Who Is the Teacher-Detective Candy Hamilton?

In December 1975, the American Indian Movement (AIM) activist Anna Mae Aquash, the Canadian Indian mother of two young schoolgirls (above), was kidnapped, interrogated, raped, and murdered. Before her murder, she was held at the Rapid City office/house of the Wounded Knee Legal Defense Offense Committe (WKLDOC). This organization defended AIM members for crimes they were accused of during their cowardly 1973 terrorist attack on the historic village of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

One theory for the motive behind the Aquash murder is that the AIM thought Aquash was an FBI informant. Aquash might also have been able to link Leonard Peltier to the 6-26-75 murder of two FBI agents on Pine Ridge Indian reservation. People who want an honest, fact-based account of what happened to Anna Mae Aquash should read American Indian Mafia by Joseph and John Trimbach, the AIM Myth Busters blog, and the Aquash file at News from Indian Country.

One Indian AIMster, Arlo Looking Cloud, is already in prison for the murder of Anna Mae Aquash. Three more people have been indicted by state and federal authorities: Richard Marshall, John Graham, and Thelma Rios. It is possible that more important AIMsters will be indicted for complicity in Anna Mae's brutal murder. Information about the backgrounds of Marshall, Graham, and Rios can be found by searching this blog. Marshall, for example, is the former bodyguard of Russell Means and has already served time for another murder.

When Looking Cloud was tried and convicted of the Aquash murder in 2004, Candy Hamilton, a teacher, Hollywood film consultant, and political activist who had once worked as a media specialist or propagandist for the WKLDOC, testified about who was at the apartment of Thelma Rios's mother and about who subsequently attended the meeting of AIMsters who were holding Aquash at the WKLDOC house/office.

Candy Hamilton testified that she couldn't understand any of the discussion in the front room:

I could hear voices, but I didn't hear any of the conversation.

Candy Hamilton, who is reportedly also a former correspondent for the Rapid City Journal, testified that she stayed upstairs most of the day and saw Anna Mae Aquash only briefly when she (Hamilton) went to the kitchen and briefly spoke with her very distraught friend who was getting a cup of coffee.

Hamilton told the court the names of most of the people in the front room. She said she didn't remember the last name of a "legal worker" nicknamed "Red."

I found the teacher's testimony about the last day of her friend's life insincere and unconvincing. She didn't seem like an innocent teacher or a dedicated Indian rights activist to me. If Hamilton were Anna Mae's true friend and a real Indian rights activist, why didn't she call the police or help her friend escape?

I first read the name Candy Hamilton in a 1985 article written by the discredited former professor Ward Churchill and published in the KGB-sponsored Covert Acton Information Bulletin. According to a KGB archivist named Vasili Mitrokhin and the British scholar Christopher Andrews, the CAIB specialized in writing defamatory articles about the CIA and FBI. The former KGB archivist Mitrokhin also revealed that the AIM lawyer and writer Mark Lane had a relationship with the Soviet KGB through Soviet journalists such as Genrikh Borovik, the brother-in-law of KGB chief Kryuchkov, one of the main plotters who orchestrated the kidnapping Gorbachev and his wife during the 1991 coup attempt.

Churchill claimed in his propagandistic CAIB article that an independent researcher named Candy Hamilton was his source for his apocryphal claim that FBI-backed death squads had murdered 342 Indians on Pine Ridge. That's some fancy detective work for a teacher!

As far as I know, independent researcher Hamilton, who has a master's degree, has never published any documentation about these supposed 342 murders. Still, as far as I know, independent researcher Candy Hamilton has never disputed what the discredited Ward Churchill attributes to her. This claim that the FBI backed death squads that killed 342 Indians has no credibility because it was published by the KGB and written by a dishonest "scholar" who has finally been fired from his tenured position at the University of Colorado.

During the 2004 Looking Cloud trial, Hamilton testified that she teaches at the Black Hills State University (BHSU) in the career learning center. An Internet profile of Hamilton posted by the South Dakota Arts Council also notes that she has a master's degree and served as a consultant on the film Incident at Oglala and Life of Leonard Peltier:

Candy Hamilton is a published poet and story writer. In addition to completing her master’s degree at USD, Hamilton has worked as a researcher for film companies, serving as a consultant to the films Incident at Oglala and Life of Leonard Peltier. Her poetry has been included in Woven on the Wind (2001), Prairie Peaks and Skies (1998) and a variety of other collections. Her articles and stories have been published in Christian Science Monitor, People, South Dakota Magazine and Winds of Change, among others. An instructor for the Career Learning Center in Rapid City and Black Hills State University, Hamilton’s residencies will focus on the impact of reading on writing and vice versa, using sensory descriptions to enliven short fiction, personal essays and poetry. Using the five physical senses and emotions improves writing. Reading skills, vocabulary, observation skills and general communication create strong writing. Residency activities may include collecting family stories and developing family reading/writing time. Presentations are available for adults or children.

I thought it was interesting that the story writer Hamilton was a consultant for the propagandistic film Incident at Oglala because it was possibly another connection between her and Ward Churchill: I once read that AIMster Robert Robideau claimed that "the now infamous Mr. X segment filmed for Incident at Oglala was made in Ward Churchill's home."

Like Candy Hamilton, the discredited ex-professor Ward Churchill has also taught at BHSU in Spearfish, South Dakota. Ward Churchill even claims he was travelling though Pine Ridge Indian reservation to take up a faculty position at Spearfish when he witnessed the FBI searching for the killers of two FBI agents.

It seems to me that the story writer Candy Hamilton---like Ward Churchill---is really a propagandist, not an Indian rights activist. She is certainly not what Ward Churchill called her: an independent researcher. According to Hamilton's own testimony in court, she worked as a media person on behalf of the WKLDOC.

How did Candy Hamilton protect Anna Mae's rights? The teacher didn't help her friend, the mother of two little schoolgirls, at all. She just claimed that she didn't know what was being discussed in the WKLDOC house or that her friend was in danger.

If Candy Hamilton was so oblivious that she didn't suspect that a murder plot against an Indian woman was being hatched in the WKLDOC office/house right under her nose, how did this teacher-detective ever manage the amazing feat of discovering that FBI-backed death squads killed 342 Indians in the wilderness of of Pine Ridge?

Story writer Candy Hamilton works as a teacher, but in my opinion she is really a propagandist who whitewashes the crimes of the AIM/WKLDOC and Leonard Peltier. The story writer is very good at making propaganda, too. She even consults on Hollywood movies! It's hard for me to understand how a teacher-story writer who is so brilliant that she uncovers 342 FBI-backed murders and so clever that she is a consultant to Hollywood movies would be so oblivious that she didn't notice what was happening to her friend in the WKLDOC house.

I wonder why this teacher-story teller, who claims to be an activist for Indian issues, feels called to make propaganda films that whitewash AIM/WKLDOC killers. I would like to know how she became a "source" for Ward Churchill's risible claim that the FBI backed death squads that killed 342 Pine Ridge Indians.

Hopefully, when the guilty are tried for Anna Mae's murder, the prosecutor will ask the brilliant story teller and writing teacher, who supposedly documented 342 FBI-backed murders and who consulted for Hollywood, some of the questions that trouble me about her court testimony and about her subsequent career as an independent researcher and Hollywood consultant.

I just can't get over the fact that the amazing teacher-detective supposedly documented the murders of 342 Indians but couldn't be more helpful in uncovering the killer of just one Indian mother, her friend Anna Mae Aquash, whose murder was plotted in the WKLDOC office while she was there.