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Cover Story · Vol 21 · Issue 1002 · 2/16/00
Bury My Heart
http://www.citypages.com/databank/21/1002/article8432.asp?page=4
by Mike Mosedale · PAGE 4 of 4
 

After the White Clay march, Means says, he decided to ask more questions
about the Aquash case. He contacted one of the people who had been linked to
her abduction and murder. That person implicated Vernon and Clyde Bellecourt,
he alleges--as did "other people," whom he also declines to identify. Two
weeks after his November 3 press conference, Means testified before the grand
jury looking into Aquash's death. "I told the grand jury that when they
indict the kidnappers, I'm confident we can divulge more names," Means says.

His motives were uncomplicated, he adds: "I want history to reflect that AIM,
no matter what you say about it, had enough integrity to admit its mistakes
and to clean up its mistakes, no matter how horrendous they might have been."

Clyde Bellecourt has a less charitable view. He calls Means "a turncoat of
the lowest degree," saying that to testify against a comrade before a grand
jury constitutes a breach of AIM's ethic. When he was shot by a fellow AIM
member in 1973, Bellecourt points out, he refused to testify. "We thought
that was Indian business," he says. "Besides, the government didn't give a
fuck if I was shot or killed. They just wanted to lock up people in the
movement."

But Russell Means is not the Bellecourts' only prominent accuser. At the
November press conference in Denver, Robert Pictou-Branscombe, Aquash's
second cousin, stood by Means's side. Branscombe, a retired Marine and
Vietnam vet, says he has been investigating Aquash's death for nine years and
has concluded that the Bellecourts are responsible. Like Means, he won't
provide details that might support that conclusion: "I don't want to put
anybody in a bad spot," he says.
 

In his travels, Branscombe says, he has confronted two of the three
individuals DeMain named as the kidnappers in his updated timeline. When he
met one of them in Denver a few years back, he says the man claimed to have
received immunity from prosecution for testifying against the alleged shooter
in a 1994 grand-jury proceeding. "I know what's going on here, I know you're
involved,"Branscombe says he told the man. "He kept repeating: 'I have
immunity.' But I said, 'You don't have immunity the way I see it. You don't
have immunity with regard to the Canadian government, the Micmac Nation, and
especially me.'"

After the Denver press conference, Vernon Bellecourt quickly posted a
response to Means's charges on the AIM Web site (www.aimovement.org),
condemning the actions of Branscombe, Means, and Churchill as "reckless,
defamatory, slanderous and libelous" and demanding that the U.S. Senate
Judiciary Committee conduct special hearings into "all of the unsolved
murders on the Pine Ridge Oglala Nation during the 1970s and continuing
today." The release called the attack "a continuation of the United States
Government's FBI war against the American Indian Movement that had its
origins in the Nixon White House."

After Means testified, Bellecourt says he received a phone call from an FBI
agent in South Dakota offering him a chance to respond before the grand jury.
He refused, he says, out of the belief that only congressional hearings on
COINTELPRO will produce justice. Meanwhile, Bellecourt vows to sue Means,
Branscombe, and Churchill. "I think I have a clear court case," he says.
"Defamation of character. False accusations. You call somebody a
murderer--that's pretty heavy stuff. And it's really based on Russell Means's
ego.

"The impression this has created is totally inaccurate," he continues. "The
American Indian Movement is not fractured. People can stand up and say,
'We're AIM,' maybe have a membership card in their pocket, an AIM logo on the
back of their jacket. That doesn't make them AIM. There's more to AIM than
that."

That said, Bellecourt concedes that AIM is currently "broke" and that he's
running the operation out of his home. "Of course we say that we refuse to be
distracted by this," he volunteers. "But it is distracting. That's what it's
designed for.

"You know, there's an old joke. Two chiefs are riding along on their horses
visiting, kind of a social visit. Finally, one chief looks over his shoulder
and he notices that his back is full of war lances and arrows. And he says to
the other chief, 'I'm glad to see my people are still behind me.'"

