See, www.indiancountrynews.com for historical information on the case.

Richard Two Elk - It’s a hard thing to do I think, it’s been a hard thing, and I apologize, (voice breaks) for the power of it, it brings me to tears sometimes. I will start with the first statement, that’s really the essence of where I stand right now and it’s all I really have, if you were to ask me what I have to say.

My name is Two Elk, Richard Two Elk, I’m a Oglala Lakota from Pine Ridge, South Dakota. I took up the pipe when I was 17 years old, I sun danced for my brother in 1977, I’m a combat veteran, I was in Wounded Knee.

I was in the United States Army, I served actively from 1983 to 1987 as a medical NCO, and I’ve been a journalist in Indian America since about 1975. When I started going around and recording Indians.

My brother is Arlo Looking Cloud, he’s also from Pine Ridge, South Dakota. We grew up together, I grew up hanging with Arlo over the years, many times we went many places and we participated in a lot of different AIM actions together. We went to Wounded Knee and we were always there supporting AIM in the Denver area, when an issue came up that had to be dealt with.

A lot of people in the country know Arlo Looking Cloud and they remember how active a supporter he was of the American Indian Movement. Arlo’s father’s name is Johnny Looking Cloud. Johnny Looking Cloud is the traditional treaty chief among our Lakota treaty headmen. He’s been around for a long time, I remember as a child, him coming to visit my house and my family. He would always bring his drums and his crafts and he would be talking and reinforcing the idea of who we were, and at that time, no one was doing that.

Johnny and Arlo Looking Cloud are the descendants of American Horse, and he’s another of our traditional Lakota chiefs. So when we talk about Arlo Looking Cloud, we’re not just talking about, as AIM has suggested, some drunk Indian, who doesn’t have a clue, we’re talking about a descendent of our Lakota headmen, (voice breaks) and if you’ll forgive me, we’re talking about a war chief.

I’m here today to address the issue of my brother’s involvement in the murder of Anna Mae Aquash. From the time of the murder and up until today, Arlo Looking Cloud has been associated with this case, and it’s also been clear to me that Arlo Looking Cloud, that’s there’s no doubt in my mind, that he was involved in the murder of Anna Mae.

He has always stated to me, consistently over the years, that he was only acting on orders. He further states, if people want to know more about where those orders came from, how they came about, then they need to talk to the AIM leadership.

So, I, my brothers, my sisters, and the relatives of Arlo Looking Cloud support him in his position, and we stand beside him in trying to bring this case to a resolve.

Over the past year, Mr. Robert Branscombe and I, have provided ample opportunities for American Indian Movement leadership to come forward and help our families resolve this case. They’ve responded with denial and finger pointing.

Given the history of this case and the interest of the Native families involved, given that it is a common knowledge among many Native people that AIM leadership clearly had it out for Anna Mae for their various reasons, given that there are hundreds of grassroots Native people who know the truth of this case and given that there has been a consistent effort on the part of American Indian Movement leadership to misdirect, confuse and avoid their role in the murder of Anna Mae and given that the families of the victim, desire, deserve at the very least the honor and dignity of knowing the truth, I am formally challenging American Indian Movement leaders, Russell Means, Vernon Bellecourt, Clyde Bellecourt, Dennis Banks, Carter Camp, John Trudell to come forward and own their part in this case.

That’s the essence of the statement that I would like to go out.

Minnie Two Shoes - How did you evolve the list of the AIM leadership that you just put forward?

Richard Two Elk -The list is, the individuals who shared in making the call, to go ahead and do the hit. I know this from my associations within the American Indian Movement and from my conversations with Arlo Looking Cloud. So those are the people that I know were critically and centrally involved in making the call. There were other people peripherally involved which I didn’t name. Does that help?

Paul DeMain - We’ve done a lot of detail work at News From Indian Country and we’ve talked a little bit about that stuff. I’m wondering if you can talk about your involvement with AIM in Denver, what role were you playing in Denver Colorado and there’s a series of questions that different people have submitted and come up with. I’d appreciate if you could give some scenarios about what you were doing in Denver on behalf of AIM, your affiliation with certain people, connected and what those affiliations were.......

