September 4, 2024 • 51 mins
COINTELPRO was shut down in 1971, and J. Edgar Hoover died in 1972. But the agency's dirty tricks continued in the years directly following the Media Burglary. Nowhere is this more evident than in the FBI's interactions with the American Indian Movement. Scholar, historian, and podcast host Nick Estes joins SNAFU to talk about how COINTELPRO and Hoover's legacy permeated the FBI, from the Wounded Knee Occupation in 1973 to the Dakota Access Pipeline protests at Standing Rock in 2016/2017.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
This is Snaffo, a show about history's greatest screw ups.
I'm at Helms. This past season we covered the daring
heist that uncovered a colossal FBI snaffo. Today we're back
with our final bonus episode of the season. But before
we dive in, I just want to add, even though
it's our final bonus episode, do not fret because there's
(00:28):
a new season coming very soon, plus a whole lot
of other cool stuff. So stay tuned. Okay, Now back
to it. As listeners will probably recall, co Intelpro was
officially shut down after being exposed in nineteen seventy one,
and j Edgar Hoover actually died in nineteen seventy two,
(00:49):
but sadly it would take a little longer for actual
reform to kick in. For a number of years, the
agency was still upholding many of Hoover's dirty tricks. Nowhere
was this more evident than in their interactions with the
American Indian Movement or AIM, as well as the greater
Native American community. To help us understand how co intel
(01:11):
pros legacy unfortunately endured in this way, we're honored to
be speaking to Nick Estes. Nick is an assistant professor
of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota and
hosts the Red Nation podcast. To start out, I would
(01:32):
love for you to introduce yourself, tell us a little
bit about your background and what it is you do.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
My name's Nick Gustus. I am a member of the
Lawbrual Sioux tribe. I was born and raised in South Dakota.
I'm currently an American Indian Studies professor assistant professor at
the University of Minnesota, and I'm currently working on a
book about the history of the American Indian Movement.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
What led you down this path?
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Well, two of my grandfathers were writers. One published the
first history of the Lorberal subtribe in nineteen sixty three
and the other published another history in nineteen seventy two.
So in some ways, you know, it's kind of a
family tradition. But also I was an anti war protester
back when the United States invaded Rock for the second time,
(02:21):
and I kind of just stayed in school after that.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Went on to get a PhD. Right on.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Well, as you know, this season of SNAFU goes into
considerable depth about the status of j Edgar Hoover's FBI
in the nineteen seventies and many of the ways that
it was overtly nefarious, oftentimes operating fully outside of the law.
This of course exemplified by co Intel pro or the
counterintelligence program, the FBI surveillance program in the sixties and
(02:52):
seventies that targeted various political groups such as the Black Panthers,
anti Vietnam protesters, civil rights demonstrators. But I'm really excited
to talk with you today about how the Native American
community experienced the FBI at that time and really throughout
the twentieth century, which is quite fascinating and complex. Let's
(03:15):
start at the beginning. The FBI's origin story actually dovetails
with a major incident in twentieth century Native American history,
the Osage murders throughout the nineteen tens, twenties, and thirties. Now,
a lot of people will be familiar with this story
from the recent Martin Scorsese movie Killers of the Flower Moon.
(03:35):
So tell us a little bit about the early interactions
between the Bureau and Native Americans and also what did
the film get right and or wrong.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Many people have probably seen this film. I started watching it,
but I couldn't watch it I couldn't. It's hard for
me to watch the killing, rape and torture of Native
women over and over again on screen. It's not some
thing I find very entertaining. But I do think that
the movie itself kind of gets to this, or at
least is trying to get to this history of murder,
(04:09):
missing Indigenous women. I think what's missing in that film,
at least from my perspective, is the advocacy of people
like Zincali Shaw, who was born as Gertrude Bonnan. She
was from the Yankton Sioux Reservation. She was an advocate,
a Native woman who worked in Congress, who was a lobbyist,
(04:30):
who is an activist, who actually interviewed some of the
osage women who had been targeted by these men and
really brought attention to this issue, and that's not in
the film. It's also kind of propaganda for the FBI,
because the FBI sees itself as sort of this crime
fighting unit has a particular history with indigenous activists. But
(04:53):
also the FBI, you know, according to its own people,
was a political police force. It was about surveiling primarily
Eastern European immigrants who were forming left progressive trade unions
and parties, the communist parties, socialist anarchists, etc. And it
(05:13):
was really about surveilling them and policing them as an
internal threat. And in fact, the precursor to the FBI,
I think it was called a Bureau of Investigations surveiled
people like Zinc Coalishaw and people who were indigenous leaders
and advocates in an organization called the Society of American
Indians because at that time American Indians were not citizens
(05:37):
of the United States, but we're advocating for rights within
a constitutional framework. Some of them were pushing for citizenship,
but they were very outspoken against the participation of American
Indians in World War One. They said, why is it
that we should volunteer and fight for this country when
(06:00):
we're not even citizens. We don't even have Fifth Amendment rights.
We can't even stand trial and bring treaty rights. So
they were very critical and they wrote, you know, these newsletters,
and it got to Jaeger Hoover's desks, and he sent
people out to investigate these people under you know, crimes
of sedition, you know, things like that.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
So and this was in when is this exactly? This
is in the ten tens or one of the.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Late nineteen tens, early nineteen twenties, because and.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
This was all contemporaneous with the Osage murders.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Oh yeah, And I think you know, Zinklishaw is somebody
who kind of gets written out of this history because
she was a Native woman, She was an advocate, she
was interviewing these.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
People, she wrote a report to Congress.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
She was threatened by the similar violence that was being
enacted on O Sage people. And I think that's a
much more compelling story because it shows that on the
one hand, Native people weren't just sort of apless victims
of violence, that they were trying to navigate the channels
of power that existed.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Why is a story like that less visible in the
historical narrative than a big story like the Osage murders.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Well, I would hope that someday they would make a
movie about Zinkali Shah and the fact that a lot
of people in this country don't even know who she is.
If people know natives from that time period, they probably
know somebody like Jim Thorpe, who was an Olympian, you know,
a multi gold medal winner, And so I think it's
(07:35):
important to know this particular history because on one hand,
it also shows these other precursors to something like red power.
That Red power didn't just emerge from the mists of history,
but it was drawing from this long tradition of activism
at the grassroots level and thinking about things like treaties,
but also.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
Drawing the attention in the ire of the FBI.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
All right, let's jump to the middle of the twentieth century.
That's when we see the emergence of the American Indian
Movement or AIM, which ultimately would become a point of
considerable friction with the FBI. Tell us what the American
Indian Movement is and why it formed.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
So the American Indian Movement formed officially in nineteen sixty
eight in northern Minneapolis, originally called it self Concerned Indian Americans,
but the acronym was CIA, so they changed it to
the American Indian Movement. But the co founders of people
like Eddie Benton, Benet Clyde Belcourt, Dennis Banks were all
(08:41):
incarcerated at one point in time together It's Stillwater prison.
So they would argue that the American Indian Movement, the
idea came out of the prison movement, and they created
this group called the Culture Group, and they sort of
made commitments that once they left prison, they were going
to change their lives, and so they went into Minneapolis.
(09:01):
At that time, there was a lot of Native people
who were part of the union movement, like the Teamsters.
There was the Teamsters rebellion in Minneapolis and the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Native people were part of that.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Native people are part of unions, they're part of working
class history, and so there was also a lot of
community organizations that were centered around the family. And so
when these men arrived on the scene, there already sort
of existed in infrastructure and a complaint, so to speak,
or an injury that Native people felt in Minneapolis. Because
(09:32):
Minneapolis turned what is known as the East Phillips neighborhood
into a sort of slum, things are being shifted around.
Termination is happening at the same time where the federal
government is trying to end its federal responsibilities with Native people.
They're enticing Native people to leave their reservations on a
(09:53):
relocation program. They found themselves in low income slum housing.
They found themselves being targeted by these police raids that
were happening on the weekends where a paddy wagon would
literally just pull up to an Indian bar on Franklin
Avenue and just start loading people in. Once the bar closed,
people were getting beat people were getting discriminated against. Native
(10:16):
children were being taken from their families and put into
white foster care systems or into white homes. One study
that came out in like the nineteen seventies found that
between twenty five to thirty five percent of Native children
had been taken from or removed from their families and
placed into non Native homes. That's quite a bit. So
(10:38):
it was three things. It was child removal, police violence,
and urban poverty that led to the foundations of the
American Indian Movement. And it wasn't just about a confrontation politics,
even though that's kind of what one aim the headlines
at the time when they began to confront police and
began filming them and following them around as they portray
(11:00):
rolled the Indian bars on the weekends. But they also
began to form what were called survival schools, which was
literally just Native families pooling together what small resources they
had and setting up a formal school system. Because it
was at public schools that Native children came under the
surveillance of state officials, whether it was through the Department
(11:22):
of Social Services, and that was the place where they
begin these child removal processes. So it is known through
the media and its representation by the FBI as a confrontational,
sort of militant social movement, but that sort of overshadows
the community work that it was doing on the ground
(11:44):
and what won a lot of respect by community members themselves.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
I mean, you spoke in some depth about some of
their initiatives. Is there an overarching sort of mission of
the American Indian Movement and does that also have some
misconceptions in the public discourse.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
So in nineteen seventy two, the American Indian Movement, as
well as a coalition of various grassroots Native organizations, some
of them even from Canada, like the Canadian Indian Brotherhood,
participated in it. They drafted a twenty point policy framework
called the Trail of Broken Treaties, and in it it
sort of lays out point by point what was being
(12:26):
advocated for. Number one priority was abolishing the Bureau of
Indian Affairs. At that time period, the Bureau of Indian
Affairs was largely responsible for plundering Native lands and implementing
this termination system, assimilation, et cetera. We saw the outcome
of like the twenty eleven you know, Cole Bell lawsuit
that showed that the Bureau of Indian Affairs had been mismanaging.
