Brian Wright McLeod - But why Anna Mae?
Richard Two Elk - They felt, Vernon Bellecourt suspected Anna Mae’s involvement with the FBI since the Trail of Broken Treaties. In my conversations with him, and in fact I did an interview with him and I didn’t talk about the FBI or AIM in that way, but I did talk about the history of AIM and it became apparent to me in my conversations with him both on the record and off the record, that Anna Mae was one of the people that he suspected clear back to the Trail of Broken Treaties as possibly being an FBI informant. O.k? The other element was, that Dennis Banks was notorious for processing women if you will. I say it that way because of the way things happen. He was notorious for getting young Indian women involved and getting involved with some of the women who came around to support AIM and our different actions. One of the women that he was involved with was Anna Mae, and in essence, he had arrived at that point where he basically threw her away. That’s the best way I could describe it. And so, it was a shared call and of all the people that were in the American Indian Movement, Anna Mae’s name kept consistently coming up over a period of years, particularly with Vernon Bellecourt. That’s how I figured she got involved in so crucial a point. She wasn’t alone, there were a lot of other people who were almost at the same standing as she was. They didn’t get taken out because she got taken out. If she would have gotten taken out and it had been successfully done with no press, no media coverage, no attention, then there would have been others. And there probably were others that never got any attention, that nobody every talked about, so.....
Brian Wright McLeod - Do you think that it was easier for them to take out a woman instead of taking out a man?
Richard Two Elk - I know that for sure, I know that for sure, because the whole nature of it is, everybody who was involved with AIM were involved with AIM because we’re not afraid, were involved with AIM because we wanted to go to the front line and stand there and so, you know that if you go against another AIM guy, he’s not going to go down easy, he’s going to go down hard and chances are, you’re probably going to get hurt in the process see.
Richard LaCourse - Richard, I’d like to turn the calender back to the Wounded Knee take over and then on to Mr. Majors. On the suspected fugitive who was tied to the cross and then finally abandoned and left there, what happened to him, was he rescued from outside the perimeter, and then number two, what were the conditions of Major’s death?
Richard Two Elk - As far as I know in reference to the first question about the guy on the cross, the marshals, after we stopped beating him, the marshals demanded that he be released, taken off the cross, released and turned over to them at I believe it was RB1, that was the southwestern roadblock coming in from Pine Ridge. So, later on, somebody went out there and took him down, I didn’t do that, and they took him out to RB1 and turned him over to federal authorities, so that was my knowledge of what happened to him.
Harvey Major’s death was determined to be a car accident, a faulty brake line was supposedly the cause of his death. There was never any investigation into the cause of his death because of the fact that it was determined to be bad vehicle, and so, when my brother saw that happen, he knew it wasn’t just an accident and he knew that he was next on the list.
The most significant element there is that Douglas Durham came into the American Indian Movement in Des Moines, Iowa, he worked very closely with Harvey Majors in the early period of his access to the American Indian Movement and he worked very closely with my brother Arron Two Elk in his access to the American Indian Movement. My brother Arron Two Elk was in fact, the person who introduced and vouched for Douglas Durham when he brought him into the American Indian Movement and when he introduced him to Dennis Banks, and so were it not for my brother Arron Two Elk bringing Douglas in and vouching for him, he probably wouldn’t have had access that he got into the movement and my brother being who he was among the Oglalas if you will and who he had been as a younger man and if he vouched for them, then they had to be good.
He knew that that was one of the worst things that he ever did and we talked about that in 75 and 76 because he explained to me how he brought him in and how he was the one who took him all the way up and that was the primary reason why when I went to AIM leadership to ask for help with my brother, I didn’t get any positive response because Durham had just come out, he had given his testimony and there were a lot of things going on and they were highly suspicious of my brother as the one who had something to do with that.
Paul DeMain - How early on were you aware of the accusations of Anna Mae, you said you were aware of the Farmington interrogation... when were you aware of that taking place?
