project (see entry for APRIL 30, 1971), the Cana-
dian government negotiates the James Bay and
Northern Quebec Agreement with these groups.
The first Native claims settlement in modern
Canada, it awards the Cree, Inuit, and Innu
$232.5 million and allows them to retain owner-
ship of 2,140 square miles of land surrounding
their communities in Quebec. The Natives are
also granted hunting and fishing rights in other
areas.
1976The Catawba Pottery Association is founded.
The Catawba form the Catawba Pottery Association
to sponsor classes for tribal members in making tra-
ditional Catawba pottery, known for its distinctive
orange, brown, and black coloring. By giving mas-
ter potters a chance to instruct a new generation in
this 4,000-year-old art, the association will help the
Catawba become the only eastern tribe to retain the
pottery traditions of ancient ancestors.
January 31
Byron DeSersa is killed by Pine Ridge police.
In a January 17 vote, incumbent Dick Wilson lost
his bid for reelection as tribal council president of
the Lakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation (see entry for
FEBRUARY 28, 1973). With his term not officially
to end until April, he sends 15 tribal policemen
into the new president Al Trimble’s hometown of
Wanblee. After a four-mile, high-speed chase, the
police open fire on a car driven by Byron DeSersa—
the son of the editor of a reservation newspaper
highly critical of Wilson and the great-grandson
of the famous Lakota medicine man Black Elk (see
entry for 1932). The car’s five passengers manage
to flee, but DeSersa, shot in the leg, is left to bleed
to death while the policemen look on. Two of the
policemen will later serve two years in jail for the
murder. Two others accused of the crime will be
acquitted after claiming they acted in self-defense,
even though no one in DeSersa’s car was armed.
February 24The corpse of American Indian Movement
activist Anna Mae Aquash is found.
The badly decomposed body of a young woman
is discovered on a ranch near South Dakota’s Pine
Ridge Reservation. A doctor for the Bureau of In-
dian Affairs (BIA) concludes that the woman died of
exposure, possibly after passing out during a night
of heavy drinking. For reasons unclear, the corpse’s
hands are cut off and shipped to FBI headquarters
in Washington, D.C., before the body is buried in
an unmarked grave.In 1998 Edgar Bear Runner, a coordinator of the 25th
anniversary of the Wounded Knee occupation, stands
before the grave of murdered AIM activist Anna Mae
Aquash. (AP/Wide World Photos)