(12:49):
I think it was like over one hundred and seventy
five billion dollars of what they could count on paper
of Native assets. There was also the program of establishing
a treaty relationship with the United States government, sort of
ending every act or going back to eighteen seventy one
when treaty making was formally abolished with Native nations. That
(13:11):
sort of treaty commission, so to speak, would replace the
Bureau of Indian Affairs. Native people would elect their own leaders.
You know, today we have the Secretary of Interior who
happens to be Native herself, Deb Holland.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
But that's not somebody we elect, but nonetheless.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Has still to this day, has arbitrary authority over the
livelihoods and resources of Native people. We're in the same
department as wildlife right still to this day, and those
are sort of the broader sort of policy frameworks that
they were pushing. But also at a grassroots level, they
really wanted self determination and community control. So those are
(13:50):
sort of like the broad brushstrokes of what they were
trying to accomplish.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
So the American Indian Movement isn't actually mentioned by name
in the co Intel profiles, But that's a little misleading
because in reality, there was no shortage of interaction between
the FBI and the American Indian Movement that reflected the
tactics and ethos of co Intel Pro, especially right after
(14:19):
Hoover's death. So tell us what was happening in the
early nineteen seventies between the FBI and AIM.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
You know, the break in at the FBI Field office
and the revealing of these Cointel pro papers. It was
a huge embarrassment to the FBI. They were exposed. Jadgar
Hoover like dies shortly after these revelations come out, and
the FBI says that it's formerly ending counterintelligence programs, and
so they were under a lot of scrutiny by the time,
(14:50):
the American Indian Movement began drawing a lot of public attention,
negative attention from law enforcement but also lawmakers themselves, the
Attorney Gerald Nixon's administration. So by nineteen seventy two, when
the trailer Broken Treaties happens in late nineteen seventy two
around the presidential elections, the co intel pro program had like,
(15:12):
quote unquote formally ended, right, And so when you look
at the FBI documents of surveillance of the American Indian Movement,
they're even cautious. There's at one point there's the LA
Field Office is like, hey, we can run the counterintelligence program.
And I don't remember who was the Field director at
the time, but writes back and says, hey, we don't
do that anymore. But the tactics, you know, just because
(15:35):
that program ended, maybe in the paper trail you couldn't
say co Intel Pro anymore, it doesn't mean that the
tactics or the actions formally ended. And so I think
that's the bigger point here. It's like it just moved
to a different category. So instead of being counterintelligence program
to disrupt and to fame the American Indian Movement, the
American Indian Movement became categorized within what is called em AIM,
(15:59):
which is extremes some matters. It actually the nature of
the FBI sort of changes culture.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
Yeah, it's changed, Yeah, exactly, I.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Would love to dig into that more. In particular, it's
very important to point out the FBI was the FBI,
and there was still a sort of legacy of Jaegar
Hoover's the culture that he had set up, and the
church hearings wouldn't happen for another few years. Those hearings
would significantly improve government oversight of agencies like the FBI,
(16:31):
at least in that moment, but leading up to that,
there was still a huge amount of friction between the
Native American community and the FBI. Let's jump into the
Wounded Knee occupation of nineteen seventy three. Can you walk
us through that event?
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (16:47):
So, after the trail of broken treaties, this really put
the Americanadian movement on the map, so to speak, and
got a lot of attention, both positive and negative. And
the negative side, tribal leaders in places like Pine Ridge
saw the American Indian Movement as a not only a threat,
but outside sort of agitators that could come to the
(17:09):
reservation and potentially overthrow the tribal government. The FBI had
to function as a federal police force because reservations, specifically
in South Dakota, fall under federal jurisdiction, So it's the
jurisdiction of federal police like the FBI or the Bureau
of Indian Affairs Police Agency or the US Marshall Service.
(17:33):
And so by nineteen seventy two, the Tribal Council president
of Pine Ridge, Dick Wilson, begins to sort of bad
mouth aim and says you're banned from the reservation. There's
already a chapter in pine Ridge at this time. So
in February, things sort of escalate and there's the Customer
Courthouse riot where the American Indian Movement leads a really
(17:54):
racous sort of riot against this man, this white guy
who stabbed Wesley bad Heart bull and barroom fight and
he ended up dying, and they ended up burning down
the Chamber of Commerce and having open fistfights, and you know,
with billy clubs, et cetera, with the South Dakota State
Patrol as well as other local law enforcement agencies. So
there's this kind of brewing tension that's happening at that time.
(18:18):
Also locally in Pine Ridge, people who were discontent with
Dick Wilson, who was seen as sort of an authoritarian
kind of like leader, begin to organize things called like
the interdistrict councils. They have opposition through the tribal council.
They have several elected leaders, but then a lot of grassroots.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
People, mainly middle aged women like Ellen.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Moves Camp, Gladys Bissonette and others, begin to form these
public hearings where people come forward and issue grievances against
the tribal council. In response to tribal council creates what
the locals called a goon squad. That was initially an
accusation and derogatory term, which the goon Squad later turned
towards the Guardian said, oh, it's an acronym for guardians
(19:01):
of the Oglala nation. But essentially they were like deputized
so Orwellian. So they were like deputized vigilantes who would
go around and.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
Terrorize Dick Dick Wilson exactly.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
And the FBI, you know, sensing this kind of brewing tension.
There was a failed impeachment attempt of Dick Wilson in February,
and they created the Oglalla Sioux Civil Rights Organization as
a sort of opposition, which invited the American Indian Movement
to Pine Ridge in late February of nineteen seventy three,
and on February twenty seventh, they led the occupation of
(19:41):
wound Nie. At that time, the FBI had already been
on Pine Ridge.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
They had been.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Specifically tasked with jotting down the license plate numbers of
off reservation supporters of the Oglalla Sioux Civil Rights Organization,
anyone who's coming and going from out of state, et cetera.
So Dick wilson title was what exactly the president of
the tribe here was elected president.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Of the tribe. Okay, So there's a lot of discontent
with Dick Wilson's leadership of the tribe. Aim is brought
in to sort of assist in the resistance to Dick
Wilson and how he's running the tribe. Is it fair
to say that there was a sense that Dick Wilson
was kind of in the incahoots with the federal government
in ways that were undermining the Native American community there well.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
On many reservations, the main employer tended to be the
federal government, whether it was through federal grants, you worked
for the tribe, you worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
And so if you're the president or you're on council
on Typically that leads to sort of nepotism, right, so
there's a cornering of resources, right, housing, things like that,
(20:49):
access to employment that he was seen as sort of
gifting out. He has been accused and found plausible that
he stole a lot of money from the tribe, but
also was making deals to sell off parts of tribal
land for exploratory uranium mining that was happening in the
(21:11):
northern part of the reservation. You have to remember that
part of the reservation was actually confiscated by the federal
government during World War Two to use as a bombing range.
As the northern part of the reservation actually there were
I think it was like around fifty or so families
were forcefully relocated from that area, and the tribe was
trying to get it back, and it was happening through
(21:31):
grassroots sort of protests that people were trying to get
this back, and there was allegations that Dick Wilson was
making sweetheart deals with outside contractors, outside industry to sort
of open that up for exploratory uranium mining.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Wow, we're just going to take this land just for
bomb practice.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
That's yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Yeah, So sometimes it's like we have and that they
see as resource rich.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Yeah right, there's other time let's get the oil exactly.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Sometimes it's like it's it's valuable because it's wasteable, you know.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Yeah, there you go. Okay. So there's an emerging tension
among members of the tribe against Dick Wilson, the tribal leadership,
who is seen as being in cahoots with federal government
in some not good ways. What do they do?
Speaker 3 (22:28):
So they take over.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
The Woundannee massacre site, which listeners may have heard that name.
But in eighteen ninety, just several days after Christmas, the
Seventh Cavalry, just George Armstrong Custer's former regiment essentially massacred
around three hundred Lakota people who were surrendering at this
particular time under the leadership of Opunkleshka, or more commonly
(22:53):
known as a Chief Bigfoot. From what I can tell
from interviews I've conducted, I don't think they actually plan
on staying there for very long, but it ended up
turning into a seventy one day occupation. It's fascinating for
a lot of reasons. One is that the.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
Day that the occupation happened, a.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
General named Volney Warner, who's actually South Dakota native, gets
a call from Nixon's administration. He said, there's a twentieth
century Indian uprising. We need to deploy somebody from the
Department of Defense. So he flies to Ellsworth Air Force Base,
the base that was used to bomb just decades before
(23:31):
bomb the reservation. Flies to Ellsworth Air Force Base and
there he meets Joseph Trimbach, who is the Special Agent
in charge of the FBI, and then he also meets
top us Marshal Wayne Colburn. And in this initial meeting
it was like three o'clock in the morning. On the
next day, Joe Trimbach and the Special Agent in charge
(23:55):
basically asks the colonel. He was a colonel later became
promoted to a general, but he was a colonel at
the time. He asked Colonel Warner, he said, can you
send in the eighty second Airborne and just end the
siege right now?
Speaker 1 (24:08):
How far into this to this occupation are we at
this point?
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Hours? Hours, like mere hours.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
This is like three point thirty in the morning the
next day, so they occupied. They began the occupation at nighttime.
So the FBI was put into this position and you
can read this through Joe Trimbak's own words, in his
own perspective, he was put into this position of turning
the FBI into this kind of like paramilitary police force.
(24:34):
Because you have to remember, like Hoover's guys, like when
Fred Hampton was assassinated, it wasn't at the hands of
FBI agents. The FBI didn't have shootouts with the Black Panthers.
It was typically other law enforcement agencies that would have
shootouts with these organizations. They were kind of like the
behind the scenes guys who were always a step back.
(24:55):
And in fact that even interviewed a former FBI agent
named Colleen and I asked her straight up, I said,
why would any FBI agent want this job? And she says,
because it's easy. Imagine you're going after hardened criminals who
are like, murder is their occupation, and then you get
a sign to go tail a political activist. There's not
(25:16):
much risk, you know, in doing that. At that time,
the image of the FBI is that they're these kind
of like suit and tie, kind of like slick, you know, investigators.
