antoinette nora claypoole

 

John LeKay: How and why did you become interested in Indian  country and when
did this interest first take place?

antoinette nora claypoole: Interesting question yet one which eludes me.  Why?  Because  I   never really "became interested" in Indian County.  The   phrase   ecoming interested  reminds me of something like  "oh  she became   interested in pottery, so she took classes  and  bought a kiln".  You  see?  So....Hmm....Maybe Indians  just   became interested in  me,  maybe that's what  happened, hard to  tell. .  All I know is  that a  college  friend was hanging out  with an old Indian guy  out west   here, in Oregon.  We all  met, hung out  in the same  big  old house  together in Coos  Bay, Oregon and Al Smith. He is a  Klamath Modoc man, Smith  his mission name who ended up  taking the lawsuit against the  U.S. gov't protecting  Native  American Church, peyote  ceremony, as a religious  right of all  Indians.  At the time  he was a simple, random  Indian guy my  friend was living with,  and.... well......  he  talked alot about  how Indian  ceremonies were just made  legal in 1978,  Freedom of   Religion Act, signed by Jimmy Carter, about a "pimpmobile" Al    bought back in the late 1950's when feds showed up on his  land  in South eastern  Oregon and were "buying Indians".
 

Offering 10  grand to  each tribal person if they would sign  away the  rights to  the reservation land.  That was part of  the big "last  assimilation plan" of the 1950's.  It happened  all over the States  at the time.  But I didn't know ANY of this Indian  history, and Al  kept telling it like some kind of keeper  of the  legends, or  something.  FOr some reason he  told us  all this  history and then  one day said hey you want  to go  into lodge?   

Hmm....what is a lodge anyway?    So there  we  had many more sit  out back in the pacific sun  and wind   and  Al telling  us what lodge is.  Clean and sober for 3 days   before  going in.  That was the part  I remembered the most.   It took   me six months to go into  ceremony with Al out on  Seven Devils  Road in Bandon, Oregon.   My life flashed  over me like a home  movie, 8mm  on white sheet  hanging in  gramma's front room.  I  saw things I  didn't want to  be doing, I saw things I wanted  to become and heard  things I   would never repeat.  When I  came out of ceremony I asked   Al  what I could to thank him for sharing these ways, this  ceremony   with me.  His answer?   "Help my people.  You  have an education,  you  can write. WHen  my people need  help be there for us."   Sounded  simple  enough. I said yes  of course.  A few years  years later I   was helping fight  forced relocation of Dine  (Navajo) grammas in Big   Mountain, Az., camping in resistance  with members of  the  American Indian Movement.

 

Another way to answer your question might be by quoting a once   old  Lakota friend  and his endorsement to my book,  historical  fiction,  about Big Mountain:"antoinette came from  back East  before the  Freedom of Religion Act, before the  changes for  Indian Children in  the Child Welfare System.   Back in the  1970's.  When she came to  Oregon they were still arresting  Indians in small towns.  She  started working on  Indian rights  when it was not popular to be  Indian."

JL:  At what point did you start writing about American Indians?
 

antoinette nora claypoole: Writing about Indians was never really my thing, my intention  or   passion.  What WAS my drive, however, was writing about  injustice  in this world out of balance. My first small piece  was written   while I was a member of the SDS back in Indiana,  Pa., in college.   Then when I moved out west my first  published piece--in a small  bioregional paper--- was regarding  the abuse of migrant  farmworkers  in the Rogue Valley, S.  Oregon back in 1982.

About Indians? I have never written "about" Indians, but "for"    their struggles,
reality and lives.  In keeping my promise to  Al   Smith, to  help when I could, 
I wrote for  various tribes  and   organized events regarding illegal and
genocidal tactics  still   being practiced by the U.S. gov't.  Those writings 
began in the   1980's. One of the first events i  organized--wrote up various PR   
pieces--was an event called  "Apartheid in America".  We radical  and  driven to 
inform  Southern Oregon and our bio region about  various  issues  happening in
Indian Country which "mainstream"  folks knew   nothing about.  This was of course before computers,  when   information about injustice and genocide in Indian Country  was  VERY  difficult to disseminate.  So.  I Designed posters,   wrote press,  brought together Indian artists, poets, members  of  International  Indian Treaty Council from San Francisco,  had  representatives of  people helping David So Happy up north  where  fishing rights were  being denied the tribes. So Happy  he had  been arrested for  catching salmon. And we showed an  old 8mm film  about the murder of  Anna Mae Aquash,  "Bravehearted Woman"  (now  long out of circulation).
 

