Story 03
Avenging Anna Mae Aquash
“In jail she just said that they were asking her questions like who you are, where do you come from?
What are you, an informant? As if anybody's gonna say, yeah, I am by the way. But I got the feeling from her that it was a very scary moment.”
– Minnie Two Shoes
In the late 1990s, Minnie Two Shoes played a critical role in the reinvestigation of the murder of Anna Mae Aquash (Mi'kmaq), a friend of Two Shoes. Mi'kmaq was also part of the American Indian Movement (AIM). Aquash had joined AIM's 1975 occupation of Wounded Knee in South Dakota, but was accused of being a "bad jacket"—or FBI informant. A rancher discovered her body in 1976; she had been shot in the back of the head. No one was arrested for her murder, and for decades the investigation went nowhere. However, Two Shoes, along with Richard LaCourse (Yakama) and Paul DeMain (Ojibwe) helped revive the case. The journalists contacted and interviewed many AIM participants and reviewed FBI files. In the early 2000s, two former members of AIM were tried and convicted of Aquash's murder.