They have these techniques, but they're investment. Yeah, they're investigative unit.
They're not really armed like that we see today, you know,
with the paramilitary sort of armed with assault rifles, you know,
(25:36):
doing all these tactics. And so to put it bluntly,
like Trimbak was pissed that he was putting his agents
out on the line, and his agents were pissed.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
So just to paint a visual picture here for our
mind's eye, sure, what was the town of Wounded Knee like?
Exactly what would it look like to drive by or
drive through?
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Wounini at that time was a village and a trading post,
like literally less than a dozen houses in the town
of Wundani. There was a church, a very visible white
church at the top of the hill where the mass
grave where umpug Gleshka's people were buried and the massacred
(26:17):
ghost dancers.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
I wonder if you could talk a little bit sort
of philosophically about the idea of occupying land as a
form of protest and or peaceful resistance.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
So the FBI had this narrative that it was because
of outside agitators like the American Indian Movement that the
arm takeover of Wundani happened. It was like their idea,
but as a lot of the locals said it would
say no, that was actually our idea. And in fact,
I told you about the bombing range initially back I
(26:48):
think it was nineteen seventy, locals occupied what was known
as Sheep Mountain, which is that bombing range. And later
on when they couldn't get an audience because it's on
the reservation, you have a protest on the reservation, like
who's going to show up in the middle of nowhere,
you know, So they decided and it was a group
of grandmothers, people like Murio Wakazoo and Lizzy Fastours who decide, hey,
(27:10):
like let's go to someplace more famous and like more iconics.
So they decided that they were going to occupy Mount
Rushmore in nineteen seventy to raise the issue of the
taken you know, bombing range lands at Sheep Mountains. So
they took over Mount Rushmore and it was you know,
several occupations and a multi yeared kind of process. But
(27:31):
this was also part and parcel to other federal property
takeovers like at Alcatraz Island in nineteen seventy or nineteen
sixty nine to nineteen seventy one. Alcatraz was a prison
island that was abandoned by the federal government. It was
also a place where, you know, hope people were sent
(27:51):
because they refused to send their children to boarding schools
in the late nineteenth century. So it kind of has
this notorious history. We see you know that movie that
Nicholas came movie The Rock or was it Nicholas Cage, Yeah,
and Sean Connery yeah, and Shuck Conry.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
Yeah. People might know it as like Rock the Rock.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Yes, Nicholas Cage is like, you think that guy's career
might be like on the tail end, but it keeps
like he keeps coming out with bangers man.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Yeah, No, he is crushing it and never stops crushing it.
So tell us what unfolded at the Wounded Knee occupation
and what role the FBI played.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
And maybe instead of giving like a play by play,
because it's seventy one days and there's different ebbs and flows.
But when we look at history, we tend to think
of things with oh, it led to this, and I
think a lot of people didn't know it was going
to lead to.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
This, you know.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
So over the course of seventy one days, the FBI
pumped in about half a million rounds into this tiny hamlet.
And it's point important to like remember that the people
on the inside, they were portrayed by the FBI as
these armed militants, and many of them were like comp veterans.
(29:00):
I've interviewed several people who were Vietnam veterans, so they
did have like combat experience, but everyone said they didn't
have ammunition. They most of their rifles were rusted out
like twenty two's. They didn't have a machine gun. There
was an AK forty seven, but that was smuggled from
the jungles of Vietnam by somebody, but nobody had an
(29:21):
ammunition for it. But it made a good sort of
image for the FBI to say, hey, look this communists
inspired Chinese inspired like uprising. They have an AK forty seven,
which that became the symbol for armed revolutions throughout the
world at that particular time. But on the inside, Wundanie,
(29:42):
you know, they declared the independent Oglala nation. They made
people citizens of this new nation, even non native people.
They proposed a succession plan to what would happen once
the tribal government relinquished its power was formally abolished, that
they would return to the eighteen sixty eight Fort Laramie
Treaty and the sort of governing principles of like traditional
(30:05):
Lakota culture, and a lot of these AIM members had
never really encountered indigenous spiritual life, and so there's also
this kind of renewal that was happening on the inside.
And wow, So it was a really you know, you
ask people, it's like, yeah, there was this immense danger.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
You know.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
I interviewed a Madonna Thunderhowk and she said, yeah, it
was the freest time of my life, even though we're
completely surrounded. There wasn't a lot of food, it was cold,
we didn't have electricity, all of those things. And she
brought in her ten year old son with her. So
she has said this to me on multiple occasions that
the American Indian Movement, if anything, was a movement of families.
(30:46):
It wasn't this militant, like violence prone organization led by men, right,
It was actually families were the heartbeat of the movement itself.
And if you read the FBI files, if you read
the media reports, it gives us a complete different point
of view because they only saw men as the leaders.
On the federal police side, a Colonel Warner, he was
(31:09):
in charge of essentially bringing in military equipment to arm
the US Marshals, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, police officers,
the FBI, and later was revealed the Goon Squad themselves
were getting these military grade assault rifles.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
Right.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
So the FBI was taking on, according to its own
words and report, a paramilitary function, something that it had
not done before in the field. It was teaching agents
to use shoulder mounted assault rifles, to use grenade launchers,
to launch tear gas canisters, to train in tactics.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
Right.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
So, the difference between the US Marshals and the FBI
at that time was the US Marshals tended to come from,
you know, non college educated, working class people, so they
had so many of their officers or marshals were Vietnam veterans,
so they had combat experience. They knew how to use
these weapons of war. Whereas the FBI they were like
(32:09):
highly educated urbanites who are not used to being in
the field in this way, and so it was for
them a lot of them was a traumatic experience. And
if you read some of the US Marshall reports, they're like,
we have to control these FBI guys. They keep freaking
out at the line, they're being overly hostile to the
Native families who's who live in this area, right, They're
(32:31):
they're being violent there. So it created this this kind
of cauldron of violence, so to speak, that was concentrated
in this area. One US Marshall was shot in paralyzed
from from the waist down, and two occupiers, a man
named Frank Clearwater who was not Native, was shot and
killed while he was sleeping in one of the bunker
(32:54):
or not in one of the bunkers in one of
the buildings. And then a Vietnam veteran and a local
from pine Rie named Buddy Lamont was shot in the
heart by a sniper's bullet after they had declared a ceasefire.
And this was towards the end. I think it was
in late April, towards the end of the occupation. And
it was Buddy Lamont's death that really ended it for
(33:16):
people on the inside because they were like, we don't
want any more people to die or to get hurt, right.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Yeah, sorry, But what was precipitating these outbursts, these firefights.
Were they just periodically shooting into wounded knee. I don't
remember how many rounds of ammunition, you said at first
half or something. Yeah, that's a lot of gunfire over
a long period of time.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yeah, And according to the documents, most of the firefights,
as they were called, happened at nighttime, and it could
be depending on which side you read or which stories
you read. You know, the FBI the US Marshals would
blame somebody for taking a potshot, and then it would
erupt into a firefight, and people would say, like the
night would literally be illuminated with flares to kind of
(34:02):
spot the occupiers on the inside. They were using tracer rounds,
and there were also the goons themselves put up their
own roadblock at the behest of Dick Wilson, and they
kind of instigated some firefights, almost getting into crossfire with
the FBI and the US Marshals who didn't like their
(34:22):
presence because they were very sort of aggressive.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Now, I want to shift gears into more recent events.
Listeners will likely be somewhat familiar with Standing Rock and
the Dakota Access pipeline protests that went on in twenty
sixteen and twenty seventeen. It seems like that was a
contemporary example of everything we've been talking about regarding FBI
surveillance and infiltration, and it represents some of the ways
(34:53):
that the Bureau has and has not evolved in its
interface with the Native American community.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
So twenty sixteen was a very similar year to twenty
twenty four. You know, as a presidential election, you have
an outgoing Democrat Trump A Trump is running Trump is
running again, and so you know twenty sixteen. What preceded
that was the successful defeat of the Keiston Excel pipeline
(35:22):
under the Obama administration. This happened through Indigenous led protests,
so there was a lot of there was a high
point at that particular moment. Of course, Trump later reversed
Obama's decision and you know, reinstated the Keystone Exel pipeline,
only to have it reversed again by the Biden administration.
But it was there was a high point, and there
was these there's organizing, There was grassroots organizing happening at
(35:45):
that time. And to be honest, the quota access pipeline
wasn't really on the radar of a lot of people.
They had just defeated this major tarzans pipeline that would
be pumping tartans from Alberta Canada down to Oklahoma across
our Tree territory in western South Dakota, so there wasn't
the kind of attention to the decod access pipeline. But nonetheless,
(36:07):
the Standing Tribe, not just grassroots organizers, but the tribe
itself had been steadfastly opposed to it from the very beginning,
especially when it was re routed from upriver from North
Dakota to downriver to North Dakota so that it would
impact the tribe more than it would impact the predominantly
white community that was north of it. This was a
(36:27):
decision made by the Army Corps of Engineers. So in
April of twenty sixteen, after a sort of contentious meeting
with the Army Corps of Engineers, a group of Standing
Rock activists got together and created the first camp that
later evolved into multiple camps, the Ochetti, Shakoi Camp, Sacred
(36:47):
Stone Camp, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
To be clear that this pipeline presents a massive danger
to our water system in the event of it possibly
failing or leaking, or any kind of natural disaster, which
we've seen from the oil and gas industry rampantly throughout
(37:10):
its existence. So any possible failure of this pipeline would
have devastating consequences to the ecosystem there on tribal land.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Yeah, Minnie Chouche, which is what we call the Missouri
River is the main drinking source for like millions of
people in the watershed. Even downriver it flows into the Mississippi,
which goes into the Gulf of Mexico. So it wasn't
just a native issue. It was like everyone's issue. And
even for Berthold Indian reservation, the Mandan, Hidatsa and Rikara tribes,
(37:43):
who has a very lucrative oil and gas industry whose
oil would be going through that pipeline, said this is.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
A bad idea.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
Even the people were profiting from it, like, this is
a bad idea, we oppose this. The fundamental issue is
tribal sovereignty right.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Right, And it's not just about hey, this pipeline would
be so annoying to have in our backyard. It's like,
oh no, this is an existential threat also. And then
on top of it is the fundamental underlying issue that
you just mentioned, tribal sovereignty.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
It's like if France decided they're going to build a
pipeline in Germany, the Germans would probably be mad about that.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Okay, how many people are now protesting this construction.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
I think that the height of the encampment itself or
the encampments is one of the top ten largest cities
in North Dakota, if it could be counted as a city,
So it's quite massive, you know. And yeah, the Aboma
administration didn't I wouldn't say like stopped it, but they
definitely put up some obstacles in trying to revisit the
(38:43):
environmental impact review process through the Army Corps of Engineers.
