AIM: Russell Means

Russell Means

His mission is larger than life.

By Nancy Clark, Emerging Markets Magazine, February 2000

Within the last five years American Indian Russell Means has appeared in many movies and television series, made speeches and CDs, written his autobiography, and created an Internet site where he hawks t-shirts and philosophy. Means has taken his message about the oppressed American Indian to the world and found his public wanting for more. What's perhaps most curious about this new-age revolutionary is that he wields an impact that is all Hollywood.

Russell Means is entering his 61st winter...not quietly. Perhaps more than any other American Indian in this country's history, Means has managed to catapult the plight of the American Indian to top-of-mind status. Unlike his native ancestors-Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull-Means has used the media (an advantage they didn't have) to further his political activism, and in the process gained a level of fame that allows him access, influence, and indulgence.

Fame is a powerful force, especially when it recasts purpose. Each of us has, of course, our destiny here on earth. But how that plays out and ultimately impacts others is a phenomenon nourished in the process. What drives an individual to achieve the remarkable remains a very personal journey. Means' journey began when he was born on the Pine Ridge Sioux Reservation in South Dakota in November 1939. It's the place where Means' heart still lives and where he's in the process of building a Total Immersion School, a Lakota cultural project for kindergarten through third grade.

Means spent his earliest years growing up on his mother's reservation, the Yankton Sioux Reservation. When he was in second grade, the family moved to northern California so that his father, a master welder and auto mechanic, could find employment. There, the family lived north of San Francisco in an interracial housing project in Vallejo. Means grew up hard, fighting with whites, blacks, Chinese, Filipinos, Mexicans... you name it. Because of the fights-other boys teased Means' younger brother Dale that he had a girl's name because of the popularity of Dale Rogers-Means renamed his brother "Dace." "It was still a time that everyone could think for themselves," says Means. "They could feel. Schoolyard fights weren't horrendous things. School officials made us put on the gloves and take it into the ring. There was none of this Ritalin around. The pharmaceutical corporations didn't own the world yet."

It took Means 10 years to work his way through four years of college. "My 20's were my I-don't-give-a-damn-years," says Means. He worked as a janitor, printer, rodeo rider, ballroom dance instructor, and Champion Fancy Dancer while he attended four different colleges: Merritt College, Sawyer School of Business, Iowa Tech, and Arizona State University. He never received a diploma, but figured he didn't need a piece of paper to tell him he was smart and entered the world as a computer programmer. "When I finally quit that, I was prgramming IBM 360 Mod 30's" he says. "We used the punch card system of data processing." The details reveal much about the limited sphere in which Means found his spirit wanting and his ambition squelched. His travels took him to Phoenix where he worked for Transamerica Title Insurance and then back home to the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation where he worked as a systems designer. For a while, he lived in Cleveland where he worked as an accountant.

Growing up Indian was always Means' aspiration. Even as a kid, he'd watch John Ford and John Wayne movies and flinch at the inequities between white men and Inidans and the roles they played out on Hollywood's silver screen. But it took Means' journey through his '20's and early '30s to reveal his purpose. He grew his hair long, wearing it to this day in the style of his Lakota ancestors, in chest-long braids. In the late '60's, the world was ripe for rebellion. Migrant workers, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, blacks, and women were espousing freedom. Five militant groups gained the attention of Congress, the Feds and all law enforcement which included the Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement, the National Lawyers Guild, the Weather Underground, and the Puerto Rican Young Lords, a pro-independence movement. The American Indian Movement is the only one to survive. "It was a heady time," says Means. "The right misunderstood the left. No one in this country knows how to be American."

It was 1971 when the anger in Means had built up to the point of boiling over. He helped to found the American Indian Movement Survival School System that subsequently implemented more than 40 alternative schools in seven states and two Canadian Provinces. He was part of the siege and destruction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The ultimate standoff occurred at the village of Wounded Knee on the Sioux Indian Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota beginning the night of Feb. 27, 1973. Means and his companion Pedro Bissonette, vice president of the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization, were at the end of a long line of almost 200 automobiles headed for the reservation. Earlier that fateful day, Chief Fools Crow told Means and his companions to go to Wounded Knee where they would be protected. These were consecrated grounds. On this same land in the winter of 1890, the U.S. Army had brutally murdered Chief Big Foot and more than three hundred Indian people. The spirits of Means ancestors would protect his people as they made their stand against the U.S. government once again.

Three hundred Lakotas and two-dozen veterans of the American Indian Movement dug in around the mmuseum and general store. Means directed the defense from the high point at the Catholic Church while the Vietnam veterans among them took charge of the defenses establishing roadblocks and patrols in the surrounding hills. The mission was threefold: enforcement of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, which guaranteed the Indian nations territories and sovereignty; Senate investigations of corruption within the Bureau of Indian Affairs; and free, honest elections on the local Pine Ridge Reservation. The rebel group also hoped their stand would insight other American Indians to continue their struggle for freedom. For seventy-one days, through three blizzards and more than five million of dollars of ammunition expended by the Feds, the confontation continued. Media flocked to the event, and, in fact, became one of the major reasons the Indians didn't suffer the same fate as their ancestors.

