John Graham is a Canadian, Yukoner, Champagne and Aishihik First Nations citizen, and former Native American activist.
[2][9] Graham was born in Whitehorse,[10] Yukon, Canada and is a member of the Southern Tutchone Champagne and Aishihik First Nations people.
In Vancouver, Graham also participated as a member the Beothuck Patrol, a First Nations group which conducted street level monitoring of police harassment.
[14] Following the conclusion of the Native Peoples' Caravan, Graham took part in his first armed occupation[1] when he traveled to the state of New York group to provide support (as general security) to the Mohawk land re-occupation at Ganienkeh, also known as Eagle Lake.
During the summer 1981, the AIM Survival Group opened the Anne Mae Aquash Survival Camp near the community of Pinehouse, located in northern Saskatchewan, on the Key Lake road, which was done to create a forum in which Native rights issues and the problems of the uranium industry could be openly discussed.
[14] During the months of May and June in 1984, Graham spoke throughout Europe, on a tour organized by European anti-nuclear, Native rights and environmental groups to raise awareness of the impact of uranium mining in Canada on Indigenous Canadians.
Aquash was then forcefully taken to an apartment in Rapid City owned by Russell Means' brother, where she was interrogated and, prosecutors charge, held captive, tortured and raped by Graham.
[23] The coroner's report indicated that in addition to the fatal gunshot wound, exposure caused the death of Aquash,[24] as her body was frozen by the time it was discovered.
[citation needed] On 30 March 2003, Graham was charged with the 1975 first-degree murder/pre-meditated murder of Anna Mae[3] in the United States.
[25] Graham resisted extradition, and despite being put under house arrest in December 2003, he filed an appeal within British Columbia to keep the case from moving forward.
"[31] Ecoffey, the former common-law wife of AIM leader Dennis Banks, was forbidden by Circuit Court Judge John Delaney from telling jurors exactly what she alleges group member Leonard Peltier told her six months before Aquash was killed.
[40] The three-judge panel concurred that felony murder was not written in the original extradition request authored by the United States.