Of course, you know, Trump was just like, now we're
going to take any sort of protections off this and
just fast track it through. So it was a measure
to block it, but I think it was kind of
also understood that it could be reverse and so that's
I think that's important to point out, because you know,
it's still flowing to this day, and I haven't heard
(39:06):
anything from the Biden administration about the status of it,
even though the tribe has won some strategic lawsuits that
basically says it's flowing illegally, but the energy transfer partners
is willing to pay the fine for it to continue
to flow illegally, So you have an organization, a private
security company called Tiger Swan Right that is operating hand
(39:29):
in glove with the Martin County Sheriff's Department. You have
a federal Emergency Management legislation called eMac, which allows states
to solicit the support of other jurisdictions, local county sheriff's departments.
I think there's like ninety two different law enforcement jurisdictions
that were sent to Standing Rock to help police the protests.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
And that was widely kind.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
Of covered in the media at that time about the
private security and whatnot, But what wasn't covered so much
was the role of the FBI.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
So walk us through the FBI's connection to this Standing
Rock protests. And then, even though it's like fifty years later,
do you see any particular echoes of j Edgar Hoover's
FBI and co intel pro Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
So, reporting by Ellen Brown through Grist revealed that the FBI,
at any given point in time during the height of
the protests was operating anywhere between one to ten informants,
and in fact, in one of the depositions, one of
the FBI agents, Jacob O'Connell, this FBI agen was called
(40:36):
to the stand It was the first time that it
was actually revealed in a public record that there were
FBI informants, and he even admitted that one of these
informants had been arrested. It wasn't just you know, people
observing on the outside there. I would say, probably people
who are deeply embedded within the movement itself, probably Native people.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
We can only guess by what limited information. If you
even look at this deposition, O'Connell is more concerned about
the sources of income that are going into a standing
Rock protest. He's like, but yeah, we're just gathering intelligence.
But it raises the question about in a criminal investigation,
you're finding evidence to charge somebody out with an actual crime.
(41:19):
But this is not an actual crime to just get
money from people, Right, there were go fundmes that were
set up, So you're not investigating a crime, So what
are you doing? In some ways, it's creating a chilling
effect to say, now your personal privacy. If you decide
to go to a protest and you do a GoFundMe,
(41:41):
or you get a gas card or something like that,
or you do a fundraising event, you might be targeted
with FBI surveillance for exercising a First Amendment right. They're
looking at resources, they're tracking people. I don't know how
many times they stole Vernon Belcourt's briefcase, but it appears
multiple times, and they stole at least three briefcases of
(42:05):
this man. You know, he was a leader of the
American Indian Movement. But they were gathering intelligence. That was
their justifications. They're gathering intelligence because they never brought charges
against him after stealing his briefcase, because he wasn't engaged
in a criminal act. And I think we have to
ask ourselves what are those lines, because it's very unclear
to people. I think it's having even ben subpoena in myself,
(42:27):
and like the questions that I was asked by the
attorneys from the North Dakota side about whether I had
witnessed illegal activities, and I said, yes, of course I've
witnessed illegal activities.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
That's why I was there.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
You guys were viting leading Article six of the Constitutions
that says that treaties are the supreme law of the land.
Like we shouldn't have been there in the first vest
we're trying to legal activity.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
We were all standing there looking at it.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
The wait is I get wait, but what about you
guys like you didn't you see you guys do some
illegal stuff.
Speaker 3 (43:03):
Yeah, So that's striking.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
It's striking how similar that is to so much of
what Hoover's FBI was up to. Have we learned anything?
Are we any better off?
Speaker 2 (43:16):
I think you have to go back to what the
people who were targeted by these investigations were actually asking.
So you mentioned the Church Commission. You know, the Church
Commission skipped over the FBI surveillance, the CIA surveillance of
the American India Movement because they were supposed to have
(43:37):
a hearing just by chance happened after the shootout in
nineteen seventy five. You know, the Attorney General decided that
just wasn't a good idea because it might compromise that
investigation of the killing of two FBI agents. And so,
following this reign of terror, Oglala people had been calling
for a congressional investigation of the role of the FBI
(44:00):
and its participation in this time period and what it did,
what it knew. There's also the botched investigation of the
murdered American Indian Movement activist Anime alquash. That could be
a whole nother podcast episode, but it's been revealed through
FBI documents that the FBI knew within almost a week
(44:21):
of her assassination, who did it, when it happened, and
where it happened. She was murdered in December of nineteen
seventy five, but didn't formally identify her body until March
of nineteen seventy six of the following year, and then
never charged anybody out for it until thirty years later.
That's a pretty poor track record if you think about it.
(44:44):
If you knew at the time, who did it, when
it happened, why weren't they prosecuted. You know, there's so
many questions that need answering, and I'm not the person
to answer those questions. That you know, the ball is
in the FBI's court. I would say the ball should
be in Congress' court to provide actual oversight of this institution.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
I mean, full circle, help our listeners understand where the
Native American movement stands today.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
The water protector movement was a watershed moment, no pun intended,
but appreciate it. Yeah, I'll try to bring a little
bit of lightness to the serious topic.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
You're a comedian. How do you do serious?
Speaker 2 (45:27):
How do you do a serious podcast?
Speaker 1 (45:29):
Well, it's the podcast is fun, but I do find
myself like just getting pulled into the gravity of these situations.
And hats off to you because I appreciate the levity
that you've also been bringing to this conversation. We both
agree that Nick Cage movies are fantastic and that might
be the main takeaway from this conversation.
Speaker 2 (45:51):
But just to kind of get back to your question
and to answer it in a serious way, I think
you know, there's a qualitative impact of the water protector movement,
meaning that it really raised the consciousness of a generation
of Native people. But there's also the quantitative impact of
the water protector movement. There's a study that came out
(46:11):
several years ago by Old Change International and the Indigenous
Environmental Network that found that Indigenous led movements a challenging
fossil fuel extraction, pipelines, etc.
Speaker 3 (46:24):
From all stages of the fossil.
Speaker 2 (46:26):
Fuel life cycle, accounted for challenging a quarter of carbon emissions.
In greenhouse gas emissions from Canada and the United States,
two of the largest per capita polluters or emitters, and
that's a huge impact, right, Like we're punching well above
our weight class. We're like the minority of the minorities,
but yet pulling a challenging at least a quarter of
(46:49):
carbon emissions. That's pretty impactful, right, So it can be
measured in that sense, and I think that's something to
be proud about. I write this in my book Our
History is a Few Future. This interview that Madonna Thunderhawk
did with a young Pablo activist name Jennifer Marley, and
Madonna had been through at all FBI surveillance was at
(47:11):
wound in every major event of the Red Power era,
all the occupations, Alcatraz, et cetera. Was asked by jen
Marley like what, like, why would you do all these things?
It's obviously caused strain in your political life. And her answer,
without hesitation, was because I want to be a good
ancestor to future generations. And I think there's something really
compelling about that. You know that everyone who walked through
(47:33):
the Gates of Standing Rock wasn't necessarily an Indigenous person.
The movement was grounded in Indigenous values, but nonetheless, water
protector is not an Indigenous identity. It's a universal identity
when it's one that is future oriented, and I think
it can become really dark in these moments if we
think about the price that people had to pay, losing
(47:56):
your life, losing your freedom, losing your family. It's important
to recognize those sacrifices, but it's also important to think
about this is something that is not just a moment,
you know, it's a moment within a larger movement of history.
I think there's some comfort in that, and it gets
us beyond this really cynical and dark electoral cycles that
(48:19):
we tend to fall into every four years, and to
think about generations and not just election cycles.
Speaker 3 (48:27):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (48:27):
Very well, said Nick Astis. Thank you so much for
joining us here in the snaff universe. If I may
coin an incredibly stupid word, but no, it has been
really a privilege to learn from you today and I
really really appreciate the conversation.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Thanks Ed, I really I'm really honored to be on
this podcast.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
Snafoo is a production of iHeartRadio, Film Nation Entertainment, and
Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. This
season of Snafoo is based on the book The Burglary
The Discovery of Jay Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI written by
Betty Metzker. It's executive produced by me Ed Helms, Milan Papelka,
Mike Valbo, Whitney Donaldson, Andy Chug, Dylan Fagan, and Betty Metzker.
(49:16):
Our lead producers are Sarah Joyner and Alyssa Martino. Producer
is Stephen Wood. Our associate producer Tory Smith edited this
bonus episode. Nevin Callapoly is our production assistant. Fact checking
by Charles Richter. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Editing,
sound design and original music by Ben Chugg, Engineering and
technical direction by Nick Dooley. Theme music by Dan Rosatto.
(49:40):
Special thanks to Alison Cohen, Daniel Welsh, and Ben Riizak.