Richard Two Elk - O.k., I got involved with the American Indian Movement, in the fall and winter of 1970, I had returned to Colorado, I had left a foster home that I was in, I ran away and I returned to Colorado and I was living there, I lived in Denver, I spent a lot of time as a child in Denver so I returned to Denver and I joined up with my mother again and I was in Denver and me and Arlo, we were just working the neighborhood, if you will, making our life and our survival.

The way I got involved with the American Indian Movement, I was selling pot and I was going down Colfax Avenue one day with Arlo, and I saw these two Indian guys come up the street, they had braids, it was not too far from the AIM office at the time. So they came by and asked me if I knew where they could get some and I said, yeah we got some right here, so me and Arlo, we went and hooked these guys up. I discovered that those two individuals were Rod Skenendore and Vernon Bellecourt after I got to know them. After I got to know them we were going to the AIM office all the time, (read) Akwesasne notes and hang out and see what was going on in the country because we were intrigued by it.

So as we got more involved and we became more present in the community there with the AIM office, we started getting invited to participate in different activities that AIM was doing. Some of the most important activities that we were doing at the time had to do with community service, helping families, employment, prisoner services, things of that nature. So this is the large part of what we were involved with in the beginning.

I worked as an organizer, grassroots organizer, I assisted Vernon Bellecourt in a lot of degrees. At one point I was Vernon Bellecourt’s driver, along with being his body guard, I carried firearm and I almost used that firearm several times in defense of Vernon Bellecourt.

One of the things that we was involved in in Denver AIM that was most significant was in 1972, the last part of June, 1972, we were invited to Flagstaff Arizona to help them because they were having a pow wow down there, and the people who were putting on the pow wow, the city of Flagstaff were abusing and ripping off the Indians so, we went down there, Vernon and I and some other people went down there to help those Indians that were calling us. When we got down there, we organized and started looking at ways to stop the pow wow to correct what was going on, we finally came to the point that the only way to stop the pow wow was to physically get out there and stop the pow wow, so we did that, late one night, July 2nd I believe, 1972.

When we did that, we took over the announcers stand and we secured the arena and we were attacked by the non-Indian participants of the pow wow, they climbed up on the announcers stand and they were punching us, there were about 6 or 7 of us up there and we had a pretty hard fight with them. They ended up throwing me off the tower and we ended up all getting charged with two counts of rioting, inciting a riot and rioting, disturbing the peace, trespassing and I forgot what that third misdemeanor charge was. Twenty thousand, three hundred dollar bond and at that point Bellecourt called in Banks and Means and everybody came to Arizona to participate in this thing that we were doing.

So that was the most significant of the events that I participated in with AIM in the sense that I was charged with rioting. I was never convicted and I don’t really know whatever happened with that case after that point because no one ever really told me, but that was one of the most critical events.

Back in Denver, with the American Indian Movement, it was at the time about when Vernon came up with the idea to do the Longest Walk or the Trail of Broken Treaties in the summer, when we were in Flagstaff, he came up with that idea to do the Trail of Broken Treaties and we talked about it when we were in the jail cell and the other people who were there, they remember that too.

And then I left Denver AIM and I went to Sioux City and I worked at the Indian Center that summer when they started to do the Trail of Broken Treaties and so I was working in Sioux City as an Outreach worker at the Indian Center, that's where I met Lorelie DeCora and Maryann and those girls out in Sioux City and so, later when Wounded Knee happened, I came back out to Denver, it was right after the Wounded Knee occupation started at the end of February just about the time of my birthday, March 17th, 73 that I returned to Denver and I started helping with support operations getting medical, ammunition and food to the people in Wounded Knee.

