COINTELPRO MISCONDUCT 90S AND BEYOND AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT

Fri, 14 Oct 1994 16:38:00 EDT

A recent post re Trudell's tour noted that he is a "charismatic"
speaker. The comment reminded me that, inasmuch as he has passed through
the fire, Trudell's charisma is well founded. IMO it is important to keep
the following specifics in mind when listening to his very powerful music.
This data comes from Agents of Repression by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander
Wall, ISBN 0-89608-293-8 (paperback), list price - sixteen dollars:

"The Peltier assassination effort appears to be only one of several
abortive but deadly FBI counterintelligence operations directed at the
remnants of AIM during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Another, even
grimmer example concerns the death of the family of AIM's last national
chairman, John Trudell:

"In February 1979, Trudell led a march in Washington, D.C. to draw
attention to the difficulties the Indians were having. Although he received
a warning against speaking out, he delivered an address from the steps of
the FBI building on the subject of the agency's harassment of
Indians...Less than 12 hours later, Trudell's wife, Tina, his three
children, and his wife's mother were burned alive in the family home in
Duck Valley, Nevada - the apparent work of an arsonist.

"Further detail is added elsewhere:

"On the Shoshone-Paiute Reservation of Duck Valley, straddling the
Nevada-Idaho border, at 1:30 a.m., February 12, 1979, a fire ripped through
the house of Arthur Manning and his family. Manning was a member of the
Duck Valley Tribal Council who was actively working for Shoshone-Paiute
treaty rights. Opposition to Manning included the local tribal police
chief, Benny Richards, a former member of the Wilson goon squad on Pine
Ridge [and brother of intended Peltier assassi Chuck Richards; both are of
the Pine Ridge 'Manson Family'], and the local BIA Director John
Artichoker, also from Pine Ridge. Manning's wife, Leah, was a coordinator
for social services on the reservation. Their daughter, Tina, had been
working actively in a local campaign to preserve the tribe's water riights
at Wilhorse Resorvoir; she was opposed by the local BIA, Elko COunty [and]
Nevada officials, the water recreation industry, and local white ranchers.
Tina's husband was John Trudell, national chairman of AIM [from
approximately 1974-80]. The Trudell's had three children: Ricarda Star [age
five], Sunshine Karma [three], and Eli Changin Sun [one]...The fire
[caught] the entire family asleep. Dead were Leah Hicks-Manning, her
daughter Tina, and the three young children. Arthur Manning survived the
blaze. The BIA issued a statement saying the fire was an accident. Trudell
believes his family was murdered.

"The basis for Trudell's belief rested in his AIM activities in
general, and with regard to the Peltier case in particular.

"During the Peltier trial in Fargo, North Dakota, Trudell had returned
to the courtroom one day when a marshall informed him that he would not be
allowed inside. An argument ensued, and Trudell was evicted. He was later
arrested for the incident, charged with contempt of court, convicted before
[U.S. District] Judge Ronald Davies, and sentenced to sixty days in jail.
He served his time in five institutions in three states [a matter clearly
reminiscent of the handling of Leonard Crow Dog]. While in Springfield
Prison in Missouri, he was told by a fellow inmate that if he did not stop
his Indian rights work his family would be killed.

"Of course, as is indicated above, the Mannings had no shortage of
enemies at Duck Valley, any one or group of which might have perpetrated
the fatal arson (assuming it was arson - despite the obvious basis for
suspicion, and Trudell's repeated allegations in this regard, no formal
investigation of the fire was ever conducted by the FBI). However, given
the overall context of apparent illegalities involved in the FBI's anti-AIM
operations, and the concomitantly high stakes which would be involved in
their disclosure, more than usual heed should be paid to Trudell's
contentions:

"When I got sent up for sixty days, that time in Fargo, I was
approached by another inmate, a guy I didn't know, and he started talking
about my public statements. You can't go around talking that shit, he says,
you better get out of the country. You don't know these crazy bastards [the
FBI] - they could kill your wife and children. Well, I was suspicious of
the guy's so-called warning at the time; that was a message John Trudell
was supposed to receive. I know who did it. What I still don't understand
is why; it was so unnecessary. But it was arson, and it was deliberate - an
assassination. Those people did a terrible thing; they should think a long,
long time about what they did.

"Trudell has explained that, in essence, he believes the death of
his family was 'set up' by the FBI as part of its strategy to silence his
and other AIM members' attempts to draw broad public attention to the
Bureau's pattern of abuses concerning AIM in general and Pine Ridge in
particular [see earlier post entitled AIM, Pine Ridge, and the FBI]. He
attributes the emphasis placed upon himself and his family in this regard
not only to his high position within AIM, but to the FBI's assessment of
his special talents as a speaker/organizer, repeated over and over in the
investigatory documents amassed on him between 1969 and 1979 (some 17,000
pages of which were released in a FOIA suit in 1986):

"Trudell is an intelligent individual and eloquent speaker who has
the ability to stimulate people into action. TRUDELL is a known hardliner
who openly advocates and encourages the use of violence [i.e., armed
self-defense] although he himself never becomes involved in the
fighting...TRUDELL has the ability to meet with a group of pacifists and in
a short time have them yelling and screaming 'right-on!' In short, he is an
extremely effective agitator."

Said by Trudell in 1980:
"When I go around in America and I see the bulk of the white
people, they do not feel oppressed; they feel powerless. When I go amongst
my people, we do not feel powerless; we feel oppressed. We do not want to
make the trade...we must be willing in our lifetime to deal with reality.
It's not revolution; it's liberation. We want to be free of a value system
that's being imposed upon us. We do not want to participate in that value
system. We don't want change in the value system. We want to remove it from
our lives forever...We have to assume our responsibilities as power, as
individuals, as spirit, as people...

"We are the people. We have the potential for power. We must not
fool ourselves. We must not mislead ourselves. It takes more than good
intentions. It takes commitment. It takes recognizing that at some point in
our lives we are going to have to decide that we have a way of life that
we follow, and we are going to have to live that way of life...That is the
only solution there is for us."

Peace...Jordan