Additional thanks to director Joanna Hamilton for letting us use
some of the original interviews from her incredible documentary nineteen
seventy one. Finally, our deepest gratitude to the courageous Citizens
Commission to Investigate the FBI, Bill Davidan, Ralph Daniel Judy Fine, Gold,
(50:01):
Heath Forsyth, Bonnie Rains, John Rains, Sarah Schumer and Bob Williamson.
This is Snaffo, a show about history's greatest screw ups.
I'm at Helms. This past season we covered the daring
heist that uncovered a colossal FBI snaffo. Today we're back
with our final bonus episode of the season. But before
we dive in, I just want to add, even though
it's our final bonus episode, do not fret because there's
(00:28):
a new season coming very soon, plus a whole lot
of other cool stuff. So stay tuned. Okay, Now back
to it. As listeners will probably recall, co Intelpro was
officially shut down after being exposed in nineteen seventy one,
and j Edgar Hoover actually died in nineteen seventy two,
(00:49):
but sadly it would take a little longer for actual
reform to kick in. For a number of years, the
agency was still upholding many of Hoover's dirty tricks. Nowhere
was this more evident than in their interactions with the
American Indian Movement or AIM, as well as the greater
Native American community. To help us understand how co intel
(01:11):
pros legacy unfortunately endured in this way, we're honored to
be speaking to Nick Estes. Nick is an assistant professor
of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota and
hosts the Red Nation podcast. To start out, I would
(01:32):
love for you to introduce yourself, tell us a little
bit about your background and what it is you do.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
My name's Nick Gustus. I am a member of the
Lawbrual Sioux tribe. I was born and raised in South Dakota.
I'm currently an American Indian Studies professor assistant professor at
the University of Minnesota, and I'm currently working on a
book about the history of the American Indian Movement.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
What led you down this path?
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Well, two of my grandfathers were writers. One published the
first history of the Lorberal subtribe in nineteen sixty three
and the other published another history in nineteen seventy two.
So in some ways, you know, it's kind of a
family tradition. But also I was an anti war protester
back when the United States invaded Rock for the second time,
(02:21):
and I kind of just stayed in school after that.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Went on to get a PhD. Right on.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Well, as you know, this season of SNAFU goes into
considerable depth about the status of j Edgar Hoover's FBI
in the nineteen seventies and many of the ways that
it was overtly nefarious, oftentimes operating fully outside of the law.
This of course exemplified by co Intel pro or the
counterintelligence program, the FBI surveillance program in the sixties and
(02:52):
seventies that targeted various political groups such as the Black Panthers,
anti Vietnam protesters, civil rights demonstrators. But I'm really excited
to talk with you today about how the Native American
community experienced the FBI at that time and really throughout
the twentieth century, which is quite fascinating and complex. Let's
(03:15):
start at the beginning. The FBI's origin story actually dovetails
with a major incident in twentieth century Native American history,
the Osage murders throughout the nineteen tens, twenties, and thirties. Now,
a lot of people will be familiar with this story
from the recent Martin Scorsese movie Killers of the Flower Moon.
(03:35):
So tell us a little bit about the early interactions
between the Bureau and Native Americans and also what did
the film get right and or wrong.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Many people have probably seen this film. I started watching it,
but I couldn't watch it I couldn't. It's hard for
me to watch the killing, rape and torture of Native
women over and over again on screen. It's not some
thing I find very entertaining. But I do think that
the movie itself kind of gets to this, or at
least is trying to get to this history of murder,
(04:09):
missing Indigenous women. I think what's missing in that film,
at least from my perspective, is the advocacy of people
like Zincali Shaw, who was born as Gertrude Bonnan. She
was from the Yankton Sioux Reservation. She was an advocate,
a Native woman who worked in Congress, who was a lobbyist,
(04:30):
who is an activist, who actually interviewed some of the
osage women who had been targeted by these men and
really brought attention to this issue, and that's not in
the film. It's also kind of propaganda for the FBI,
because the FBI sees itself as sort of this crime
fighting unit has a particular history with indigenous activists. But
(04:53):
also the FBI, you know, according to its own people,
was a political police force. It was about surveiling primarily
Eastern European immigrants who were forming left progressive trade unions
and parties, the communist parties, socialist anarchists, etc. And it
(05:13):
was really about surveilling them and policing them as an
internal threat. And in fact, the precursor to the FBI,
I think it was called a Bureau of Investigations surveiled
people like Zinc Coalishaw and people who were indigenous leaders
and advocates in an organization called the Society of American
Indians because at that time American Indians were not citizens
(05:37):
of the United States, but we're advocating for rights within
a constitutional framework. Some of them were pushing for citizenship,
but they were very outspoken against the participation of American
Indians in World War One. They said, why is it
that we should volunteer and fight for this country when
(06:00):
we're not even citizens. We don't even have Fifth Amendment rights.
We can't even stand trial and bring treaty rights. So
they were very critical and they wrote, you know, these newsletters,
and it got to Jaeger Hoover's desks, and he sent
people out to investigate these people under you know, crimes
of sedition, you know, things like that.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
So and this was in when is this exactly? This
is in the ten tens or one of the.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Late nineteen tens, early nineteen twenties, because and.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
This was all contemporaneous with the Osage murders.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Oh yeah, And I think you know, Zinklishaw is somebody
who kind of gets written out of this history because
she was a Native woman, She was an advocate, she
was interviewing these.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
People, she wrote a report to Congress.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
She was threatened by the similar violence that was being
enacted on O Sage people. And I think that's a
much more compelling story because it shows that on the
one hand, Native people weren't just sort of apless victims
of violence, that they were trying to navigate the channels
of power that existed.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Why is a story like that less visible in the
historical narrative than a big story like the Osage murders.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Well, I would hope that someday they would make a
movie about Zinkali Shah and the fact that a lot
of people in this country don't even know who she is.
If people know natives from that time period, they probably
know somebody like Jim Thorpe, who was an Olympian, you know,
a multi gold medal winner, And so I think it's
(07:35):
important to know this particular history because on one hand,
it also shows these other precursors to something like red power.
That Red power didn't just emerge from the mists of history,
but it was drawing from this long tradition of activism
at the grassroots level and thinking about things like treaties,
but also.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
Drawing the attention in the ire of the FBI.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
All right, let's jump to the middle of the twentieth century.
That's when we see the emergence of the American Indian
Movement or AIM, which ultimately would become a point of
considerable friction with the FBI. Tell us what the American
Indian Movement is and why it formed.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
So the American Indian Movement formed officially in nineteen sixty
eight in northern Minneapolis, originally called it self Concerned Indian Americans,
but the acronym was CIA, so they changed it to
the American Indian Movement. But the co founders of people
like Eddie Benton, Benet Clyde Belcourt, Dennis Banks were all
(08:41):
incarcerated at one point in time together It's Stillwater prison.
So they would argue that the American Indian Movement, the
idea came out of the prison movement, and they created
this group called the Culture Group, and they sort of
made commitments that once they left prison, they were going
to change their lives, and so they went into Minneapolis.
(09:01):
At that time, there was a lot of Native people
who were part of the union movement, like the Teamsters.
There was the Teamsters rebellion in Minneapolis and the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Native people were part of that.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Native people are part of unions, they're part of working
class history, and so there was also a lot of
community organizations that were centered around the family. And so
when these men arrived on the scene, there already sort
of existed in infrastructure and a complaint, so to speak,
or an injury that Native people felt in Minneapolis. Because
(09:32):
Minneapolis turned what is known as the East Phillips neighborhood
into a sort of slum, things are being shifted around.
Termination is happening at the same time where the federal
government is trying to end its federal responsibilities with Native people.
They're enticing Native people to leave their reservations on a
(09:53):
relocation program. They found themselves in low income slum housing.
They found themselves being targeted by these police raids that
were happening on the weekends where a paddy wagon would
literally just pull up to an Indian bar on Franklin
Avenue and just start loading people in. Once the bar closed,
people were getting beat people were getting discriminated against. Native
(10:16):
children were being taken from their families and put into
white foster care systems or into white homes. One study
that came out in like the nineteen seventies found that
between twenty five to thirty five percent of Native children
had been taken from or removed from their families and
placed into non Native homes. That's quite a bit. So
(10:38):
it was three things. It was child removal, police violence,
and urban poverty that led to the foundations of the
American Indian Movement. And it wasn't just about a confrontation politics,
even though that's kind of what one aim the headlines
at the time when they began to confront police and
began filming them and following them around as they portray
(11:00):
rolled the Indian bars on the weekends. But they also
began to form what were called survival schools, which was
literally just Native families pooling together what small resources they
had and setting up a formal school system. Because it
was at public schools that Native children came under the
surveillance of state officials, whether it was through the Department
(11:22):
of Social Services, and that was the place where they
begin these child removal processes. So it is known through
the media and its representation by the FBI as a confrontational,
sort of militant social movement, but that sort of overshadows
the community work that it was doing on the ground
(11:44):
and what won a lot of respect by community members themselves.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
I mean, you spoke in some depth about some of
their initiatives. Is there an overarching sort of mission of
the American Indian Movement and does that also have some
misconceptions in the public discourse.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
So in nineteen seventy two, the American Indian Movement, as
well as a coalition of various grassroots Native organizations, some
of them even from Canada, like the Canadian Indian Brotherhood,
participated in it. They drafted a twenty point policy framework
called the Trail of Broken Treaties, and in it it
sort of lays out point by point what was being
(12:26):
advocated for. Number one priority was abolishing the Bureau of
Indian Affairs. At that time period, the Bureau of Indian
Affairs was largely responsible for plundering Native lands and implementing
this termination system, assimilation, et cetera. We saw the outcome
of like the twenty eleven you know, Cole Bell lawsuit
that showed that the Bureau of Indian Affairs had been mismanaging.
(12:49):
I think it was like over one hundred and seventy
five billion dollars of what they could count on paper
of Native assets. There was also the program of establishing
a treaty relationship with the United States government, sort of
ending every act or going back to eighteen seventy one
when treaty making was formally abolished with Native nations. That
(13:11):
sort of treaty commission, so to speak, would replace the
Bureau of Indian Affairs. Native people would elect their own leaders.