Richard Two Elk - I was aware of it in 75 and 76, when I guess we set up the AIM house in Denver on Emerson Street and I was an active part of Denver AIM and the Colorado Warrior society with Frank Dillon and Arlo Looking Cloud and John Boy, there were others but those were the primary people that we can name now. And the question in Denver, because Anna Mae came into Denver quite a few times with Nogeshik over the period since Wounded Knee, and she’d come to the office and they’d give them money and there was an association there so some of what was happening had a lot to do with the women in the community in Denver at that time.
There was and is still an incredibly level of jealousy that exists within women in AIM in Denver, not only jealousy in terms of attention of the leadership but jealousy in the ability to influence actions and decisions and to be a part of AIM in an tangible way, so what happened when Anna Mae came in was I would say, one of the things that we’ve always had as a problem as Indian people is we have some people that have what the Lakota might call, Chuntay washtay, (sp) it’s a good heart, and the good hearts do what they do because it’s something that they believe in and they’re such a good heart that they’re almost naive about that maybe somebody doesn’t want them to do that. The good heart believes that we all share the same values and ambitions and purpose and so they go forward to do something and they share their ideas and they offer their ideas in such a way that they do that very freely and openly.
That’s how Anna Mae was. She come into the community and she had a million ideas about how to do this or how to do that, and because she was pretty, the AIM leadership and a lot of the guys had an interest in trying to hook up with her or be her friend. None of the foot soldiers or little guys ever really entertained that, but the AIM leadership was constantly toying with it. As a result of their attention that they gave to Anna Mae, they pissed off some of the other women in Denver. And some of the women had the capacity to rally opinion within the group against Anna Mae. So that was essentially what happened that took it beyond a level of suspicion and put it into a realm of danger in Denver.
Paul DeMain - In other interviews that I’ve conducted, it’s been said that those women include Lorelie DeCora, Madonna Gilbert, Troy Lynn and to some extent, Theda, though Theda is quite a bit older, are those names some of the names that are affiliated with your scenarios?
Richard Two Elk - Yeah, I would say that’s pretty much on the money. Theda had a more direct involvement because being the older woman she was able to exert a significant amount of influence and control, not only over the women that were there but also over the young men, and I know for a fact that she was very closely associated and influenced very heavily the actions of Arlo and Frank.
Paul DeMain - I’ve often been told, and in fact Troy Lynn has made statements to that effect that Anna Mae was taken (captive) from her house when she left (it). More recently some other people have said that Anna Mae was staying in another house about two blocks away from Troy Lynn’s but was in and out of the Emerson Street AIM house. Can you confirm that and can you tell me if you were involved in Anna Mae’s first interrogation in Denver?
Richard Two Elk - With the house on Emerson Street, there were a lot of different people that stayed in the house that were a part of Denver AIM at the time.
Paul DeMain - The person that oversaw the house and stayed at the house most regularly, from my knowledge was Rod Skenendore?
Richard Two Elk - That’s right, Rod Skenendore lived at the top floor of the AIM house of Emerson Street and he was in essence the on site over watch in the house. He was the older individual and everyone else in the house was my age and that would have been in the early twenties at that time, and so he, everything basically had to go through him and he had knowledge about everything that went on within the Emerson Street facility.
Since I came forward, and I’ve came forward several years back, long before I started becoming public about my role in this case. Since I came forward, I started first among the Oglalas asking questions and talking to people and representing my brother. In the process of doing that, I went to all the people that I know were present at the time and I asked them directly and personally, what they knew, what they might have seen and what they could tell me. Most people were very apprehensive about what they wanted to tell me, but they did talk, and they did tell me different things, but they did ask me not to divulge their name and they asked not to put them in a position where they would have to testify in this regard.
And that goes back to some of the guiding principles that we have within our community where we won’t turn over our own to the enemy. And so, one of the statements that was given to me was that, this young woman had come into the house unexpectedly, looking for someone and everybody was in the kitchen and they were talking and getting kind of hushed and there was quite a few people there. And so they came in and they started to go out the back door to get something off the porch and when they opened the back door, the people in the room, started yelling at them and trying to stop them from going through that door, but they managed to open that door a little bit and they saw a woman back there and she was tied up and she was gagged.
