FBI accuses AIM of killing Civil Rights activist in 1973 Wounded Knee occupation

[frogmarch]

http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/246187851.html

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — The FBI says a black civil rights activist was killed during the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee, and it suspects militant members of the American Indian Movement are responsible, according to recently released documents.

Hundreds of pages of reports provided to Buffalo, N.Y., attorney Michael Kuzma shed new light on the 40-year-old case of Ray Robinson, an activist and follower of Martin Luther King Jr. Kuzma sued the U.S. Justice Department in June in an effort to help Robinson's widow, Cheryl Buswell-Robinson, and their children get some closure.

The father of three from Bogue Chitto, Ala., traveled to South Dakota in April 1973 to stand alongside Native Americans in their fight against social injustice. He never returned and his body was never found.

Buswell-Robinson, of Detroit, has said the family wants to bring his remains home for a proper burial.

According to the FBI documents, an unidentified cooperating witness told agents that "Robinson had been tortured and murdered within the AIM occupation perimeter, and then his remains were buried 'in the hills.'"

Another witness told agents that Robinson was in Wounded Knee for about a week and seemed to have difficulty adjusting to the conditions of having no food, the area constantly being under fire and unilateral AIM command. That witness said Robinson immediately wanted to open discussion on strategies in the bunker but no one listened to him or gave him any serious consideration.

The witness said Robinson got into a heated exchange with another person and was taken to a house by a security team. When Robinson grabbed a butcher knife from a table, security formed a full circle around him, according to the witness.

"The next thing, I heard a loud bang and saw Mr. Robinson's lower leg spin from the knee and rotate outward as he started to fall forward," the witness said. "His eyes rolled up as he went down."

Other parts of the documents relate to the knowledge of the incident by leaders of American Indian Movement, which was founded in the late 1960s to protest the government's treatment of Indians. For decades, AIM leaders have denied knowledge of Robinson's death.

One witness told agents that AIM leader Vernon Bellecourt expressed knowledge and awareness of Robinson being killed during the occupation. The witness said Bellecourt "made a statement to the effect that AIM had 'really managed to keep a tight lid on that one' over the years.'"

Bellecourt died in 2007.

[bravenak]

1. More likely the FBI is the culprit.

They lie.

[frogmarch]

2. The FBI made up the witnesses?

I don't think so.

[msanthrope]

4. The widow thinks it was AIM..

"Reliable sources let it be known positively that Ray had been shot and killed at Wounded Knee by an Indian man and buried there. We have been told that a participant in Wounded Knee has heard a definite confession from the man who did it," Cheryl Robinson wrote in a February 1975 request for a meeting with AIM.

http://www.indiancountrynews.com/index.php/investigations/ray-robinson/888-widow-says-civil-rights-activist-killed-during-1973-wounded-knee-takeover


If he had an FBI bullet in him, I'm betting AIM would have used that.

[frogmarch]

9. One of my daughters-in-law is Lakota,

and she told me years ago that it’s common knowledge on the Pine Ridge reservation that an AIM member killed Ray Robinson. When I saw this news story, it immediately interested me.

Not all Lakota tribal members were, or are, AIM supporters.

[msanthrope]

11. Like I said...Ray Robinson with an FBI bullet in him would have been useful.

An AIM one....not so much.

But I discount nothing...for all we know, he could have been shot by an AIM member who was FBI.

[bravenak]

5. I trust no law enforcement.

Ever.
I lived through the riots and saw and heard cops making up evidence. And forcing witness statements. I never trust law enforcement to be honest. I've seen them lie to my face personally, and stole 200 dollars from my husbands wallet while I was looking straight at the guy. Never got the money back, cause he lied.

They need to get rid of their bad apples and start telling the truth and then the first response wouldn't be for people to think they're lying.

Plenty of witness statements given to law enforcement have been coerced.

[msanthrope]

3. Given the Ana Mae Aquash case, and how that went down, I wouldn't make any

assumptions about any player in this.

I'm interested in knowing who the witness was.

[bravenak]

6. I'd like to know too.

Could be a member, FBI agent, anybody. Or nonexistent.
I always question the veracity of the FBI or any law enforcement, immediately.

[msanthrope]

7. Yeah...but as I noted above, the widow and the family (the kids, now grown)

think it was AIM.

[2naSalit]

8. ^^^THIS^^^ 100% nt

[msanthrope]

10. Funny..the widow disagrees. nt

[tkmorris]

12. Those closest to a crime are the least objective

I know you know this.

Of course, she may be correct. Or not. The matter is not proven either way, but offering her opinion as if it tips the balance in either direction is not convincing.

[msanthrope]

13. Wow...that is some condescending shit to offer a family who has been trying

for 40 years to get his body back. They don't even want prosecution...just his body.

[2naSalit]

15. Yeah

and that's probably WHY she'll never get his remains back, FBI doesn't like it when evidence or potential evidence uncovers their lies. Whether SHE wants to prosecute or not, there will be some process by which the remains will be examined by someone and the truth might get out... and we all know how that ruffles the fed feathers. Most of what the federal story implies is not what really happened.

[rug]

14. Bullshit.

Tell that to Frank Clearwater and Buddy Lamont.

John Sayer, a Wounded Knee chronicler, wrote that:

"The equipment maintained by the military while in use during the siege included fifteen armored personnel carriers, clothing, rifles, grenade launchers, flares, and 133,000 rounds of ammunition, for a total cost, including the use of maintenance personnel from the National Guard of five states and pilot and planes for aerial photographs, of over half a million dollars".

