scouts, and of course the AIM.

The occupation of Wounded Knee
by the FBI and other punitive
forces was followed by 562 arrest
and 54 violent deaths of Indians
(most of them AIM supporters) in
the next two and a half years,
scores of beatings and shooting and
other forms of terror and
harrassment.

On June 26, 1975 two FBI agents
were shot to death on the Pine
Ridge Reservation in a shoot-out.
Again the reservation was placed
under virtual martial law, 150-200
FBI agents were rushed in, a
special weapons and _ tactics
(SWAT) team combed the
reservation, and the reservation
was patrolled with airplanes, jeeps
and police dogs.

In September 1975, Anna Mae
was arrested and allowed out on
bail as the FBI began its campaign
to arrest AIM leaders and charge

PACIFIC TRIBUNE— —May 26, 1978—Page 10

them with murder. Anna Mae had
felt for some: time that her days
were numbered.

When she failed to show up for
her trial, because she was given a
wrong date, she was rearrested.
“If they take me back to South
Dakota,” she told a reporter, “T’ll
be murdered.’’ She was taken back
in chains, finally released in the
custody of her lawyer, and then
walked out of the motel room in
which she was staying and went
into hiding.

On Feb. 24, 1976 her body was
found on the Pine Ridge Reserva-
tion in a state of partial decomposi-
tion. A Bureau of Indian Affairs
pathologist subjected the body to
an examination, cut off the hands
at the wrists to be turned over to
the FBI, and the body was buried
as that of an unidentified Indian
“woman who had died of exposure.

Indian leaders managed to get
the body exhumed and identified
and found that she had been shot in
the back of the head. As the author
says, ‘The evidence suggests a
conspiracy to prevent. the
discovery and investigation of the
murder of Anna Mae Aquash,”’

Just who murdered (executed
would be a better word) Anna Mae
Aquash has not yet been revealed.
But that the FBI was in one way or
another responsible, there can be

little doubt from the evidence _

outlined in the book.

The role of the RCMP and the
Canadian government in Anna
Mae’s death was nothing less than
disgraceful. The daily press played”
it down.

The Canadian government was
loath to even inquire about the
death of this Canadian Indian
woman in a foreign country and
when pressed to do so limited itself
to repeating the press releases of
the FBI which was itself under
investigation and suspicion in ue
case.

And, as the book reveals, in close
cooperation with the FBI the
RCMP is carrying on activities
against Canadian Indian
organizations that includes spying
and disruption. Its paranoic at-
titude is illustrated by an RCMP
document which calls the small
Red Power movement in Canada
“the principal threat to Canadian
Stability.”

This fact-filled book is required

reading for all who are concerned
with the struggle of the Indian
people for social justice.

— Ben Swankey

Making of young:

addict explored —

The promotion for this film does
it a disservice when it sums it up as
“touching’’, ‘‘beautiful’’ and
“human’’.

It is each of these things, but A
Hero Ain’t Nothing but a Sandwich
is much more. Most of dil it is a
very frank, true-to-life study of the
social conditions that destroy the
lives of many young people before
they have really had a chance to
begin.

It is a story of a 13-year-old
heroin addict and there is a lot in it
that is neither ‘‘touching’” or
“beautiful’’, but brutally real. And
although it is a movie essentially
about a black family in Los
Angeles, there are compelling
lessons that are applicable to the
problem of the about 7,000 heroin
addicts in Greater Vancouver.

Reunited from their earlier
pairing in the movie Sounder,
Cicely Tyson and Paul Winfield are
tremendous in the roles of com-
mon-law parents of Tyson’s son,
Benjamin.

But it’s Larry B. Scott’s per-
formance as ‘‘Benji”’ that is key to
the film’s success by unlocking the
mystique surrounding the making
of a young addict.

Growing up in a poor, black area
of Los Angeles, by 13, Benji had
already lost his childhood. Like
most of his friends, he learned
about life on the streets, a process
that quickly hardened his
childhood fantasies into cynicism.

An important part of the
cynicism, around which much of
the movie revolves, stemmed from
a broken home after his father
simply walked away, leaving
nothing behind but a picture. The
shattering of the father role left a
deep imprint on Benji, and one
which Winfield, an unemployed
musician supporting the family by
working as a janitor, has great
difficulty filling in.

Just as important, however, is
Benji’s social awareness, highly

developed even at his young age.

Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey,
W.E.B. Dubois — they were names
that he knew and could recount,

but they were frustratingly old -

answers for Benji, without a
present. At one point he responds
to his black teacher’s attempts to
instill a sense of pride in black
history with the sharp comeback,
“But what about now . . . What
about the now answers.”

Before long Benji had stopped
looking for answers and had
substituted pleasure, at the end of
a needle. Of course from that point
on, his life runs downhill, creating
a series of problems and intense
pressures on his family, until an
overdose lands him in the hospital.

The latter half of the movie
describes Benji’s struggle back, in
a sense a struggle against his own
cynical appreciation of a world
where ‘‘a hero ain’t nothing but a
sandwich’.

A HERO AIN’T NOTHIN’ al
A SANDWICH. Starring Lary
B. Scott, Cicely Tyson and Pall)
Winfield. Screenplay by Alic®
Childress. At the Varsity —

Theatre, Vancouver. 4)

In the end, the forging of a new
relationship with his stepfathel
provides the decisive impetus for
Benji to beat his habit. If anywher®
itis here that the movie falls shor
perhaps by overstressing thé
personal as opposed to the social
solution of the problem. i

There is a glimpse of the politica! |
answer as well, though, when UF
black teacher leaves the classro0!”
to deliver a eulogy for anothél
black teenager, killed by
overdose of heroin.

A Hero Ain’t Nothing but a
Sandwich is a very moving, humal
film. It is based on an wand
winning book by the same name,
authored by Alice Childress, W'
did the screenplay. |

It is released by New World
Pictures, a smaller studio, with the
co- operation of Tarzan
psychiatric institute in Los Angeles
which provides some of its vivid
realism.

This is a movie which should
follow the book in winning aaa 1
not because it is “‘touching”’,
because it is real.

— Fred wilsot

Wide reading -

May 5 marked the Day of the
Press in the Soviet Union whet?
more than 8,000 newspapers, if
total press run of 170 million copies
are printed in 57 languages. M any
newspapers are published in the
languages of peoples which befor”
1917 did not have a writ!
language.

Some 4,860 different journals 2 and
magazines are also published with
a total annual output of 3; n
million copies — more than f
copies per Soviet family.

-CAN.-USSR ASSOC.

invites you to

MAY FILM FEST
AND MEETING

SUNDAY, MAY 28
805 E. PENDER, VAN.
2 P.M. - 8:30 P.M.

Full of activities
for the whole
family... hefty
snack at 5 p.m.

Sat. June 3 —

Russian Hall,

600 Campbell Ave.,
Doors open 6:30 p.m.,
Supper 7 p.m., Dance
from 9 p.m.
Admission: $4,

$3 OAP, Unemployed

RIDE THE RAILS WITH RANKIN’

Celebrate Harry Rankin's birthday
in dirty thirties style

Best Depression Costume!!!

Tickets at Co-Op Books, Tribune Office or. 874-4806 |

$30 prize for

Sponsored by }
COPE and the

B.C. Youth

Festival Committee-