Bellecourt declines to answer most questions about Aquash's death, saying
only that Means's accusation "doesn't bother me, and I don't pay too much
attention to it. I know what we have to do here, and that's the important
thing."

But according to Laura Weatherman Wittstock, a longtime friend of
Bellecourt's, the controversy has taken a toll. "I think he's deeply
disturbed," she offers, "that the image of AIM is crumbling around the edges
because of these fringe people who are trying to revise history and create
the illusion that there is no one to blame but ourselves, that we killed our
own people, and that's all there is to it."

Wittstock, who met Bellecourt in 1971 while she was working as a journalist
in Washington, D.C., says he impressed her as "the most even-tempered" of the
AIM leadership--and, she says, he is the one who has "evolved" most in the
years since. "I don't think there's any possibility Clyde or Vernon had
anything to do with the murder of Anna Mae Aquash," she concludes. "To use
her death as a means of attack is very, very wrong."

The American Indian Movement's original leaders have followed varied and
peculiarly American career trajectories. Russell Means has worked extensively
in Hollywood, with appearances in Natural Born Killers, Last of the Mohicans,
and CBS's Walker, Texas Ranger. In 1984 he ran for vice-president on a ticket
headed up by Hustler publisher Larry Flynt.

Clyde and Vernon Bellecourt, on the other hand, have become a part of the
Twin Cities' institutional infrastructure. Clyde draws his salary from the
Peacemaker Center and serves as president, chairman, or member of the board
in a host of other organizations. Vernon Bellecourt develops job-training
programs and remains busy on the speaking circuit as founder of the National
Coalition Against Racism in Sports and Media, which opposes Indian mascots.
Dennis Banks has returned to the Leech Lake reservation. Though he is still
affiliated with AIM, Banks--like the movement itself--has receded from the
national spotlight.

In a less complicated world AIM's founders, closing in on old age, would be
resting on their laurels--or, at the least, not lunging at each other's
throats. "Everybody thinks the American Indian Movement has folded up and
gone away since Wounded Knee," Clyde Bellecourt says gruffly. "People have
this John Wayne mentality about AIM. They think that if we're not waving a
gun in the air, or taking over the BIA, there's no AIM. We're still here,
we're still working. But all anybody wants to talk about is that old
bullshit."

If the recent developments surrounding the death of Anna Mae Aquash
demonstrate anything, perhaps it is the efficacy of COINTELPRO--a program
whose stated goal was to disrupt cohesion in the movement. AIM's triumph was
in the assertion of Indian identity, yet its leaders are now battling one
another over that very issue: Who's a killer, who's a fed, who's AIM?

"AIM raised awareness of a lot of important issues," DeMain notes. "There's a
duality. You've got the attractive and successful fundraising, the programs,
the jobs. But the movement was led by human beings who made a lot of mistakes
and there is very little left of the power and glory it had at one time. In
terms of the mass of people who support it--that just doesn't exist anymore.
Even among people who say they are part of the American Indian Movement, and
there are many, [many] don't identify with Bellecourt or Means."

In a sense, the rancor and divisions within AIM conform to a basic historical
template. From Robespierre to Trotsky, revolutions have often devoured their
own. "Some day, it's gonna be like this," DeMain ventures. "You'll go to a
powwow and you'll see Russell Means sitting over there with his big black hat
and his choker and his ribbon shirt, and he'll be all decked out with his AIM
buttons and felt patches, sitting in a wheelchair. And right alongside of him
is gonna be Vern Bellecourt, in his big hat and choker and beaded medallions.

"And I can see it: Vern takes out his cane and whacks Russell over the head
and says, 'I'm the leader of AIM.' And Russell whacks his cane over Vern's
head, and says, 'I'm the leader of AIM.' And then Vern whacks Russell over
the head and says, 'You're an FBI agent,' and Russell says, 'No, you're a CIA
agent.' And back and forth, and back and forth.
 
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