Right after Frank Clear Water got killed, one of the brothers from inside came out to Denver and he was pretty adamant that every able bodied who had the capabilities to go, needed to go into the Knee, so the rest of us who were doing support work gathered ourselves up and loaded up ammunition and supplies and food and we went to Wounded Knee. I went in Wounded Knee, I hiked in along with a team of people who were carrying in supplies, probably within a week from Frank Clear Water being killed. I remained there until about a week prior to the shut down, when I and my brother Arron Two Elk evacuated out, on the recommendation of some of the leadership.

So I was present at Wounded Knee for a pretty significant time, I saw a lot of things happen there. Many of the things I witnessed there are similar to the case of Anna Mae in that, there are events that took place, many people remember these things. Today I can talk to people in Wounded Knee on the reservation who remember the same things I remember about the Wounded Knee occupation, but it’s not public information and it’s not something many people know about.

The significant part of that is, on Easter Sunday in Wounded Knee, I and Arlo and Frank Blackhorse (DeLuca) and a couple other people were down towards the cook shack and somebody came over there and said, they caught somebody over at the, they got em over at headquarters, they said they’re a fed. So we went over there to see who it was and what was going on, so Dennis Banks and some of the other leadership had this Wasicu guy over there and they were interrogating him and they were trying to find out who he was with and why he was there and he kept denying who he was and denying that he was an informer and so they turned this individual over to us and they said take care of him. So as we were taking this individual we said what are we going to do with this guy, so we decided that since Little Big Horn was taking so much heat every time a fire fight broke out because it was close proximity to the Marshall’s bunkers, that we would take this guy and we would post him over there by Little Big Horn. There was already a cross out there on the side of the hill and it was just up the hill from Little Big Horn.

So I and Arlo and Frank Blackhorse and must of been about twenty, twenty five other people, we took him out there and we tied him to that cross. And (when) we tied him to that cross, we were talking about how we needed to do something to send these guys a message and so we started beating this guy up, he was tied to this cross, we kicked him, we punched him, we hit him, we yelled at him and what we were trying to do is we were trying to piss off the marshals, because of all the heat they were putting on Little Big Horn.

It was an act of war of sorts, because that was the state of mind that we were at at the time. We did that, pretty much all afternoon, taking turns, finally the marshals got so pissed about what we were doing, they sent a message on the radio that if we didn’t stop, then they were going to open up and so Banks sent out orders that we needed to stop beating this guy up, so then we just left him on the cross and we all left him hanging there, and we went away. I share this because this is one of the events that was discredited as untrue by some of the media, not official media, unofficial media and their discussion of Durham's testimony before the Senate subcommittee, they tried to discredit Durham's testimony on the basis of the fact that this event supposedly never took place. So I’m telling you know that it did in fact happen and these were the people who were directly involved in that process because I was standing right next to them and doing it with them.

There are other stories and other things that happened during Wounded Knee and at Wounded Knee that like I said, a lot of people won’t talk about. And that’s important in the case of Anna Mae because it tells you something about who we are as a people, as Native people, that no matter what happens we’re not going to do that.

One of the things that was important about the time period when we came out of Wounded knee was that a lot of pressure was behind everybody about who was going to be charged, who had been charged, who was going to be hunted down and so the whole process after Wounded Knee became one of hiding and avoiding and trying to remain undetected, knowing full well that they had pictures of us and they had lists of our names and they had everything they needed to pull us in if they wanted to.

My brother Arron got some charges out of that, I was lucky, I didn’t get any charges out of that. I think his charges were eventually dropped. After Wounded Knee and the American Indian Movement became an organization on the run I decided that that really wasn’t what we were supposed to be doing. And it was in that same time window that everything started to get really complex, the war between AIM and the FBI, that wasn’t the reason that I separated from active involvement with AIM, the reason I separated was because I felt like we needed to do constructive and positive things to represent Indian people.

That was at the point that I started to go into teaching and Indian journalism. As a teacher and as a journalist, I continued to maintain contact and involvement within the Indian movement not as an organization but as a movement of people and I would bring those things to my classroom and I would document and record those things as a journalist. But that was essentially the primary window, from 1970 to 1976 when I was directly involved with the American Indian Movement.

