Aquash, Anna Mae, 1945-1975

Annie Mae Aquash, also known as Naguset Eask, (b. March 27, 1945, Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia-d. circa mid-December 1975) was a First Nations activist from Nova Scotia, Canada, who moved to Boston in the 1960s and joined American Indians in education and resistance. She was part of the American Indian Movement in the Wounded Knee incident at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, United States in 1973. Aquash participated in the 1972 Trail of Broken Treaties and occupation of the Department of Interior headquarters in Washington, DC; and protest to draw government action and acknowledgement of First Nations and Native American civil rights in Canada and Wisconsin in the following years. After she disappeared in late 1975, there were rumors she had been killed. On February 24, 1976, her body was found on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota; she was initially determined to have died from exposure but was found to have been murdered by an execution-style gunshot. Initially, her death was covered up and the body declared to be "unidentifiable". The FBI disseminated rumours that she had been an informant. She was thirty years old at the time of her death.