You know, today we have the Secretary of Interior who
happens to be Native herself, Deb Holland.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
But that's not somebody we elect, but nonetheless.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Has still to this day, has arbitrary authority over the
livelihoods and resources of Native people. We're in the same
department as wildlife right still to this day, and those
are sort of the broader sort of policy frameworks that
they were pushing. But also at a grassroots level, they
really wanted self determination and community control. So those are
(13:50):
sort of like the broad brushstrokes of what they were
trying to accomplish.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
So the American Indian Movement isn't actually mentioned by name
in the co Intel profiles, But that's a little misleading
because in reality, there was no shortage of interaction between
the FBI and the American Indian Movement that reflected the
tactics and ethos of co Intel Pro, especially right after
(14:19):
Hoover's death. So tell us what was happening in the
early nineteen seventies between the FBI and AIM.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
You know, the break in at the FBI Field office
and the revealing of these Cointel pro papers. It was
a huge embarrassment to the FBI. They were exposed. Jadgar
Hoover like dies shortly after these revelations come out, and
the FBI says that it's formerly ending counterintelligence programs, and
so they were under a lot of scrutiny by the time,
(14:50):
the American Indian Movement began drawing a lot of public attention,
negative attention from law enforcement but also lawmakers themselves, the
Attorney Gerald Nixon's administration. So by nineteen seventy two, when
the trailer Broken Treaties happens in late nineteen seventy two
around the presidential elections, the co intel pro program had like,
(15:12):
quote unquote formally ended, right, And so when you look
at the FBI documents of surveillance of the American Indian Movement,
they're even cautious. There's at one point there's the LA
Field Office is like, hey, we can run the counterintelligence program.
And I don't remember who was the Field director at
the time, but writes back and says, hey, we don't
do that anymore. But the tactics, you know, just because
(15:35):
that program ended, maybe in the paper trail you couldn't
say co Intel Pro anymore, it doesn't mean that the
tactics or the actions formally ended. And so I think
that's the bigger point here. It's like it just moved
to a different category. So instead of being counterintelligence program
to disrupt and to fame the American Indian Movement, the
American Indian Movement became categorized within what is called em AIM,
(15:59):
which is extremes some matters. It actually the nature of
the FBI sort of changes culture.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
Yeah, it's changed, Yeah, exactly, I.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Would love to dig into that more. In particular, it's
very important to point out the FBI was the FBI,
and there was still a sort of legacy of Jaegar
Hoover's the culture that he had set up, and the
church hearings wouldn't happen for another few years. Those hearings
would significantly improve government oversight of agencies like the FBI,
(16:31):
at least in that moment, but leading up to that,
there was still a huge amount of friction between the
Native American community and the FBI. Let's jump into the
Wounded Knee occupation of nineteen seventy three. Can you walk
us through that event?
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (16:47):
So, after the trail of broken treaties, this really put
the Americanadian movement on the map, so to speak, and
got a lot of attention, both positive and negative. And
the negative side, tribal leaders in places like Pine Ridge
saw the American Indian Movement as a not only a threat,
but outside sort of agitators that could come to the
(17:09):
reservation and potentially overthrow the tribal government. The FBI had
to function as a federal police force because reservations, specifically
in South Dakota, fall under federal jurisdiction, So it's the
jurisdiction of federal police like the FBI or the Bureau
of Indian Affairs Police Agency or the US Marshall Service.
(17:33):
And so by nineteen seventy two, the Tribal Council president
of Pine Ridge, Dick Wilson, begins to sort of bad
mouth aim and says you're banned from the reservation. There's
already a chapter in pine Ridge at this time. So
in February, things sort of escalate and there's the Customer
Courthouse riot where the American Indian Movement leads a really
(17:54):
racous sort of riot against this man, this white guy
who stabbed Wesley bad Heart bull and barroom fight and
he ended up dying, and they ended up burning down
the Chamber of Commerce and having open fistfights, and you know,
with billy clubs, et cetera, with the South Dakota State
Patrol as well as other local law enforcement agencies. So
there's this kind of brewing tension that's happening at that time.
(18:18):
Also locally in Pine Ridge, people who were discontent with
Dick Wilson, who was seen as sort of an authoritarian
kind of like leader, begin to organize things called like
the interdistrict councils. They have opposition through the tribal council.
They have several elected leaders, but then a lot of grassroots.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
People, mainly middle aged women like Ellen.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Moves Camp, Gladys Bissonette and others, begin to form these
public hearings where people come forward and issue grievances against
the tribal council. In response to tribal council creates what
the locals called a goon squad. That was initially an
accusation and derogatory term, which the goon Squad later turned
towards the Guardian said, oh, it's an acronym for guardians
(19:01):
of the Oglala nation. But essentially they were like deputized
so Orwellian. So they were like deputized vigilantes who would
go around and.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
Terrorize Dick Dick Wilson exactly.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
And the FBI, you know, sensing this kind of brewing tension.
There was a failed impeachment attempt of Dick Wilson in February,
and they created the Oglalla Sioux Civil Rights Organization as
a sort of opposition, which invited the American Indian Movement
to Pine Ridge in late February of nineteen seventy three,
and on February twenty seventh, they led the occupation of
(19:41):
wound Nie. At that time, the FBI had already been
on Pine Ridge.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
They had been.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Specifically tasked with jotting down the license plate numbers of
off reservation supporters of the Oglalla Sioux Civil Rights Organization,
anyone who's coming and going from out of state, et cetera.
So Dick wilson title was what exactly the president of
the tribe here was elected president.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Of the tribe. Okay, So there's a lot of discontent
with Dick Wilson's leadership of the tribe. Aim is brought
in to sort of assist in the resistance to Dick
Wilson and how he's running the tribe. Is it fair
to say that there was a sense that Dick Wilson
was kind of in the incahoots with the federal government
in ways that were undermining the Native American community there well.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
On many reservations, the main employer tended to be the
federal government, whether it was through federal grants, you worked
for the tribe, you worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
And so if you're the president or you're on council
on Typically that leads to sort of nepotism, right, so
there's a cornering of resources, right, housing, things like that,
(20:49):
access to employment that he was seen as sort of
gifting out. He has been accused and found plausible that
he stole a lot of money from the tribe, but
also was making deals to sell off parts of tribal
land for exploratory uranium mining that was happening in the
(21:11):
northern part of the reservation. You have to remember that
part of the reservation was actually confiscated by the federal
government during World War Two to use as a bombing range.
As the northern part of the reservation actually there were
I think it was like around fifty or so families
were forcefully relocated from that area, and the tribe was
trying to get it back, and it was happening through
(21:31):
grassroots sort of protests that people were trying to get
this back, and there was allegations that Dick Wilson was
making sweetheart deals with outside contractors, outside industry to sort
of open that up for exploratory uranium mining.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Wow, we're just going to take this land just for
bomb practice.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
That's yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Yeah, So sometimes it's like we have and that they
see as resource rich.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Yeah right, there's other time let's get the oil exactly.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Sometimes it's like it's it's valuable because it's wasteable, you know.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Yeah, there you go. Okay. So there's an emerging tension
among members of the tribe against Dick Wilson, the tribal leadership,
who is seen as being in cahoots with federal government
in some not good ways. What do they do?
Speaker 3 (22:28):
So they take over.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
The Woundannee massacre site, which listeners may have heard that name.
But in eighteen ninety, just several days after Christmas, the
Seventh Cavalry, just George Armstrong Custer's former regiment essentially massacred
around three hundred Lakota people who were surrendering at this
particular time under the leadership of Opunkleshka, or more commonly
(22:53):
known as a Chief Bigfoot. From what I can tell
from interviews I've conducted, I don't think they actually plan
on staying there for very long, but it ended up
turning into a seventy one day occupation. It's fascinating for
a lot of reasons. One is that the.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
Day that the occupation happened, a.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
General named Volney Warner, who's actually South Dakota native, gets
a call from Nixon's administration. He said, there's a twentieth
century Indian uprising. We need to deploy somebody from the
Department of Defense. So he flies to Ellsworth Air Force Base,
the base that was used to bomb just decades before
(23:31):
bomb the reservation. Flies to Ellsworth Air Force Base and
there he meets Joseph Trimbach, who is the Special Agent
in charge of the FBI, and then he also meets
top us Marshal Wayne Colburn. And in this initial meeting
it was like three o'clock in the morning. On the
next day, Joe Trimbach and the Special Agent in charge
(23:55):
basically asks the colonel. He was a colonel later became
promoted to a general, but he was a colonel at
the time. He asked Colonel Warner, he said, can you
send in the eighty second Airborne and just end the
siege right now?
Speaker 1 (24:08):
How far into this to this occupation are we at
this point?
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Hours? Hours, like mere hours.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
This is like three point thirty in the morning the
next day, so they occupied. They began the occupation at nighttime.
So the FBI was put into this position and you
can read this through Joe Trimbak's own words, in his
own perspective, he was put into this position of turning
the FBI into this kind of like paramilitary police force.
(24:34):
Because you have to remember, like Hoover's guys, like when
Fred Hampton was assassinated, it wasn't at the hands of
FBI agents. The FBI didn't have shootouts with the Black Panthers.
It was typically other law enforcement agencies that would have
shootouts with these organizations. They were kind of like the
behind the scenes guys who were always a step back.
(24:55):
And in fact that even interviewed a former FBI agent
named Colleen and I asked her straight up, I said,
why would any FBI agent want this job? And she says,
because it's easy. Imagine you're going after hardened criminals who
are like, murder is their occupation, and then you get
a sign to go tail a political activist. There's not
(25:16):
much risk, you know, in doing that. At that time,
the image of the FBI is that they're these kind
of like suit and tie, kind of like slick, you know, investigators.
They have these techniques, but they're investment. Yeah, they're investigative unit.
