The Unquiet Grave by Steve Hendricks (2006, Hardcover)

I didn't buy the book Unquiet Grave by Steve B. Hendricks. I got it from the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Library.It was the most complete presentation I have read about the life and times of the American Indian Movement I knew.I believe that the author did the best effort he could with available information thus far gathering the factual information in the book and endnotes.
Eventhough it has as many blanks as blacked out government documents it still brought closure of much I had heard through the moccasin telegraph. It fulfilled my need to know about different situations I had experienced in AIM, heard, or had read in bits and peices elsewhere.
Steve Hendrickson was the first Author to spell out in detail much of the information that is currently available about the deaths of Anna Mae Aquash,Ray Robinson,the Two FBI agents and people on Pine Ridge killed in the aftermath of Wounded Knee in 1973.
I never joined many organizations in life but I did join the Great Lakes Indian Youth Alliance and the American Indian Movement in their early days.I still cannot not believe the impact that simple action had on my total life.For some strange reasons unknown to me I always felt the American Indians suffered the same fate as the Jewish people and I committed early to do what ever I could do to help them overcome the daily injustices of the dominant society.
I first remember experiencing the double standards and unfairmess of racism in grade school as we the poor whites and Indian kids were lined up in the hallways whenever head lice were discovered.The Teachers only seemed to think certain kids had the head lice.Their kids were never in the head check lines. We all eventually got lice or bedbugs in the small winter closed schools of Northern Michigan.
I visited and lived in American Indian homes and It appeared that closed racial doors and injustice created for them day in and day out poverty and dysfunction.
When the Great Lakes Indian Youth Alliance and the American Indian movement came into my life I began to see a small glimmer of hope. I saw Indian individuals and communities begin to have the same hope as the movement gained momentum. I saw people begin to increase their interest in their spirituality,higher education,their history,and most of all their own self actualization and determination.
The American Indian Movement was the one organization that gave a voice to many other similar efforts that were rising at the same time. It was a unusual time in history for the whole Civil Rights movement the Indian people, the First Americans, were again the last to finally get some national recognition someplace other than the fake Hollywood movies.
DR Richard Thomas African Am Historian at MSU asked me, "who is documenting the movement?" I said, "no one is really documenting the movement because the Indian people believe in their oral traditions." He said, "that movement is so important that someone must document it."I don't believe it ever was except for bits and peices found here and there after the fact.Photographs are severly limited except those still in the COINTELPRO,Federal Marshall's and FBI files.
There was one good book of photos published by Akawsasne Notes before that newspaper was burnt to the ground.It is rare "The Voices of Wounded Knee As Told By The Participants" both of these eBay found books should be in every Library or hands of serious American Indian Studies or Legal students. What a necessary resource.