But all they caught was a glimpse, but they recognized her and they knew it was Anna Mae. But right away the people in that room closed that door and they hurried that girl out. So she left and she never said anything about it and that’s kind of how it is with Indian people and that’s why I say there’s hundreds of witnesses out there in the grassroots community who know what happened.
And so it isn’t a case of having to prove something. Maybe for the FBI and maybe for charges, it has to be proven and evidence comes to play, but these were some of the things that were told to me and my personal recollections were that Skenendore was there and he had an active involvement in the abduction and murder of Anna Mae Aquash, not only because of his presence and his awareness as an older member who was in charge of things at the time. But, after Arlo was taken into custody in ‘94 and interrogated by the FBI in reference to this case, I began to actively challenge people within Denver AIM concerning this case and that was before I ever went public.
On the moccasin telegraph I put the word out that I knew what had happened and that I was taking an active interest in the case. Within a week of my putting the word out, Rod Skenendore came to my house. He came from Montana or Wyoming to visit me. He invited me in essence to come back in the fold. He asked me why I had to go out there and do things on my own and why couldn’t I work with, the other people within Denver AIM. And I told him very clearly, that there was a distinction in my mind and in my heart between my brother and the other people in Denver AIM and the truth in the case of Anna Mae.
At that point he started arguing with me and challenging me in my house, in front of my children and my family and my son witnessed that. I then invited him to leave and I told him again that I wasn’t going to go away from this case and I wasn’t going to break from it and that he and the others needed to get ready because we were going to move in on them. He started insulting me and telling me to quit barking around, so I basically just went to my soldier’s mode and started barking at him until he drove away.
That’s why I know, from his reaction to me hitting buttons, he came all the way from Wyoming to personally counsel me and he relied on his personal association with me and other people within Denver AIM to basically get me to back off and be quiet. He knew I was a journalist and he knows that I had been doing radio for a long time and he knows that I have the inside track on Denver AIM and what had happened and what was going on. That’s why he was so adamant about wanting me to come back into the fold.
Richard LaCourse - Richard I want to again, turn the pages back a little bit. In all the review of records and interviews and including the Wounded Knee papers, I have never, ever seen Anna Mae being bad jacketed with the informer thing clear as far back as November 1972..... and since you'd talked to Vernon about it, what did she do that turned on Vernon’s warning lights? This is really early for being fingered.
Richard Two Elk - I think what happened with Vernon was that he at the time didn’t have a suspicion of her. He acquired and developed this suspicion in retrospect, because....
Richard LaCourse - Excuse me, and this was not something that she was ever aware of herself?
Richard Two Elk - Right, she was never, never aware of, until probably within 6 months of her death she was not aware of the magnitude of the allegations against her and it wasn’t until six months of her death, and from the summer of ‘75, that she started to begin to realize that it’s real, that she was highly suspected.... Never suspected that the American Indian Movement was going to be involved directly until probably about a month after she got arrested in November, then she knew it was coming down, and it had nothing to do with the FBI...
Paul DeMain - The first time she was arrested was in September at Crow Dogs?
Richard Two Elk - Crow Dog’s, right. It wasn’t until after she got arrested in Ontario and she was being extradited to South Dakota that she knew that it was basically closing in. She had acquired that sense by that time, but by then it was too late because she knew there were Indian people involved, but what she didn’t know was that the two people that she had accepted into confidence, John Boy and Arlo were the ones who were supposed to do that.
And she didn’t know, she trusted them. She thought that they were helping her deal with the other AIM guys, and that they were going to back her because they were foot soldiers, she had no idea that they were the foot soldiers who were marked to take her out.
Paul DeMain - And that all occurred after the Marlon Brando motor home bust.
Richard Two Elk - Right.
CONTINUED…
