wonderings, and all

by antoinette nora claypoole

SaturdayDec. 18

There are some thoughts that keep me awake. In the night of all this. How could it be that so many people are "wrong". And where are the "right" ones?? A handful of us who emerged in the early 90's have spent over a decade trying to make sense of the brutal last days of Annie Mae. People confessing. Others claiming witness. To Annie Mae tied up and terrorized. Now. There is the dead man theory. An old "medicine man". Described to me yesterday. By John Graham defense attorney Terry LaLiberte. Old man Gates. Dying in a nursing home. Naming Graham. Before the old man left the place.

These are just stories that cannot seem to leave my heart. And others. Who I spoke with years ago. Talking casually nearly in passing. About what Christmas in 1975 was like. With Annie Mae. Those conversations about the holidays.Long before the Graham/Looking Cloud jingle rock came down.

With a "Christmas adjournment", an unadorned silence, where is Annie Mae in all of this???? The Canadian Judge Bennett, challenging in a her quiet way the details of John Graham's arrest, leaves me with a month to wonder at how/where/if Annie Mae's murderers will ever be found.

There just seems no easy way to say this. These hearings cannot just be about John Graham. Challenging the U.S. tactics. Could it be, I wonder, that while so many believe his innocence in Annie Mae's death, could it be that somehow, someone somewhere in the protect-Graham-campaign, could it be that in some way people begin to locate the persons who did this horror to Annie Mae??

I guess what i am wondering is...is there any other search going on out there about how she was murdered. While Demain's/U.S. prosecutor's theory claims Graham and Looking Cloud. Both of these old AIM footsoldiers say "not us". Looking Cloud changing his story. Yes. But who IS now looking for the truth in this?? Who kidnapped and murdered Anna Mae Pictou Aquash.

For it is still a need and necessity, isn't it, that Annie Mae's last days be seen for what they were? And those responsible look into their hearts, into the faces of her family, and offer some semblance of remorse.

As some of us are hoping for the U.S. to be challenged in it's arrogant, big daddy ways through these Graham hearings, the death of Annie Mae still lingers in the air like roadkill in the summer desert. There is still the pressing, haunting reality. The swoop of buzzards and tobacco offering. That if not Graham, then who?? Is there anyone out there like Nogeeshik was? Searching into the night up to death for how it was in Annie Mae's last breath of beingness....

all people are One
antoinette nora claypoole
copyright 2004