It was here, perhaps, that Means first realized the impact of a sound bite, a talent he has parlayed as his infamy grew. From 1974 to 1976, he represented himself as his own lawyer in 12 criminal trials assisted by the Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense Committee Lawyers. He was acquitted on every count. In 1977, he assisted in leading the first international conference ever held concerning the American Indian of the Western hemisphere by the international community sponsored by the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. And in 1978, he assisted the Longest Walk (American Indians walked across the country form San Francisco to Washington, D.C. up to that time. Ultimately, Means and his fellow tribesmen stopped all anti-Indian legislation in Congress at the time. The next year, he reorganized the Dakota American Indian Movement and in 1980 he founded the KILI Radio Station, the first American Indian owned and operated raido station in the country. In 1986, Means assisted in building the first independent health clinic on an American Indian reservation, again at his home base of Porcupine on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation.

Until the late '70's, the impact of Means activism was felt mostly in the United States. But his fame was beginning to gain international recognition. In 1985 and 1986, he participated in two clandestine trips into Miskito country of Nicaragua where he assisted in documenting Sandinista atrocities against the Miskito, Sumo, and Rama Indian Nations. And the next year, 1987, he was the first American Indian to run for the Presidency of the United States of America, drafted by the Libertarian Party, a largely white, upper middle class constituency. Means expanded his international presence for the next two years as he attempted to assist eight American Indian reservations with development in the free market with investors from Europe, Africa and the United States.

Despite his active role in politics, a new role, that of Hollywood American Indian, was right around the corner. For Means it meant that his political interests would gain a notoriety that no other American Indian and few political activists ever achieve. Means' film credits include Wind River, Poccahontas, Wagons East, Natural Born Killers, Windrunner, and The Last of the Mohicans in which he played Daniel Day Lewis' father Chingachgook. The movie is to be re-released soon in DVD format and will include a closing soliloquy by Means that was cut from the original screenplay. On July 14, 2000, Means' latest film, "Thomas and the Magic Railroad" featuring fellow actors Alec Baldwin and Peter Fonda, will be released. As a showman, Means is inimitable. He's got a brilliant mind and a knack for attracting an audience. "I haven't abandoned the movement for Hollywood," he says on his Web site. "I've brought Hollywood to the movement." And never underestimate the power of stardom.

Today, Means has an office in Santa Monica, California, where his company, T.R.E.A.T.Y. Productions, is headquarted. His star quality is what allows him the luxury these days of focusing on building a Total Immersion School in Porcupine on the Pine Ridge Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota. He's raised $70,000 from the Natural Spirit Foundation, $100,000 from Disney and Chicago's Joseph Sciarrotta has donated 30,000 shares of his own company to the project Means calls "an innovative solution to a centuries old challenge." Means witnessed his first total immersion school when visiting New Zealand as a speaker. There, the Maori Peoples educate their young in one of five total immersion schools fostering their Native Indian culture in every school-related activity. From cradleboard to high school age, the Maori youth are educated in the ways of their elders, keeping their way of life intact for generations to come. The success rate, insists Means, is 100 percent. Every one of the Maoris who enters high school ranks in the top 10 percent of his or her class, academically and athletically. "I saw those kids and that was enough for me," says Means.

The Total Immersion School for the Lakotas is ambitious in that it means building facilities from ground up including texts and teaching material. From inception in 1990 until now, Means kept the idea alive through his daughter Sherry, head of education for the Cheyenne Sioux tribe, until he could generate interest in donations. The process took years. Today, his son Scott runs the ranch on the reservation that will become the site of the new school. Daughter Michelle is a teacher in Pine Ridge. The reservation is located in Shannon County, the poorest county in the entire United States. Means focus now is on what will become a community of 20 to 40 families living a self-sufficient lifestyle and educating their young at the same time. Former barracks have been donated, but now Means is bent on raising the funds necessary to relocate the barracks to Pine Ridge.

From his home just outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico, Means and his Navajo wife Pearl Daniel Means, also treasurer of T.R.E.A.T.Y., are occupied with the school development. Other board members include Shawnee Glenn Morris, Vice Chairman and Legal Council of T.R.E.A.T.Y.; Rainer Greeven of New York; Michelle Thunderhawk, a Lakota-Sioux; and George Tall, a Sioux bilingual teacher and member of the Tokala Society. Means' computer background is not lost on this project; early objective include purchasing a state-of-the-art computer and individual computers for the children to use. The design includes a passive solar earth intergrated school to be used during severe winters. In spring, summer and early fall, the school will use traditional tipis as classrooms. The model, says Means, will be transferable and suitable for other American Indian Nations to duplicate.

On balance, Means' current educational interests and his early Indian patriotism seem to be at odds with each other. But then the sound bites kick in. "I see that the United States government has accomplished colonization of the American Indian. We've got to do something if we're going to survive as a distinct culture, or we will become a facsimile of white males, a cheap imitation." Gone is the rage of his youth; but the anger remains. He adds, "Everyone should get angry at injustice. People who don't certainly aren't spiritual people." His mission is larger than life.