 

This event was pulled together to try and bring focus and  support  to various Indian issues AND to support the struggle  at Big   Mountain, Az. Actually, my first published piece for  Indians was   one  I wrote while in resistance at Big Mountain.   The piece was  my  inside resistance camp article covering  the first deadline  for  forced relocation, July 8, 1986, the  event at which Ronald  Reagan
had threatened to bring in the  Nat'l Guard to destroy the  lives and  people of Big Mountain.   The article was to bring  attention to  their struggle, the  need for resistors, food, old  CB radios an  overall call for  the cessation of military  occupation of Indian  land.  That  article ran in the "The  Alliance"
out of Portland,  Oregon.

JL: Was this around the time you wrote your book on Anna Mae and what inspired you to write that book?  What triggered it exactly?

antoinette. nora claypoole: During the 1980's, Louise Benally, a young Dine' resistor to forced relocation at Big Mountain,  decided to name the camp where we had all often lived in resistance--the land there near her family hogan--she decided to call the place "Camp Anna Mae".  To this day that is the name for the land there.  At the time I had only seen the old film I mentioned earlier, Brave Hearted Woman, and didn't know much at all about Annie Mae.  So I asked Louise.  And others there at camp, members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) who had known Anna Mae.  I asked about what happened, who she was exactly and how they thought she was murdered.
 

 

My naiveté still astounds me.  When I tell the story.

Actually believing her old friends would tell me things about her, her life and her execution.  Of course no one said a thing to me about her.  Just, "oh antoinette, she was a brave sister who helped with the movement.  And the feds killed her".  Well.  Okay.  That worked for me for a few years.  But somewhere in the early 90's, after producing many of John Trudell's Northwest events, hanging out with him on tours and during poetry readings, something just got inside of me about Annie Mae.  I started asking Trudell questions about her. I  did an interview with him for one of our events in the Northwest here and I had asked him about being chairperson of AIM when Anna Mae was murdered.  How that felt to him.  How it sure looked like he was someone who might have been responsible for her death.  Even though he was, back then,  someone I called family and a friend, as a writer and journalist I had to ask the hard questions.  His answers were about how Indians didn't have a hierarchy, that being an AIM leader didn't mean he had any real say as to what went down.  In that interview he explained the intricacies of the movement at lengths.  Reluctantly, but at length. Still.  Triggered is a good word.

You asked what triggered this book.  Even after and during talking with Trudell about all this.  Something was pressing against me like heat before the desert winds of late summer.  I asked more questions of more people and got less answers. It was becoming apparent, everywhere I went, that many people still believed--this was the early 90's-- she was a Federal Agent. An Indian turncoat. A woman who had betrayed her people.  And even though Camp Anna Mae had her name, many of her old "friends" were still wondering about whether she was working for the government when she was murdered. 

That kind of injustice is something that had always pressed me to write, create, and research.  So.  In looking to honor to Anna Mae's memory, to get the "story straight" I began the book project.  It took 6 years of research,  writing and random, scary expeditions.  To bring to page an honoring for Anna Mae that could give the reader a sense of what was happening during the 1970's in Indian Country AND offer her a legacy other than silence or turncoat. For it was clear to me that she was not an agent and was set-up to look like one by the U.S. gov't.

What inspired me, then, to do that book you ask?  A need, as a woman, to be certain Anna Mae's story was not lost.  Was not buried with her somewhere east of dreams.  That as a woman still alive I had a responsibility to present some history, sentiments, poetry and news articles that would help people seek their own truth about her commitment to the People.  I wrote it for all the people everywhere who fight for "justice" and pay a price in this world out of balance.  And for the next generation.

 

JL : How would you say this book was received by Indian country?
 

antoinette nora claypoole: There are many ways to tell a story.  Even a story about how people tasted a story no one wanted to tell.

In the mid 1990's silence was the mantra of Indian Country about Annie Mae.  How was my effort, my labor of poetic persistence, my ability to survive death threats which emerged as a result of the project, how was all that received? Hmm...this  is probably best explained by those who reviewed it,  those who read it then, read it now, and those who mark time as a cycle spiraling into infinity.

We are sometimes left with the remnants of what perception does to time.

Still....there were  many, many  people in the movement who, back in the day,  thanked me for having the courage to say what others wouldn't. And Anna Mae's family, most notably via  her second cousin Bob Pictou-Branscombe, gave me a nod and thank you,  without which  the project would never have gone to print. At the time I actually never heard any complaints except that "all that poetry got in the way"  and it was, according to one of her family members (a guy) " a girl's book".  Hmm.....true that.

