SHIPROCK, N.M. (AP) Even now, 27 years later, it takes Norman Patrick Brown considerable time to find the words still laced with sorrow, apologies for what happened that fateful morning on the Pine Ridge, S.D., reservation, and the miserable aftermath.
Brown, now 42, was 15 years old when he witnessed a shootout between federal agents and members of the American Indian Movement, during which two FBI agents died.
He now lives in Shiprock working in health promotion and disease prevention programs for the Navajo Nation and also produces films about life on the reservation.
There is a reason he will discuss his involvement now. "This will help with closure. I hope a lot of people will understand," Brown said.
Brown testified against fellow AIM members in exchange for immunity and protection for his family, he said.
He first testified against Bob Robideau and Darrelle "Dino" Butler, two leaders of the group, during a trial in 1976 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Brown, however, shocked the courtroom crowd by recanting his testimony, stressing that he gave false information to the grand jury under duress.
The men were acquitted, but that didn't help Brown avoid criticism from fellow AIM members. Brown went to Canada to seek political asylum.
"When I went back (to AIM), the movement was really disappointed in me. Nobody wanted to talk to me," Brown said. "I had done the gravest thing: testify against my brothers in the struggle."
A year later in 1977 in a Fargo, N.D., court room, Brown was compelled to testify against Leonard Peltier. This time, the jury was sequestered before Brown could recant.
"They wanted me to put (Peltier) at the scene of the shooting (of the two FBI officers)," Brown said.
In truth, Brown said he never saw Peltier shoot the agents from long range, and then as the federal government case alleges walk down from a bluff to the flat-lying area to finish them off.
He had seen Peltier exchange fire with the agents, however.
Brown says he believes Peltier who was convicted of their murders is innocent.
Brown, one of five children born to Navajo Code Talker Tsosie Herman Brown and Mary Elizabeth Brown, went to his first AIM conference in 1973, at age 13. The event came after the AIM occupation of Wounded Knee, a 71-day standoff with the U.S. military to protest treatment of Indians by the federal government.
"There, I learned what sovereignty was ... it was a new world that just opened to me," Brown said.
Brown became heavily involved with the group, fighting for native treaty rights and assistance to other Native Americans.
AIM was viewed by whites as always negative, seeming to involve fears of violent, trouble-making Indians, Brown said.
But what AIM was actually about, he said, was traveling to assist Native Americans who needed protection and support. AIM movements did often involve armed protest and standoffs.
Brown took part in his first armed conflict in Kenora, Ontario, Canada in 1974 when members of AIM traveled to Ojibwe land to assist in a standoff against the city, which was trying to commandeer part of the land for a park.
The summer of 1975, Brown attended his third AIM conference in Farmington. A group of elders invited AIM members to Oglala land on the Pine Ridge reservation.
There, an ongoing battle had pitted the traditional, full blooded-Sioux against the government-backed "mixed bloods," who followed tribe leader Dick Wilson.
The Pine Ridge reservation had one of the highest per capita murder rates in the United States many of which were unsolved. Nearly all of the tribal members carried guns and people rarely ventured outside their homes, Brown said.
"We were invited to Pine Ridge because of the beatings, the killings," Brown said. "It was really bad, very violent there. We knew what we were getting into."
Heavy thunderstorms and tornado winds shook the AIM encampment the night before the shootout. The morning of June 26, 1975, was sunny and pleasant.
Brown recalls getting ready to eat an oatmeal concoction "because that's all we had." He wasn't given time his meal, as that's when the shooting erupted between AIM members and the two FBI agents.
The agents had entered the Jumping Bull family property looking for a 19-year-old wanted for theft. What ensued was chaos and violence.
"At first, we thought that some of us might be target shooting," he said. "Then I heard the whiz of bullets over my head, and fell down."
Brown got up, and he and Stuntz grabbed rifles and ran up to the bluff.
Brown feared for the safety of the families within the Jumping Bull residences, mainly mothers with small children and pregnant women that morning.
Soon after the shooting erupted, two Bureau of Indian Affairs police units, carrying FBI agents, were seen coming in from Highway 18. Then hundreds of law enforcement officers descended on Oglala Sioux land to exchange fire with AIM members.
Brown said it's incredible that only three people died that day.
"It was like a pre-planned raid," he said.
Brown used a single-shot .22 caliber rifle, to burst the front tire of the lead car speeding along 200 yards away from him.
The group suffered from dehydration, sunburn and cracked lips. At one point they were surrounded, and no one gave out much hope for survival, Stuntz had already been shot from long range and killed.
The men and women of AIM did manage to escape. Though law enforcement had set up roadblocks across the reservation, the group hid in a culvert under the main road. The group ran for the hills, hiding in the homes of several Lakota families.
The escapees regrouped on the Rosebud reservation, where most were eventually caught and charged with felony indictments.
Brown was later interrogated in Chinle by the driver of the BIA car. That is when he made the "agreement" to testify against his friends, he said.
The aftermath of the trials burdened Brown and separated him from his friends.
Two years ago, during the 25th anniversary of the incident, Brown returned to the site of the shootings. He sprinkled offerings of tobacco for his fallen friend and for the two slain officers.
Brown said that he prayed that his own life be returned to him. He said he put himself through the pain of returning to the site to "bring a 15-year-old boy home."
Brown says his work now is designed for healing powers within Navajo communities. Outside of work, he's the president of a budding grassroots organization, Dine Nationalists, which seeks grants for impoverished communities.
"I'm a former AIM activist now. I stepped back from that years ago. I put down my gun, and picked up a corn pollen camera," Brown said, referring to the substance used by Navajos in ceremonial practices.
One of Brown's films will be on display in August and the Indian Film Festival in Santa Fe.