They're not really armed like that we see today, you know,
with the paramilitary sort of armed with assault rifles, you know,
(25:36):
doing all these tactics. And so to put it bluntly,
like Trimbak was pissed that he was putting his agents
out on the line, and his agents were pissed.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
So just to paint a visual picture here for our
mind's eye, sure, what was the town of Wounded Knee like?
Exactly what would it look like to drive by or
drive through?
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Wounini at that time was a village and a trading post,
like literally less than a dozen houses in the town
of Wundani. There was a church, a very visible white
church at the top of the hill where the mass
grave where umpug Gleshka's people were buried and the massacred
(26:17):
ghost dancers.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
I wonder if you could talk a little bit sort
of philosophically about the idea of occupying land as a
form of protest and or peaceful resistance.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
So the FBI had this narrative that it was because
of outside agitators like the American Indian Movement that the
arm takeover of Wundani happened. It was like their idea,
but as a lot of the locals said it would
say no, that was actually our idea. And in fact,
I told you about the bombing range initially back I
(26:48):
think it was nineteen seventy, locals occupied what was known
as Sheep Mountain, which is that bombing range. And later
on when they couldn't get an audience because it's on
the reservation, you have a protest on the reservation, like
who's going to show up in the middle of nowhere,
you know, So they decided and it was a group
of grandmothers, people like Murio Wakazoo and Lizzy Fastours who decide, hey,
(27:10):
like let's go to someplace more famous and like more iconics.
So they decided that they were going to occupy Mount
Rushmore in nineteen seventy to raise the issue of the
taken you know, bombing range lands at Sheep Mountains. So
they took over Mount Rushmore and it was you know,
several occupations and a multi yeared kind of process. But
(27:31):
this was also part and parcel to other federal property
takeovers like at Alcatraz Island in nineteen seventy or nineteen
sixty nine to nineteen seventy one. Alcatraz was a prison
island that was abandoned by the federal government. It was
also a place where, you know, hope people were sent
(27:51):
because they refused to send their children to boarding schools
in the late nineteenth century. So it kind of has
this notorious history. We see you know that movie that
Nicholas came movie The Rock or was it Nicholas Cage, Yeah,
and Sean Connery yeah, and Shuck Conry.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
Yeah. People might know it as like Rock the Rock.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Yes, Nicholas Cage is like, you think that guy's career
might be like on the tail end, but it keeps
like he keeps coming out with bangers man.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Yeah, No, he is crushing it and never stops crushing it.
So tell us what unfolded at the Wounded Knee occupation
and what role the FBI played.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
And maybe instead of giving like a play by play,
because it's seventy one days and there's different ebbs and flows.
But when we look at history, we tend to think
of things with oh, it led to this, and I
think a lot of people didn't know it was going
to lead to.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
This, you know.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
So over the course of seventy one days, the FBI
pumped in about half a million rounds into this tiny hamlet.
And it's point important to like remember that the people
on the inside, they were portrayed by the FBI as
these armed militants, and many of them were like comp veterans.
(29:00):
I've interviewed several people who were Vietnam veterans, so they
did have like combat experience, but everyone said they didn't
have ammunition. They most of their rifles were rusted out
like twenty two's. They didn't have a machine gun. There
was an AK forty seven, but that was smuggled from
the jungles of Vietnam by somebody, but nobody had an
(29:21):
ammunition for it. But it made a good sort of
image for the FBI to say, hey, look this communists
inspired Chinese inspired like uprising. They have an AK forty seven,
which that became the symbol for armed revolutions throughout the
world at that particular time. But on the inside, Wundanie,
(29:42):
you know, they declared the independent Oglala nation. They made
people citizens of this new nation, even non native people.
They proposed a succession plan to what would happen once
the tribal government relinquished its power was formally abolished, that
they would return to the eighteen sixty eight Fort Laramie
Treaty and the sort of governing principles of like traditional
(30:05):
Lakota culture, and a lot of these AIM members had
never really encountered indigenous spiritual life, and so there's also
this kind of renewal that was happening on the inside.
And wow, So it was a really you know, you
ask people, it's like, yeah, there was this immense danger.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
You know.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
I interviewed a Madonna Thunderhowk and she said, yeah, it
was the freest time of my life, even though we're
completely surrounded. There wasn't a lot of food, it was cold,
we didn't have electricity, all of those things. And she
brought in her ten year old son with her. So
she has said this to me on multiple occasions that
the American Indian Movement, if anything, was a movement of families.
(30:46):
It wasn't this militant, like violence prone organization led by men, right,
It was actually families were the heartbeat of the movement itself.
And if you read the FBI files, if you read
the media reports, it gives us a complete different point
of view because they only saw men as the leaders.
On the federal police side, a Colonel Warner, he was
(31:09):
in charge of essentially bringing in military equipment to arm
the US Marshals, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, police officers,
the FBI, and later was revealed the Goon Squad themselves
were getting these military grade assault rifles.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
Right.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
So the FBI was taking on, according to its own
words and report, a paramilitary function, something that it had
not done before in the field. It was teaching agents
to use shoulder mounted assault rifles, to use grenade launchers,
to launch tear gas canisters, to train in tactics.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
Right.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
So, the difference between the US Marshals and the FBI
at that time was the US Marshals tended to come from,
you know, non college educated, working class people, so they
had so many of their officers or marshals were Vietnam veterans,
so they had combat experience. They knew how to use
these weapons of war. Whereas the FBI they were like
(32:09):
highly educated urbanites who are not used to being in
the field in this way, and so it was for
them a lot of them was a traumatic experience. And
if you read some of the US Marshall reports, they're like,
we have to control these FBI guys. They keep freaking
out at the line, they're being overly hostile to the
Native families who's who live in this area, right, They're
(32:31):
they're being violent there. So it created this this kind
of cauldron of violence, so to speak, that was concentrated
in this area. One US Marshall was shot in paralyzed
from from the waist down, and two occupiers, a man
named Frank Clearwater who was not Native, was shot and
killed while he was sleeping in one of the bunker
(32:54):
or not in one of the bunkers in one of
the buildings. And then a Vietnam veteran and a local
from pine Rie named Buddy Lamont was shot in the
heart by a sniper's bullet after they had declared a ceasefire.
And this was towards the end. I think it was
in late April, towards the end of the occupation. And
it was Buddy Lamont's death that really ended it for
(33:16):
people on the inside because they were like, we don't
want any more people to die or to get hurt, right.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Yeah, sorry, But what was precipitating these outbursts, these firefights.
Were they just periodically shooting into wounded knee. I don't
remember how many rounds of ammunition, you said at first
half or something. Yeah, that's a lot of gunfire over
a long period of time.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yeah, And according to the documents, most of the firefights,
as they were called, happened at nighttime, and it could
be depending on which side you read or which stories
you read. You know, the FBI the US Marshals would
blame somebody for taking a potshot, and then it would
erupt into a firefight, and people would say, like the
night would literally be illuminated with flares to kind of
(34:02):
spot the occupiers on the inside. They were using tracer rounds,
and there were also the goons themselves put up their
own roadblock at the behest of Dick Wilson, and they
kind of instigated some firefights, almost getting into crossfire with
the FBI and the US Marshals who didn't like their
(34:22):
presence because they were very sort of aggressive.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Now, I want to shift gears into more recent events.
Listeners will likely be somewhat familiar with Standing Rock and
the Dakota Access pipeline protests that went on in twenty
sixteen and twenty seventeen. It seems like that was a
contemporary example of everything we've been talking about regarding FBI
surveillance and infiltration, and it represents some of the ways
(34:53):
that the Bureau has and has not evolved in its
interface with the Native American community.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
So twenty sixteen was a very similar year to twenty
twenty four. You know, as a presidential election, you have
an outgoing Democrat Trump A Trump is running Trump is
running again, and so you know twenty sixteen. What preceded
that was the successful defeat of the Keiston Excel pipeline
(35:22):
under the Obama administration. This happened through Indigenous led protests,
so there was a lot of there was a high
point at that particular moment. Of course, Trump later reversed
Obama's decision and you know, reinstated the Keystone Exel pipeline,
only to have it reversed again by the Biden administration.
But it was there was a high point, and there
was these there's organizing, There was grassroots organizing happening at
(35:45):
that time. And to be honest, the quota access pipeline
wasn't really on the radar of a lot of people.
They had just defeated this major tarzans pipeline that would
be pumping tartans from Alberta Canada down to Oklahoma across
our Tree territory in western South Dakota, so there wasn't
the kind of attention to the decod access pipeline. But nonetheless,
(36:07):
the Standing Tribe, not just grassroots organizers, but the tribe
itself had been steadfastly opposed to it from the very beginning,
especially when it was re routed from upriver from North
Dakota to downriver to North Dakota so that it would
impact the tribe more than it would impact the predominantly
white community that was north of it. This was a
(36:27):
decision made by the Army Corps of Engineers. So in
April of twenty sixteen, after a sort of contentious meeting
with the Army Corps of Engineers, a group of Standing
Rock activists got together and created the first camp that
later evolved into multiple camps, the Ochetti, Shakoi Camp, Sacred
(36:47):
Stone Camp, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
To be clear that this pipeline presents a massive danger
to our water system in the event of it possibly
failing or leaking, or any kind of natural disaster, which
we've seen from the oil and gas industry rampantly throughout
(37:10):
its existence. So any possible failure of this pipeline would
have devastating consequences to the ecosystem there on tribal land.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Yeah, Minnie Chouche, which is what we call the Missouri
River is the main drinking source for like millions of
people in the watershed. Even downriver it flows into the Mississippi,
which goes into the Gulf of Mexico. So it wasn't
just a native issue. It was like everyone's issue. And
even for Berthold Indian reservation, the Mandan, Hidatsa and Rikara tribes,
(37:43):
who has a very lucrative oil and gas industry whose
oil would be going through that pipeline, said this is.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
A bad idea.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
Even the people were profiting from it, like, this is
a bad idea, we oppose this. The fundamental issue is
tribal sovereignty right.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Right, And it's not just about hey, this pipeline would
be so annoying to have in our backyard. It's like,
oh no, this is an existential threat also. And then
on top of it is the fundamental underlying issue that
you just mentioned, tribal sovereignty.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
It's like if France decided they're going to build a
pipeline in Germany, the Germans would probably be mad about that.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Okay, how many people are now protesting this construction.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
I think that the height of the encampment itself or
the encampments is one of the top ten largest cities
in North Dakota, if it could be counted as a city,
So it's quite massive, you know. And yeah, the Aboma
administration didn't I wouldn't say like stopped it, but they
definitely put up some obstacles in trying to revisit the
(38:43):
environmental impact review process through the Army Corps of Engineers.