Who Would Unbraid Her Hair : the Legend of  Annie Mae

 

JL: How would you say your book differs from Steve Hendricks book about Anna Mae? That is, just from reading excerpts of your first book, about Anna Mae Aquash,  I see that your vision, your art, like most art, is a form of healing.  Through your truth and poetry. Do not see it as just laying out a legal argument in a deposition, or a summary proceeding as in some parts of the Steve Hendricks book.  His book seems much more detached, removed. Colder. My sense is you have a much deeper connection here. A bond of another sort to these people. Like you really care about these people.

antoinette nora claypoole:  hmm.... as I admittedly  never read  Hendricks book. I have no idea how he came at the topic, but you  must remember mine was written earlier on, 1999, and it was one  of the first efforts  to speak her name in print and ask the hard  questions.  Perhaps Mr. Hendricks carried forward with that  impulse in his presentation of facts, perhaps?
 

And yes  John, there was an organic intention of healing which I imagined my art, this book,  to be.

I cared about all these people when I wrote the book. Cared very deeply. As the book was written before ANY indictments   were handed down,  any of my friends could be named as her murderer, any of HER friends. This is a very important piece to remember when reading the book.  So yes. I DID care about what happened to all.  John Trudell was family and friend in my life. HE was being fingered as her murderer.  Others I knew and cared about were possible targets.  And in the meantime there was still moccasin telegraph that she had worked for the Feds, which I never believed true.

 

 

In many ways, my desire to write Annie Mae's story was NOT so much that she was murdered but HOW she was being forgotten.  as I said to you yesterday, as a woman living in a patriarchy I couldn't let that happen.  We were all having a time of it, poetry, music, resistance gatherings, ceremonies, but she was dead. At the time I was writing the book I was deep inside Indian country, traveled w/Trudell, the kids, did ceremonies, it was a kind of  charmed life. And I was aware that we were all  ABLE to have these beautiful and intense experiences BECAUSE she was an activist and died trying to implement freedom of religion, for instance. Very important. The book was and still is a celebration of her LIFE, not her murder. and I was writing about it while celebrating my life. With some of the very same people she had known and loved.

JL: Didn't you get attacked for writing this book?

antoinette nora claypoole:   No NOT AT ALL.... I did NOT get attacked for writing the book, though I was often warned by friends in the Movement to be careful, that the same thing that happened to Annie Mae could happen to me.  That was while I was working on the project.  Once it came into print, I / the book  was honored. Attacks at me and my writing came about 4 years later  when I covered the murder trial of Arlo Looking Cloud  for Pacifica Radio. That is when the slander/libel against me began. After that, the book was not often mentioned much one way or the other.

 

 

JL:  How important were Anna Mae's efforts with gaining this freedom of Religion?

antoinette nora claypoole: As with so much of Indian History, many things changes during the  70's, many humane freedoms were finally reclaimed.  All due to the  actions and impulse of the American Indian Movement.  Annie Mae  was key figure in the movement, albeit near her end a controversial  one.  Still, she was involved in early AIM actions, was at the  takeover of the BIA building in Washington, D.C.  Was in  resistance at the Siege of Wounded, was married there by the same  man who I would later meet and have given to me healing  ceremonies.  Hers was a synergy which infused the movement, and it  was her intent that her children, the next generation, could be  proud to be Indian, be allowed to pray in the old ways, all ol it.   So...in this way she was very much the matrix of change that  would happen later for Indian People.
 

 

JL: Why did you get attacked for covering this Looking Cloud trial for Pacifica Radio?
Did you express a strong opinion of some sort?  Listen to radio coverage here
 

antoinette nora claypoole: Hmm....I often wondered what happened, truly.  Was totally blind sighted by the events, the death threats and random slander rants against me at that time.

It seems to me that the attacks came because I wasn't mantra chanting  the party line.

That is, most everyone in Indian Country was glad to have the indictments against Looking Cloud and John Graham happening.  They looked at it as some kind of "hurray, we get resolve".    Many people looked at the arrests and trial, understandable, as a way to complete a painful chapter in Indian History--the murder of Annie Mae.  But in my mind they  had already tried, sentenced and executed (figuratively)  these two men and I wasn't so convinced that a lynch mob was where I wanted to hang out. Mainly because I hadn't seen any evidence that convinced me they were her killers.

The entire case against them seemed to  rely only on hearsay---he said she said he wanted
to say she was dead by what he said about....etc etc.

