Name Jancita Deer | ||
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Born 1952 Rosebud Indian Reservation, South Dakota Died April 1975, Nebraska, United States | ||
Jancita Eagle Deer (1952 – April 4, 1975) was a Brulé Lakota who lived on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. She was notable for accusing William Janklow of having raped her in January 1967 when he was a poverty lawyer and Director of the Rosebud Sioux Legal Services program on the reservation. She had worked as his babysitter. At the time the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) did not prosecute the case.
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In October 1974 Dennis Banks acted on her behalf as the tribal attorney to revive the charges, as Janklow was a candidate for state attorney general. Eagle Deer in 1974 had Janklow disbarred from practicing in the Rosebud Sioux Tribal Court. No charges were brought against Janklow in the alleged rape case and in 1975 he was appointed by the White House to the national board of the Legal Services Corporation.
Eagle Deer was killed the night of April 4, 1975 in a hit-and-run accident in southern Nebraska. She had been seeing former American Indian Movement (AIM) activist Douglass Durham. He was discovered in late 1974 to be an FBI informant and expelled from AIM in March 1975. Janklow was elected governor of South Dakota in 1978, and twice served tenures of two terms.
Early life and education
Jancita Eagle Deer, a Brulé Lakota, was born and grew up on the Rosebud Indian Reservation. She attended local schools, including the Rosebud Boarding School on the Reservation.
On January 14, 1967, Eagle Deer reported to her school principal that Janklow had raped her at gunpoint the night before. He had been driving her home from her work as his family's babysitter. The principal took her to the hospital, where a doctor and nurse examined her. In his memoir, Dennis Banks, an AIM founder who became involved in the case in 1974, said his review of the records showed the medical personnel said the girl was in shock. He believed that she had been assaulted. The BIA police conducted the investigation on the reservation, and the FBI did not think there was sufficient evidence to prosecute. The journalist Steve Hendricks also wrote there was evidence of an assault, but the case was not prosecuted.
Later life
In the fall of 1974, before the election for state attorney general, for which Janklow was the Republican Party candidate, AIM leader Dennis Banks encouraged Eagle Deer to testify to the tribal court about the rape case to try to gain justice. Anna Mae Aquash, another high-ranking AIM member, had located Eagle Deer in Iowa, where she had gone to escape rumors about the incident. Aquash persuaded the young woman to return to the Rosebud Reservation to testify.
Eagle Deer testified at court. Janklow failed to appear in response to a BIA summons served through a US Marshal. Eagle Deer filed a petition (through her attorney Larry Leventhal and tribal attorney Dennis Banks) to disbar Janklow from the tribal court, to prevent him from practicing at the reservation. In their book on this period, Mario Gonzales, who served as judge of the Tribal Court, and the writer Elizabeth Cook-Lynn said the BIA allegedly had sent the police investigation files of the rape charges to its Aberdeen, South Dakota office to keep it out of the hands of the Tribal Court. The tribal court issued two misdemeanor warrants against Janklow and granted Eagle Deer's petition to disbar Janklow from practicing law on the Rosebud Reservation.
No arrest was made, and Janklow denied all allegations connected with the rape case. The writer Peter Matthiessen included a statement by Banks on this issue in his book, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (1983). Publication in paperback was delayed as Janklow sued both the author and publisher Viking Press for libel, but his suits were finally dismissed by the federal courts because of protection of free speech under the Constitution's First Amendment.
Jancita Eagle Deer had started seeing Douglass Durham in the fall of 1974, soon after her return to South Dakota. According to Banks' 2005 memoir, he was concerned about Durham's relationship with Eagle Deer, especially after Aquash told him that Durham was physically abusing the young woman. Banks said he confronted Durham about it and said he "should let her go." Banks said that in late 1974, Vernon Bellecourt and Clyde Bellecourt, leaders of AIM, shared documentary evidence showing that Durham was an FBI informant. Banks had earlier appointed him as head of security for AIM.
Banks continued working with Durham for some time before he and other leaders confronted him and expelled him from AIM in February 1975. They held a press conference in March, at which Durham also spoke and admitted he was an FBI informant. Durham had participated in the Wounded Knee Incident on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and been closely involved with Banks and other leaders since then.
Jancita Eagle Deer continued to see Durham. On the night of April 14, 1975, she was struck and killed by a car while on a rural road in southern Nebraska, 200 miles from home. The journalist Hendricks wrote that she had last been seen in the company of Durham. Eagle Deer's brother said a man had picked her up from their family house that night. The coroner's report said she may have been beaten before the accident, or injured in being pushed out of another car before being hit, but because of her injuries, he could not tell for sure.
After death
After Jancita Eagle Deer's death, her step-mother Delphine Eagle Deer tried to take up her case against Janklow. Delphine Eagle Deer was the sister of Leonard Crow Dog, a spiritual leader in AIM. About nine months later in 1976, Delphine Eagle Deer was found beaten to death on the Rosebud reservation. According to Banks' memoir, she was beaten by a BIA policeman (unnamed), who pleaded drunkenness in his defense and was not charged. The writer Hendricks referred to the case as an unsolved murder.
Janklow was later convicted of vehicular manslaughter for killing a motorcyclist in South Dakota in 2003. He died of terminal brain cancer on January 12, 2012.