It was the same time window that my brother Arron was identified as a key element in the American Indian Movement by Doug Durham and targeted for elimination. It was the same window that my brother was essentially moved on and set up and taken out in terms of his ability to be actively involved within the American Indian Movement. In reference to that, in my effort to help him and support him I started doing a lot of research at that time, about the FBI, about FBI informants and about what they had done to infiltrate the American Indian Movement and the research and the conversations I had with my brother Arron Two Elk, I was able to learn a lot of particulars in reference to Douglas Durham's access to the American Indian Movement, and his role in the American Indian Movement of Iowa. His involvement with Harvey Majors and my brother Arron Two Elk.

It was also in that same time window that Harvey Majors was killed because of his positioning and my brother fled Iowa and relocated to Colorado for the safety of his family and his children. So that’s the primary focal point of my direct involvement with the American Indian Movement.

Paul DeMain - Richard, do you believe that your brother was framed as an FBI informant? Was that part of the process that occurred?

Richard Two Elk - I believe my brother was given the opportunity to become an FBI informant and that he declined that opportunity but, because of the nature of paranoia within the organization at the time, he was looked at as being a possible informant by AIM leadership. Because when he was charged, and I went to Dennis Banks and I went to Russell Means and I went to Vernon Bellecourt and asked them for support and backing in my brother’s case, their only response was, keep us informed. So they had at that time already taken a removed posture toward my brother. And I didn’t understand at the time, why and it wasn’t until I got a better grasp of what had happened with Harvey Majors and Doug Durham and AIM that I began to understand why they separated themselves from my brother.

Minnie Two Shoes - I’d like to ask two questions, if I may. How old were you when you were in the Knee?

Richard Two Elk - Let’s see, 19, I’d just turned 19.

Minnie Two Shoes - And how old was Arlo?

Richard Two Elk - I think he was about the same age, if anything he was maybe one year older or one year younger. It was just one of those things that we never talked about that.

Minnie Two Shoes - The second question I would ask, did you witness any other events of the interrogation of any informants? I have knowledge of a particular incident, I don’t want to bring forward this person’s name, but there are other people who are involved in this incident in which they held a gun to this person’s head, there were several of these incidences, as you well know, I know you from that time period and I knew Arlo and I’ve always heard that this guy was an innocent bystander that was sucked in, that’s why I’m asking about the age, any 19 year old kid is going to be very impressionable.

Richard Two Elk -Yes, very much. I can say that, and I think the important thing to say is on your comment that there were many instances, and the many instances I guess from my point of view was that the interrogation process was standard form for the American Indian Movement. Any time that someone was out of line, presented an opposing view or raised any questions about the activities of the American Indian Movement.

I myself, along with Arlo participated in several of these types of interrogations. As foot soldiers, it was our primary responsibility to flush these things out. So yes, many of those things happened of that nature, sometimes they would be executed on other elements within the movement. In Ajo, Arizona, in the summer of ‘72, Bellecourt and I and all the people that were with us, had a armed, guns drawn, fingers on the trigger face off with Russell Means at the Childs ranch. And the face off had to do with who was making the decisions and who was making the calls for our Arizona campaign during that time. There was challenge and confusion between Bellecourt and Banks and Means as to who was going to make all the final decisions as to who was going to do what, where and how. We were in a conversation of that nature at the Child’s ranch outside of Ajo, when Russell and his boys drew on us, so we drew back and we stood there.....

Minnie Two Shoes - When you say we, are you talking about?.....

Richard Two Elk - Vernon Bellecourt, myself and other people that were with us, and I don’t want to name these other people because it’s not necessary. They know who they were and they remember and they will validate within the communities everything that I say. But, we had a face off and it was long rifles and hand guns and I truly thought at that point that there was a possibility that I might get shot, but I didn’t hesitate because of that, but it was just one of those things that happened then.