 

So.  When I covered the trial in Rapid City-- as a freelancer for KPFK, Los Angeles-- it was already known in Indian Country that I was NOT applauding the dog and pony show which was about to take front and center in our lives.  My daily coverage of the trial DID include interviews with Russell Means, Vernon Bellecourt amongst others, an attempt to get varied perspectives out there. Have "opposing camps" represented.  At the time Bellecourt was trying to help Graham and Looking Cloud, believed in their innocence. 
Means was in another camp.  My coverage attempted to give listeners a whole canvas of info. That in itself made it  clear to those in Indian Country who once celebrated my work and efforts that I wasn't going into an unequivocal place of believing the murderers had "been found". It was and still is my role to keep people awake to asking themselves what they believe truth is and not be lead by any one dictate.

Did I express a strong opinion of some kind, you ask?
Perhaps it was simply that  I made it clear that  I did not necessarily believe the men indicted had actually killed Annie Mae.
" They might have, they may not have"  was the matrix of my coverage and commentary.
Further, I explained I thought the government was simply putting AIM on trial, saying "this is what can happen to you if you join a radical movement" to the next generation of activists. Overall, at the time I made it clear that I wanted to see evidence, of which there was only hearsay.  Not enough for me to jump into the mob mentality which was emerging.

This is  really the only way  I have ever been able to explain to myself why, out of the midday winter sky, this flare of toxic rants landed on my literary map.

JL :  What are your thoughts on the upcoming John Graham trial and thoughts on Robert Robideau's views for example on Anna Mae?
 

antoinette nora claypoole: This case, these trials and hearings are all complex and stem from the denial by the Federal Gov't to own their role in sending in agents to AIM and making Annie Mae looking like a snitch, a turncoat.  Everything else is what it is.

Complex. Creepy.  Destructive.  Divisive.  Sad and despicable.

Still, overall, it is not my place to really say how this will play out and why.  Anna Mae was murdered and will we ever know the truth about what went down?  Perhaps not.  There are people of course who differ with Robideau's perspective, but then there are people who differ with another and at different times they stop differing and agree.  To differ again.  As I say,  It is complex and best left to those who were inside those last days of her life

 

This is from a handwritten letter which came to me from what I believe to reliable source. It circulates somewhat widely in Indian Country these days, and is something  none of Annie Mae's family members has denied is her handwriting.  It brings the idea of informants front and center and still makes me wonder if they still walk around us, threaded through the whole brutal story.

We can remember the story of her second husband, Nogeeshik Aquash.  (1945-1989?) who died mysteriously after phoning his nephew with news "I figured out who killed Annie Mae".  Nogeeshik was in a wheelchair, paraplegic. Spent  everyday  after her death searching for the answer.  He was run off the road on one of his research missions. Terrible car accident, the wheelchair came after. Nogeeshik  finally felt he had found his wife's  killers he was found dead the next morning.  A horrible fire in his home. Being parapglegic, he couldn't get out of the fire.  So the story goes.

Who killed her?  Maybe  better asked, who gets killed trying to find out who wanted to kill her...."

Overall, there is the reality that those who really want the truth pay harshly, a sacrifice on the altar of seeking occurs.  Was it Graham and Looking Cloud?  I just can't say.  For certain. One way or the other.  The idea of informants still haunts me. And I only imagine resolve for those she loved and those who lost her love.

 

JL: Can you please tell me about this Taos project you have been working on?What it is about. What inspired this? Who is a part of it?

antoinette nora claypoole: This was a small project which I began in 2003, grew and is still a work in progress.  We had some publication delays and in this some wild revitalization has emerged.  La Puerta, Taos is very close to my heart as it celebrates the art and people of a town which was very welcoming and generous to me at a time in my life when community and art were essential to my survival.  But then, when aren't those elements pranna, right?

This project, is then to simply to honor the writers and artists of Taos, New Mexico, the history of becoming an art colony early in the last century and overall an attempt to share with readers how land and sky converge there to create something in humans which just doesn't exist everywhere.  An alchemy of synchronicites, an elixir of sky doctoring the senses. There is alchemy which is manifest near Taos Mountain and the project began as a way to celebrate these realities.  Woven throughout is the  fact that really, because of the persistence and lives of Tewa (Taos Pueblo Indians) there IS this place where art is created with ease and resonance between all beings.  The haiku of it is, the project is a biography of place.

People included?  Interviews with Robert Mirabal, Tewa, John Nichols,  writer times ten, foreword by Barbara Waters, writer and wife of Frank Waters, great artwork/photography by local Taos artists including Jaap Vanderplas, Anita Rodriguez, Lenny Foster and Gail Russell.  All of these and more gave me work, time, sky to infuse into the book.

 

"This is a ball off destruction.

This coming of United States tried to

end the lives of a proud people

A proud people. A PROUD culture.

It didn't happen.

Taos Pueblo is still standing."

John Suazo, Tiwa

 

© Lenny Foster

CONTINUE TO PART 2