FBI report responds to claims of unsolved Indian deaths.

By Heidi Bell Gease, Journal Staff Writer | Thursday, February 27, 2003

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PINE RIDGE -- It has been 30 years since members of the American Indian Movement and their supporters took up residence at Wounded Knee, launching a 71-day standoff with federal authorities to protest alleged tribal corruption, unjust treatment of Indians and broken treaties.

But trouble didn't end when the occupation did. The 1970s, especially the years from 1972 to 1976, were filled with violence on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

It's referred to as the "Reign of Terror." Literally hundreds of people were assaulted. Dozens died. Gunfire and beatings were common.

"It was terrifying to be on the reservation," one man who remembers it well said.

For years, people have talked about deaths that were never solved by the FBI, which investigates federal crime on Indian reservations. Those allegations were repeated at a community forum held in Rapid City in December 1999 by the South Dakota Advisory Committee of the United States Commission on Civil Rights.

Five months later, the FBI released a report titled "Accounting for Native American Deaths (on) Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota." FBI officials say the report was widely distributed to anyone who wanted one. However, many people say they have never seen the report, which was not released to the media at the time.

Some who have read the report, including U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Elsie Meeks of Interior, say it was a good faith effort by the FBI to address people's questions.

"I think that was a lot of why people have the perceptions that they do, is that they don't know what the final outcome (of the cases) was," Meeks said. "I think they did a fair reporting on it."

Others say the report is flawed. "It's a whitewash, is basically what it is," said Bruce Ellison of Rapid City, a member of the Wounded Knee Legal Defense Committee. "That paper was an outrage."

The 30-page booklet lists allegations about 57 unsolved deaths on Pine Ridge, followed by the FBI's response to how each case was resolved. The report is also available on-line at http://minneapolis.fbi.gov/.

"The FBI and its Agents in South Dakota can only operate effectively where we have the trust and help of the American people," wrote Douglas J. Domin, special agent in charge from the Minneapolis Division of the FBI, in a forward to the report.

Domin said the FBI didn't have specific names it could investigate until after the 1999 hearing. The FBI found most of the deaths had been solved

"either through conviction or finding that the death had not been a murder according to the law," Domin wrote. Other cases remain under investigation or occurred outside of FBI jurisdiction.

"It is hoped the dissemination of this information will clear up allegations of unresolved murders and protect the confidence the FBI must have to accomplish its mission," Domin stated.

Most of the dead addressed in the report were described as AIM members or supporters, killed either by "unknown assailants" or by GOONs (Guardians of the Oglala Nation), police employed by then-tribal President Dick Wilson.

But according to the report, many deaths had nonpolitical causes. Some were attributed to exposure, alcohol intoxication or suicide.

A few cases are unsolved, including the death of AIM organizer Anna Mae Pictou Aquash. AIM supporters say the FBI attempted to conceal the cause of her death and that an ongoing attempt was made to establish AIM involvement in Aquash's murder.

The FBI's response: "In September, 1976, Anna Mae Pictou Aquash's partially decomposed body was discovered in a remote area in the northeastern part of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota. Cause of death was determined to be a gunshot wound to the head.

"In June, 1975, FBI SA's (special agents) Jack Coler and Ron Williams were ambushed and killed execution-style on Pine Ridge. The ensuing major case investigation ... resulted in the trial and conviction of Leonard Peltier, and the trial and acquittal of two other individuals.

"Some attention had been focused on Aquash for her possible knowledge of the slayings. Rumors circulated that Aquash cooperated with the government and was an FBI informant. Those rumors were untrue. The coroner, who died shortly after performing the autopsy on Aquash, was not deposed. The Aquash murder has not been solved."

AIM supporters agree with the last statement. But they point out that the coroner initially determined Aquash died of exposure, despite a gunshot wound to the head. They say that same coroner determined that four others listed in the report also died of "exposure."

The Leonard Peltier Defense Committee produced a 17-page response, outlining what it says are errors and omissions in the report while also pointing out a few errors of its own. Author Ward Churchill claims the FBI had access to the names in question as early as the late 1980s but declined to respond until 2000.

He and others say the FBI had a political motive to release the report when it did, just before Peltier was eligible for clemency from outgoing President Bill Clinton. "To the extent that the list of allegations can be discredited, so the reasoning goes, AIM will be discredited, and so, by extension, will Peltier," Churchill states on the site, at www.freepeltier.org.

Ellison said the names in the report are "a minute portion of the percentage of people who were either members of or friends and families of members of the American Indian Movement who were injured, shot, raped, beaten, maimed."

He said people have tried for 20 years to get Congress to investigate violence on the reservation during the 1970s and the FBI's support of GOON squads. It amounted to government terrorism against AIM, he said, "and nobody cares. ... What you're looking at now is really the tip of a massive inquiry that's needed."

FBI Agent Mark Vukelich of Rapid City maintains that the FBI didn't know the names in question until after the 1999 hearing.

"We did the best we could," he said. "This is a frustrating topic."

He said that the FBI had taken several steps to improve its operations before the 1999 hearing, including setting up a victim witness program to communicate with victims, and starting a drug task force that involves federal, state, tribal and local officials. The agency works closely with the tribes, he said.

"We work all of our cases jointly with our partners, whether they be tribal or

Bureau of Indian Affairs people," Vukelich said. "We stand behind what we've done in South Dakota and strongly feel that those criticisms (presented at the hearing) were not justified."

The FBI may have good communications with other law enforcement agencies, but what about with the general public? Meeks said that poor communication was a common theme at the 1999 hearing. "I think that was good that they did that (issued the report)," she said. "But again, they need to keep up the correspondence in some ways, I think."

Asked whether complaints of poor communication might actually reflect a lack of trust in the FBI, Vukelich bristled, questioning how it could be said that Indian people in general don't trust the agency.

He asked for specific names of people who do not.

The FBI report addresses the deaths of Leon L. Swift Bird, Lydla Cut Grass, Edward Means Jr., Byron DeSersa, Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, Lena R. Slow Bear, Edward Standing Soldier, Martin Montileaux, Hobart Horse, Stacy Cotter, Edith Eagle Hawk and her two children, Cleveland Reddest, Jeanette Bissonette, Richard Eagle, Hilda R. Good Buffalo, Jancita Eagle Dear, Priscilla White Plume, Frank Clearwater, Roxeine Roark, Buddy Lamont, Betty Jo Dubray, Marvin Two Two, Julia Pretty Hips, Ben Sitting Up, Sam Afraid of Bear, Kenneth Little, Kevin Hill, Leah Spotted Elk, Clarence Cross, Joseph Stuntz Killsright, Betty Means, James Briggs Yellow, Andrew Paul Stewart, Julius Bad Heart Bull, Sandra Wounded Foot, Randy Hunter, Dennis LeCompte, Howard Blue Bird, James Little, Jackson Washington Cutt, Robert Reddy, Melvin Spider, Philip Black Elk, Aloysius Long Soldier, Phillip Little Crow, Pedro Bissonette, Olivia Binas, Janice Black Bear, Michelle Tobacco, Delphine Crow Dog, Elaine Wagner, Allison Fast Horse, John S. Moore, Carl Plenty Arrows Sr., Frank La Pointe, Floyd S. Binals, and Yvette Loraine Lone Hill.

Contact Heidi Bell Gease at 394-8419 or heidi.bell@rapidcityjournal.com