In the following years, Aquash was active in protests to draw positive government action and acknowledgement of First Nations and Native American civil rights in Canada and the United States.

[3] On February 24, Aquash's body was found in Wanblee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota; she initially was determined to have died from exposure by a Bureau of Indian Affairs medical examiner, but after a second autopsy two weeks later, it was found that she had been murdered by an execution-style gunshot to the head.

Numerous Aquash supporters and her daughters believe that higher-level AIM officials, including Leonard Peltier, ordered her murder, fearing she was an FBI informant.

[8][9] Annie Mae Pictou was born into the Mi'kmaq First Nation at Indian Brook Reserve in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia.

On Thanksgiving Day 1970, AIM activists in Boston held a major protest against the Mayflower II celebration at the harbor by boarding and seizing the ship.

[15] In 1973, Nogeeshik and Anna Mae traveled together to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota to join AIM activists and Oglala Lakota in what developed as the 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee, which ended on May 8, 1973.

She worked on the Red Schoolhouse project, for a culturally based school for the numerous American Indian students who lived in the city.

That year she also participated in the armed occupation at Anicinabe Park in Kenora, Ontario by Ojibwe activists and AIM supporters.

[19] In January 1975, Aquash worked with the Menominee Warriors Society in the month-long armed occupation of the Alexian Brothers Novitiate at Gresham, Wisconsin.

[19] The Catholic abbey had been closed and abandoned, and the Menominee wanted the property returned to the tribe, as the land had originally been appropriated by the Alexian Brothers for their mission.

[21] Leaders were nervous since they had discovered on March 12, 1975, that Douglas Durham, a prominent member who by then had been appointed as head of security for AIM, was an FBI informant.

[10] Durham gained the trust of leaders in AIM over the two years he went undetected, and created his false appearance by, "dying his hair black, wearing contact lenses and adopting the AIM-style dress - ribbon shirts, turquoise and silver jewellery and beadwork.

[20][23] When Banks went into hiding, Aquash and Darlene (Ka-Mook) Nichols joined him at various times in late 1975 as he along with Peltier and others moved throughout the West for several months in an R.V., lent by Marlon Brando, an AIM sympathizer.

According to Ka-Mook Nichols, while camping in Washington in October 1975, Peltier bragged to her, Annie Mae and others about shooting the two FBI agents on June 26, 1975.

[24] On November 14, 1975, while heading south through Oregon, a state trooper pulled over the R.V., full of guns and explosives, and ordered everybody out.

[25][24][26] After having spent ten days in jail, Annie Mae Aquash was released on bail in Pierre, South Dakota on November 24.

On March 10, 1976, eight days after the burial, Aquash's remains were exhumed due to requests made by the American Indian Movement and her family.

She dedicated her life to the movement, to righting all the injustices that she could, and to pick somebody out and launch their little cointelpro program on her, to bad jacket her to the point where she ends up dead – whoever did it – let's look at what the reasons are.

[30]In a January 2002 editorial in the News from Indian Country, DeMain said that he had met with several people who reported hearing Leonard Peltier in 1975 admit the shootings of the two FBI agents on June 26, 1975, at the Pine Ridge Reservation.

In January 2003, a fourth federal grand jury was called in Rapid City to hear testimony about the murder of Aquash.

"[10] On March 20, 2003, a federal grand jury indicted Looking Cloud (an Oglala Lakota) and Graham (aka John Boy Patton; a Southern Tutchone Athabascan) from Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada for her murder.

Although Clarke, Graham's adopted aunt, was alleged to have been involved, she was not indicted; by then, she was in failing health and being cared for in a nursing home.

Bruce Ellison, who has been Leonard Peltier's lawyer since the 1970s,[32] invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination and refused to testify at the grand jury hearings on charges against Looking Cloud or at his trial in 2004.

Although no physical evidence linking Looking Cloud to the crime was presented, a videotape was shown in which he admitted to having been at the scene of the murder, but said he was not aware that Aquash was going to be killed.

In an interview, recorded in the studios of Pacifica Radio KPFK, Los Angeles March 30, 2004, when being asked by Antoinette Nora Claypoole about the last time he saw Annie Mae Aquash, Graham replied: "Last time when we drove from Denver to Pine Ridge, and you know that ride there going to Pine Ridge, and talking with her, gearing up.

"[41] In August 2008, a federal grand jury indicted Vine Richard "Dick" Marshall with aiding and abetting the murder.

It was alleged that Graham, Looking Cloud, and Theda Nelson Clarke had taken Aquash to Marshall's house, where they held her, then took her to be executed in a far corner of the reservation.

[44] Already in poor health, she avoided a trial on murder charges by agreeing to a plea bargain "that acknowledged her role in the events leading up to Aquash's death."

[45] Although names were redacted in her plea agreement at court, she had said she heard two people ordering Aquash to be brought from Denver to Rapid City and that there was a discussion about "offing her".

Before her death, Aquash allegedly said FBI Special Agent David Price threatened she would die within the year if she refused to inform on Leonard Peltier.