Of course, you know, Trump was just like, now we're
going to take any sort of protections off this and
just fast track it through. So it was a measure
to block it, but I think it was kind of
also understood that it could be reverse and so that's
I think that's important to point out, because you know,
it's still flowing to this day, and I haven't heard
(39:06):
anything from the Biden administration about the status of it,
even though the tribe has won some strategic lawsuits that
basically says it's flowing illegally, but the energy transfer partners
is willing to pay the fine for it to continue
to flow illegally, So you have an organization, a private
security company called Tiger Swan Right that is operating hand
(39:29):
in glove with the Martin County Sheriff's Department. You have
a federal Emergency Management legislation called eMac, which allows states
to solicit the support of other jurisdictions, local county sheriff's departments.
I think there's like ninety two different law enforcement jurisdictions
that were sent to Standing Rock to help police the protests.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
And that was widely kind.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
Of covered in the media at that time about the
private security and whatnot, But what wasn't covered so much
was the role of the FBI.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
So walk us through the FBI's connection to this Standing
Rock protests. And then, even though it's like fifty years later,
do you see any particular echoes of j Edgar Hoover's
FBI and co intel pro Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
So, reporting by Ellen Brown through Grist revealed that the FBI,
at any given point in time during the height of
the protests was operating anywhere between one to ten informants,
and in fact, in one of the depositions, one of
the FBI agents, Jacob O'Connell, this FBI agen was called
(40:36):
to the stand It was the first time that it
was actually revealed in a public record that there were
FBI informants, and he even admitted that one of these
informants had been arrested. It wasn't just you know, people
observing on the outside there. I would say, probably people
who are deeply embedded within the movement itself, probably Native people.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
We can only guess by what limited information. If you
even look at this deposition, O'Connell is more concerned about
the sources of income that are going into a standing
Rock protest. He's like, but yeah, we're just gathering intelligence.
But it raises the question about in a criminal investigation,
you're finding evidence to charge somebody out with an actual crime.
(41:19):
But this is not an actual crime to just get
money from people, Right, there were go fundmes that were
set up, So you're not investigating a crime, So what
are you doing? In some ways, it's creating a chilling
effect to say, now your personal privacy. If you decide
to go to a protest and you do a GoFundMe,
(41:41):
or you get a gas card or something like that,
or you do a fundraising event, you might be targeted
with FBI surveillance for exercising a First Amendment right. They're
looking at resources, they're tracking people. I don't know how
many times they stole Vernon Belcourt's briefcase, but it appears
multiple times, and they stole at least three briefcases of
(42:05):
this man. You know, he was a leader of the
American Indian Movement. But they were gathering intelligence. That was
their justifications. They're gathering intelligence because they never brought charges
against him after stealing his briefcase, because he wasn't engaged
in a criminal act. And I think we have to
ask ourselves what are those lines, because it's very unclear
to people. I think it's having even ben subpoena in myself,
(42:27):
and like the questions that I was asked by the
attorneys from the North Dakota side about whether I had
witnessed illegal activities, and I said, yes, of course I've
witnessed illegal activities.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
That's why I was there.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
You guys were viting leading Article six of the Constitutions
that says that treaties are the supreme law of the land.
Like we shouldn't have been there in the first vest
we're trying to legal activity.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
We were all standing there looking at it.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
The wait is I get wait, but what about you
guys like you didn't you see you guys do some
illegal stuff.
Speaker 3 (43:03):
Yeah, So that's striking.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
It's striking how similar that is to so much of
what Hoover's FBI was up to. Have we learned anything?
Are we any better off?
Speaker 2 (43:16):
I think you have to go back to what the
people who were targeted by these investigations were actually asking.
So you mentioned the Church Commission. You know, the Church
Commission skipped over the FBI surveillance, the CIA surveillance of
the American India Movement because they were supposed to have
(43:37):
a hearing just by chance happened after the shootout in
nineteen seventy five. You know, the Attorney General decided that
just wasn't a good idea because it might compromise that
investigation of the killing of two FBI agents. And so,
following this reign of terror, Oglala people had been calling
for a congressional investigation of the role of the FBI
(44:00):
and its participation in this time period and what it did,
what it knew. There's also the botched investigation of the
murdered American Indian Movement activist Anime alquash. That could be
a whole nother podcast episode, but it's been revealed through
FBI documents that the FBI knew within almost a week
(44:21):
of her assassination, who did it, when it happened, and
where it happened. She was murdered in December of nineteen
seventy five, but didn't formally identify her body until March
of nineteen seventy six of the following year, and then
never charged anybody out for it until thirty years later.
That's a pretty poor track record if you think about it.
(44:44):
If you knew at the time, who did it, when
it happened, why weren't they prosecuted. You know, there's so
many questions that need answering, and I'm not the person
to answer those questions. That you know, the ball is
in the FBI's court. I would say the ball should
be in Congress' court to provide actual oversight of this institution.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
I mean, full circle, help our listeners understand where the
Native American movement stands today.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
The water protector movement was a watershed moment, no pun intended,
but appreciate it. Yeah, I'll try to bring a little
bit of lightness to the serious topic.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
You're a comedian. How do you do serious?
Speaker 2 (45:27):
How do you do a serious podcast?
Speaker 1 (45:29):
Well, it's the podcast is fun, but I do find
myself like just getting pulled into the gravity of these situations.
And hats off to you because I appreciate the levity
that you've also been bringing to this conversation. We both
agree that Nick Cage movies are fantastic and that might
be the main takeaway from this conversation.
Speaker 2 (45:51):
But just to kind of get back to your question
and to answer it in a serious way, I think
you know, there's a qualitative impact of the water protector movement,
meaning that it really raised the consciousness of a generation
of Native people. But there's also the quantitative impact of
the water protector movement. There's a study that came out
(46:11):
several years ago by Old Change International and the Indigenous
Environmental Network that found that Indigenous led movements a challenging
fossil fuel extraction, pipelines, etc.
Speaker 3 (46:24):
From all stages of the fossil.
Speaker 2 (46:26):
Fuel life cycle, accounted for challenging a quarter of carbon emissions.
In greenhouse gas emissions from Canada and the United States,
two of the largest per capita polluters or emitters, and
that's a huge impact, right, Like we're punching well above
our weight class. We're like the minority of the minorities,
but yet pulling a challenging at least a quarter of
(46:49):
carbon emissions. That's pretty impactful, right, So it can be
measured in that sense, and I think that's something to
be proud about. I write this in my book Our
History is a Few Future. This interview that Madonna Thunderhawk
did with a young Pablo activist name Jennifer Marley, and
Madonna had been through at all FBI surveillance was at
(47:11):
wound in every major event of the Red Power era,
all the occupations, Alcatraz, et cetera. Was asked by jen
Marley like what, like, why would you do all these things?
It's obviously caused strain in your political life. And her answer,
without hesitation, was because I want to be a good
ancestor to future generations. And I think there's something really
compelling about that. You know that everyone who walked through
(47:33):
the Gates of Standing Rock wasn't necessarily an Indigenous person.
The movement was grounded in Indigenous values, but nonetheless, water
protector is not an Indigenous identity. It's a universal identity
when it's one that is future oriented, and I think
it can become really dark in these moments if we
think about the price that people had to pay, losing
(47:56):
your life, losing your freedom, losing your family. It's important
to recognize those sacrifices, but it's also important to think
about this is something that is not just a moment,
you know, it's a moment within a larger movement of history.
I think there's some comfort in that, and it gets
us beyond this really cynical and dark electoral cycles that
(48:19):
we tend to fall into every four years, and to
think about generations and not just election cycles.
Speaker 3 (48:27):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (48:27):
Very well, said Nick Astis. Thank you so much for
joining us here in the snaff universe. If I may
coin an incredibly stupid word, but no, it has been
really a privilege to learn from you today and I
really really appreciate the conversation.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Thanks Ed, I really I'm really honored to be on
this podcast.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
Snafoo is a production of iHeartRadio, Film Nation Entertainment, and
Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. This
season of Snafoo is based on the book The Burglary
The Discovery of Jay Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI written by
Betty Metzker. It's executive produced by me Ed Helms, Milan Papelka,
Mike Valbo, Whitney Donaldson, Andy Chug, Dylan Fagan, and Betty Metzker.
(49:16):
Our lead producers are Sarah Joyner and Alyssa Martino. Producer
is Stephen Wood. Our associate producer Tory Smith edited this
bonus episode. Nevin Callapoly is our production assistant. Fact checking
by Charles Richter. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Editing,
sound design and original music by Ben Chugg, Engineering and
technical direction by Nick Dooley. Theme music by Dan Rosatto.
(49:40):
Special thanks to Alison Cohen, Daniel Welsh, and Ben Riizak.
Additional thanks to director Joanna Hamilton for letting us use
some of the original interviews from her incredible documentary nineteen
seventy one. Finally, our deepest gratitude to the courageous Citizens
Commission to Investigate the FBI, Bill Davidan, Ralph Daniel Judy Fine, Gold,
(50:01):
Heath Forsyth, Bonnie Rains, John Rains, Sarah Schumer and Bob Williamson.
Host
Ed Helms
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