Everybody ended up backing down and together we rode into Ajo. So that was kind of an interesting process. After that we broke up into different elements and moved throughout the state as different elements rather than one united element within the American Indian Movement.

So those things did happen, the interrogative processes and, today I call it thuggery. I call it thuggery because, they’ve come after me the same way. They’ve come after Arlo the same way. (voice breaks) They beat him up, four or five guys come and they catch him when he’s drunk and he fights em, but when there’s four or five, it’s harder, but he doesn’t quit or give up. When I found out about that, I took my boys and we took Arlo and we went around Denver and we visited different families and homes and I told people, this is my brother, I know what he did, it doesn’t matter that he did that, no one’s going to terrorize him now and I did that because I wanted to be able to help my brother come forward and speak out the truth. So in answer to your question, that’s the best I could offer.

Brian Wright-McLeod - Were those interrogation tactics necessary and what was their success rate at weeding out informants?

Richard Two Elk - It’s a hard challenge because you have to understand that the American Indian Movement emerged out of the framework of an Indian community that had been borne into resistance. Having been borne into resistance, a lot of us grew up admiring, if not, idolizing gangsters of history. We know we’re outlaws, Indian people were born to be outlaws, not by our own choice, but by the way the system was and the way things happened, so we inherently identified with outlaws in a particular way, a lot of that remained within our mental perspective when the American Indian Movement came about, and so when the American Indian Movement came about, and issues of security and issues of confidence came up, our response was to apply tactics that we had learned in the hood, if you will, no one ever said, go take this guy and interrogate him. Ask him questions, do this do that, there were no direct orders like that.

There were questions, someone would come and say, hey, do you know about so and so? And we’d say nah, he came around lately but we don’t really know, well check it out. And on that alone, we would move. Because anybody who couldn’t be secured or couldn’t be defined as secure, needed to be removed from the circle of the American Indian Movement. So in that way, there’s no clear line of authority or command that could be traced, such as you might be able to do with a military action.

Brian Wright McLeod - Was there a success rate in weeding out informants with that kind of tactic?

Richard Two Elk - I don’t think that the success rate was in weeding out informants incredibly enough, I think the success rate was in alienating people from the American Indian Movement, because whether or not somebody was an informant was never really validated, you see? It could have been anybody. Maybe they raised a question, maybe they challenged, maybe they didn’t buy in easily, and so the question would be raised, who is this person?

Brian Wright McLeod - Did it ever enter into your mind that there was something wrong with that kind of thinking?

Richard Two Elk - Not until later on when I began to I guess mature beyond a state of being just an outlaw and understanding that we had a movement of people that was trying to go somewhere, versus a kind of a gang if you will.

Brian Wright McLeod - You say there were no direct orders, but how does that tie into the Anna Mae killing?

Richard Two Elk - It ties in with Anna Mae killing in that, what happened with the Anna Mae killing was that there was no direct command given from one individual to Arlo to go out and do the hit. By the time that word came down, there had already been at least two or three different types of interrogations of different types of Indian people who had been suspected or accused of being an informant. That was often a rationale that was put forward against somebody who didn’t buy into the program.

It ties into the Anna Mae case in that, when Arlo got word that this had to be done and he and John Boy knew that they were the ones who were going to have to carry it through, it wasn’t somebody who said, Arlo and John Boy go and do this, first do this and then do that and then do this other, it was more like it was a common consensus among the members of Denver AIM and AIM members in general that Anna Mae was under suspicion, and so they were essentially looking for somebody to take that to another level.

They had already gotten Leonard Peltier, Butler and Robideau to do an interrogative process with Anna Mae and, but they needed sombody who was cleaner and not associated with the whole process. So what they did is, they passed word through the moccasin telegraph, that this had to be taken care of, and Arlo was chosen and selected and John Boy was chosen and selected by Troy Lynn Yellow Wood (Williams) out of Denver to complete the process. They were chosen because of their allegiance to those people, Troy Lynn and some of the others and they felt that they could be secured enough and not let anybody know.

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