On Wednesday March 26th I went to a discussion forum organized by the Vancouver John Graham Defense Committee. In the room was a tension uncommon to most political meetings. There amongst the seventy people who filled every seat, with some sitting on the floor, were many who knew John. Some had grown to know him while helping in various aspects of the support work done by the Defense Committee throughout the years that he had been in Vancouver under house arrest. They sat in the forum unsettled, as though uncomfortable that they were there while John sits in prison. Others, like Mr. Graham’s daughter Naneek Graham, had known him their whole lives and, on top of anger and un-resolvable frustration, they projected shock at having a loved one taken from them by the courts of Canada and the US.
Some people evoke the word ‘complicated’ against the case of John Graham in order to avoid taking a stance, or even to excuse his extradition. This seeming ‘complication’ even reared its head at the forum, in the person of a woman who slipped into the room three-quarters of the way through and interrupted the event screaming “John Graham killed a woman!” I am familiar with this sort of Complication, having formerly been a member of a group, Fire This Time (FTT), that drew the same conclusions as the woman who interrupted this event. However, as the speakers at the forum outlined, the Complication insisted by groups like FTT is more of a subjective confusion developed under the machinations of the courts and media than an objective complication of the case of John Graham’s extradition. Rex Weyler, a seasoned journalist and one of the panelists at the event, explained, “As a journalist I am trained to look at facts to understand what is going on in any case. The facts in the case of John Graham speak for themselves.”
John Graham was an activist with the American Indian Movement (AIM) in the 1970’s. He was active on the Pine Ridge Reservation on Lakota Sioux territory at a high point of struggle that was marked by a heavy handed campaign of violent and secret agent style terrorist disruption carried out by the FBI under the auspices of their counterintelligence COINTELPRO program, the US Fifth Army, SWAT teams, and the vigilante GOON squads of the corrupt Tribal Council. According to Jennifer Wade, the founder of the Vancouver branch of Amnesty International, “In the 1970’s, Pine Ridge was a war zone. People were being killed left and right.”
In this climate of intense government suppression, the body of AIM organizer Anna Mae Aquash was discovered in the hills. FBI Agent David Price, who had told Anna Mae just six months before her death “if you don’t cooperate with us you won’t live out the year,” reported that he could not identify her body. She was classified a Jane Doe, her death was ruled “by exposure”, her hands were cut off for identification, and she was buried, unannounced, “in a paupers grave” as Jennifer Wade explained.
It was only because her family demanded her body be exhumed that her identity was discovered. It was only because her family demanded her body be exhumed that the .38 bullet hole in the back of her head was discovered, and her death reclassified as murder. The FBI had covered up the murder of this leader of Indigenous struggle.
“Time passed,” Rex Weyler explained, “and the FBI traveled all the way to the Yukon to track down John Graham.”
Jennifer Wade said, “John wisely refused to meet with with FBI behind closed doors,” but he did agree to talk to them in the park where they confronted him. They offered him a deal, “you give up the leadership of AIM and we’ll offer you immunity.” Wade continued, “I love John’s response, ‘Immunity from what?’” The FBI said “maybe it’ll turn out” that he had killed Anna Mae.
Panelists Billy Pierre and Lynn Highway explained that the FBI’s COINTELPRO program was one part systemic violence, and one part arbitrary terrorism to suppress the actions of communities by making examples of individuals. They said that this strategy is being carried out still today. “The case of John Graham is an example of policing at its best and most efficient,” Highway said.
Mike Gifford talked about John Graham’s continued commitment to Indigenous power and struggle through the years that passed between the struggles at Pine Ridge and his arrest for the alleged murder of Anna Mae in 2003. He said that John Graham had gotten involved in anti-Uranium mining actions in the 1980’s in northern Saskatchewan. In 1980 he organized a “Caravan for Survival” that traveled from Regina to La Ronge, the uranium mining hub in northern Saskatchewan. Then, in as part of the same campaign against the development of the mine that went on to become the largest uranium mine in the world, he was part of establishing the “Anna Mae Aquash Survival Camp” on the road to the proposed mine site.
