Taking AIM For a Ride

"IT'S COLD HERE!" said Carol Means as she felt the below-zero temperatures outside the Twin Cities airport. She was understandably testy: her husband Russell faced 85 years in prison for his part in last year's Wounded Knee uprising, and his trial would begin the next day.

St. Paul, where the trial is being held, has been colder and bleaker than usual this January. For two weeks after New Year's the temperature seldom rose above zero. The icy snow squeaked beneath footsteps like balloons rubbed together.

This year, two things made the brisk monotony of a Minnesota January more bearable: the upcoming Super Bowl and the Wounded Knee trial. But for all the publicity focused on the "Indian Trial of the Century" (in the words of defense attorney William Kunstler), most Minnesotans seemed more interested in Vikings than Indians.

As the trial began, there was surprising apathy in the Twin Cities--among non-Indians, that is. But Indians view the trial as a crucial event in their lives, whether they were personally involved or not. Technically, Russell Means and Dennis Banks are on trial for conspiracy, riot, arson and assaulting Federal officers. In actuality, the entire history of governmental policy toward Indians is on trial in St. Paul.

When I arrived at the legal defense offices to work as a driver, I was surprised that so few whites had volunteered to aid the American Indian Movement. A news conference was beginning as I wormed my way through the tight security. (AIM leaders fear that the government has infiltrated their ranks; they keep a 24-hour-a-day vigil at the defense headquarters.)

Means and Banks made statements about Indian solidarity and wondered aloud why the jury panel was all white. Network reporters began to wander out, and local cameramen started shooting footage of onlookers instead of the speakers. Then Kunstler predicted that the government's case would flop in the Wounded Knee trial, just as it has in every other political trial of the last few years.

Kunstler kept stressing the trial's political angle in court, too. Later that week, he interrupted the dull jury selection with a charge--an insinuation, really--that FBI agents had tried to sway local news coverage of the event. The spectators--largely Indian and all Watergate-conscious--sat up in their seats when they heard this. But the judge and one of the prosecutors couldn't understand what Kunstler was so riled about.

Judge Fred Nichol (a folksy, jocular man who tries so hard to make jurors feel comfortable that they feel ill at ease) said that newspapermen were too tough to be influenced by the government. The prosecutor, a Young Republican type, said, "I'm not aware of any law forbidding conversations between agents of the federal government and newspaper editors!" He glanced at the spectators to see how his remark had come off.

Back at the pre-trial press conference, Kunstler was still speaking, and rumors were floating around the room that Jane Fonda or Marlon Brando was going to appear that night at an AIM rally, when someone told me to pick up Carol Means.

Getting off the plane, Carol Means was tired and tense. She didn't want to talk about her husband's trial. But when I told her I hoped that extensive publicity wouldn't turn the trial into a circus, she reacted sharply:

"Why would anyone want to turn the trial into a circus? We certainly don't! Russell and Dennis could spend the rest of their lives in jail!"

As Carol Means hoped, the trial has not been turned into a circus, but has been low-key and businesslike thus far, unlike the occupation, which became a full-blown "media event."

When Carol Means and I arrived at the defense office, security was as tight as ever, even though the press-conference trappings were gone. One AIM member eyed a bunch of press releases and fact sheets I had picked up. "What have you got there?" he asked suspiciously. "Let me take a look at that stuff." Several Indians talked among themselves and painted banners: REMEMBER WOUNDED KNEE. HONOR THE 1868 TREATIES. Russell Means walked around the room, glaring at people, asking his wife where they were going to spend the night. Finally, Dennis Banks emerged from a back room and asked me to drive him, his wife and brother to Minneapolis.

In the car, the Banks family was subdued, but not as visibly tense as Means or his wife. I asked Mark Banks, Dennis's brother, if he thought the 1868 treaty between the U.S. government and the Sioux would be admissible evidence; he said he certainly hoped so. (But this defense tactic could backfire: The treaty grants much of western South Dakota to the Sioux, but it also permits Federal forces to intervene in disturbances on that land.)

Mark Banks turned to his brother in the back seat, breathed deeply with anticipation of the trial's beginning, and said, "Well, Dennis, tomorrow's the day of reckoning. How do you like the prospect of 85 years in prison?" Dennis Banks burst out laughing, sat back, and smiled grimly.