Who Would Unbraid Her Hair : the Legend of Annie Mae

Antoinette Nora Claypoole has unleashed a monster of a book that delves deeper into the mysteries surrounding the murder of Annie Mae Pictou-Aquash than many of her one-time friends and lovers will be comfortable with. The book, _Who would unbraid her hair: The legend of annie mae_, published by anam cara press, was released in November, 1999.

Claypoole's book is, like Anna Mae's life, a harrowing journey into the maze of idealism, paranoia, and blind spots of Indian activism and its nemesis, the miscellaneous COINTELPRO operations run by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Claypoole's intentions for the book, as Anna Mae's for her life, are nothing but good: "The continual intention of my work is to encourage a healing of the fear and sorrow, anger and injustice which surround the memory of Annie Mae, and to help her wondering spirit settle into her journey home" (p. xiv). And in the end, both Anna Mae and Antoinette Nora were stymied, through no fault of the! ir own, Anna Mae by a bullet through the back of her head, and Claypoole by a pervasive silence that still blankets Indian Country like a shroud.