Throughout this time, Jennifer Wade said, John Graham had remained worried about the FBI framing him for the murder of Anna Mae because of the threat they’d made against him for not cooperating with the US government smear campaign on AIM.
According to the extradition treaty between Canada and the US, it is not necessary for the US to provide evidence in order for Canada to extradite anyone requested by the US. Because of this far reaching treaty, the US did not have to supply any evidence of the charges they leveled at Graham. In the legal disclosure documents that have been released, the US government case rests on the testimony of Arlo Looking Cloud. Jennifer Wade called Looking Cloud the “Myrtle Poor Bear of the John Graham extradition.” Poor Bear had been the primary prosecution witness of Leonard Peltier’s trial around the deaths of the two FBI agents in 1975. Her testimony was held up as the justification of Peltier’s extradition from Canada. She later recanted her statements, saying that the FBI had manipulated and intimidated her into making a statement against Peltier, who she had never met and did not know. Like Poor Bear, Arlo Looking Cloud is a vulnerable oppressed man who, Weyler explained, “has many challenges,” and who the FBI plied with drugs and liquor. He has already recanted his statement and said that he will never take the stand against Graham.
John Graham was arrested in Canada based on the extradition request of the US government, and finally was extradited on December 6th 2007. John Graham’s eldest daughter Naneek Graham, spoke at the forum about the last moments her father spent in Canada. “On December 6th Dad was waiting for his turn to use the phone in the holding cell at 8am. Suddenly he was told that he was being moved, and was immediately put in leg irons and hand cuffs. He asked to call his lawyer, and they said no.” In the parkade of the Surrey Pre-Trial, fifteen minutes before the execution of his extradition was decided by the supreme court of Canada, he was transferred to a black SUV. He asked again to call his lawyer. The cops responded, “Don’t make trouble.” Naneek Graham continued, “They drove to the border at high speed and handed Dad over to the US police.” He was gone before anyone in Canada knew what was happening.
What stood out to this forum participant was that, while the panelists tore apart every claim the US government has laid against John Graham, it is around his extradition that ambiguities fall away, and the real issues that matter to Indigenous people and other working and oppressed people stand clear. The US Government’s claims around what might have happened on Pine Ridge in 1976 have less than zero value in the context of the serious stakes at play in this case, especially considering that if it was not for the concerted FBI attack on the American Indian Movement, Anna Mae would still be alive today.
The extradition treaty between Canada and the US is a tool still on hand for these two states to attack Indigenous organizers and all people who fight against injustice. These two states share an overwhelming interest in suppressing Indigenous fighters, whether their struggle is for self determination, Red Power, or against uranium mining. After all, if it were not for the suppression of Indigenous title over the entire territory now called “Canada” and the “United States”, neither of these states would exist. The struggle against colonialism and capitalism has been hurt by the extradition of John Graham. The speculations, complaints and hesitations of a handful of abstentionist or collaborationist Complicators further confuses the real issue of the need for continued struggle against the governments of the US and Canada. Justice for Anna Mae and all the hundreds of people killed in Pine Ridge in the 1970’s can only be served by charging the FBI and the US government. Their guilt is indisputable. Only the same movements that the governments of the US and Canada attempt to suppress can see through these charges to win justice.
The John Graham Defense Committee encourages you to write words of encouragement and solidarity to John where he is held in jail in the US:
John Graham
307 St. Joseph Street
Rapid City
SD 57701
USA
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For more information on John Graham’s case, see:
“Stop the Deportation of John Graham!”, by Ian Beeching, Socialist Voice, July 4th 2007
“Who Killed Anna Mae?”, by Rex Weyler, Vancouver Sun, January 8, 2005.
A collection of articles and updates, as well as announcements for upcoming solidarity events and actions is available on the John Graham Defense Committee website and the Our Freedom blog