The data gathered by the historians Record and Hocker largely concur: "barricades of paramilitary personnel armed with automatic weapons, snipers, helicopters, armored personnel carriers equipped with .50-caliber machine guns, and more than 130,000 rounds of ammunition". The statistics on the U.S. government force at Wounded Knee vary, but all accounts agree that it was a significant military force including "federal marshals, FBI agents, and armored vehicles". One eyewitness and journalist described "sniper fire from…federal helicopters", "bullets dancing around in the dirt", and "sounds of shooting all over town" (from both sides).

On March 13, Harlington Wood Jr., the assistant attorney general for the Civil Division of the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ), became the first government official to enter Wounded Knee without a military escort. Determined to resolve the deadlock without further bloodshed, he met with AIM leaders for days. While exhaustion made him too ill to conclude the negotiation, he is credited as the "icebreaker" between the government and AIM.

After 30 days, the government's tactics became harsher when Kent Frizell was appointed from DOJ to manage the government's response. He cut off electricity, water and food supplies to Wounded Knee, when it was still winter in South Dakota, and prohibited the entry of the media. AIM says that "the government tried starving out the (occupants)", and that its activists smuggled food and medical supplies in past roadblocks "set up by Dick Wilson and tacitly supported by the government". Keefer, the Deputy U.S. Marshal at the scene, said there were no persons between federal agents and the town, and that the federal marshals' firepower would have killed anyone in the open landscape. The Marshals Service decided to wait out the AIM followers in order to reduce casualties on both sides. Some activists organized an airlift of food supplies to Wounded Knee.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_incident

[frogmarch]

16. "AIM says..."

Whatever, rug.

[rug]

18. "FBI says . . . ."

Whatever, frogmarch.

[frogmarch]

19. Having had both positive and negative

experiences with AIM and its members before, during, and after the Wounded Knee occupation, I trust my judgment.

And of course, you are free to trust yours, rug.

[rug]

20. Having been at Wounded Knee, I will.

There is one thing in this report that rings true, the growing level of paranoia as the place was surrounded and rapidly militarized.

I went out with a carful of people from the Fellowship for Reconciliation, an explicitly pacifist group. The plan was to backpack food and supplies into Wounded Knee. There is no underestimating the military presence surrounding that small place.

We arrived in Porcupine on the reservation, which served as a sort of staging area about 8 miles from Wounded Knee. The next day we were all given rifles and asked if we needed training. I gave mine back, as did the others, and told them we were there to bring in food, not to have a firefight.

Long story short, we were all treated suspiciously after that and were told we could help out in Porcupine or leave. We were not allowed anywhere else in Pine Ridge.

We stayed until it was over. When Buddy Lamont was shot (not by AIM) there was a service in Porcupine that started in a sweat lodge with peyote soup and ended on a hillside after sunset.

This story, with mysterious, anonymous sources and one named but deceased source, is self-contradictory and utter bullshit. Given the number of agents, APCs and weapons deployed, the only question I have is how only three people were killed.

[frogmarch]

21. Both sides were armed. If you were prevented

from entering Wounded Knee, it must have been out of regard for your safety, not to keep you from helping the hostages or hostage-takers.

It began when AIM failed at getting "half-breed" Wilson ousted as tribal president. AIM decided a good way to protest their failure at ousting him and at the same time draw attention to the broken treaties of the U.S. government and the plight of Native Americans (I think it would be called killing three birds with one stone) would be to hold a town hostage, and then place the blame for anything bad that might happen on the feds (or on NAs who weren't members of AIM).

I can imagine teabaggers doing something similar to the Wounded Knee takeover, and getting a similar result.

To make a long story short: I walked with AIM on their bicentennial march to Mt. Rushmore. I was with them when they "took over" Hot Springs in the Black Hills. I stared down the barrels of law enforcement rifles right along with my AIM friends.

I was also with Park employees and helped to clean up the Black Hills campsites after the AIM occupation of the Black Hills. I wondered why AIM, who claimed to consider Paha Sapa holy, would leave behind destruction and garbage and would defecate everywhere. Later I wondered why the AIM members I let live in my rental house in Hot Springs for free, despite my neighbors' objections at having AIM members near by, trashed the house when they left, ripping out the electrical wiring and the plumbing, and tearing out the sinks, and even the toilet.

There were "good" AIM members and "bad" ones. It was sometimes hard to tell them apart, even among my friends.

I get tired of the rhetoric that the FBI bullied AIM. If anyone was bullying AIM or the Indian People in general, it was AIM leaders.

[rug]

22. The relationship of AIM members to tribe members is entirely different from that of AIM to the FBI.

Neither the FBI nor the BIA have been friendly to Native Americans.

I'm not as knowledgeable as to how AIM was received by tribal members but I do know the tribal leaders and tribal police were seen as no more than agents of the BIA and the government who helped perpetuate the appalling conditions on the reservation.

I did see a lot of things I didn't like. There was a artificial air of reviving the ancient ways. There were talks about the sacredness of the land no more than thirty feet from an old truck rusting in the creek. There was a sign taped to the door of the trailer that served as AIM's headquarters in Porcupine that read, women who are menstruating may not enter.

After the peyote ceremony in the sweat lodge (which was sleeping bags thrown over a structure of sticks) the leader of the ceremony asked for a virgin to step forward to lead the group into the hills to conclude the ceremony. No one stepped forward. One of the women I came with from FOR was a nun so I looked at her. After a moment, she muttered "shit" and stepped forward.

Overall it struck me as a self-conscious and aggressive reclamation of identity. The friction with established leaders probably wasn't that much different from the reaction to the Panthers in their community a few years earlier. The FBI helped destroy them as well.

As to why we stayed in Porcupine, I don't think it was a safety issue, it was a matter of distrust. Not that I can blame them. they had taken a bold step against the government and there was a lot on the line.

Still, flaws and all, I favor them over the FBI and its tactics. By far.