As we near the end of National Native American Heritage Month, our editorial board would like to take this opportunity to remember the late Native American libertarian activist Russell Means, an Oglala Lakota Sioux.
Means, was born Nov. 10, 1939 on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, and spent much of his early life here in California. His family resettled in the San Francisco Bay Area when he was a toddler and he graduated from high school in San Leandro.
Means rose to prominence in the late 1960s and 1970s as a member of the American Indian Movement (AIM). Through his activism in support and defense of Native American communities, Means participated in many of the most well-known protest activities of AIM. This included his participation in the 1969 occupation of Alcatraz by Native American activists and the 1973 armed standoff at Wounded Knee.
“What AIM wants is self-determination for our people, and a leave-us-alone policy,” Means explained in a 1986 interview with Reason magazine. “We’ve found the best route towards that is the elimination of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. …. It should be an insult to any decent human being that this country, in this day and age, still has a bureaucracy that governs a specific ethnic group per se.”
In 1987, Means sought to be the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate, putting up a strong challenge to then-former and future Congressman Ron Paul. “I challenge every American to make a list of what they feel their individual rights are, and then, item by item, find out how much government is interfering with those rights,” he told The New York Times in 1987. “I have been trying to throw off the yoke of government interference in our lives since I joined the American Indian Movement.”
As described by Reason magazine’s Brian Doherty in his book “Ron Paul’s Revolution,” Means appealed to the anti-authority instincts of Libertarian Party members “by stressing such selling points as having removed himself from the Social Security system, not having paid income taxes since 1971, and battling the state of South Dakota over whether as a tribe member on a reservation, he had to have a license plate or driver’s license.”
While Paul ultimately prevailed over Means, it was only by the thinnest of margins. “The wisdom in the LP world was that Paul had won their minds — just barely — but not their hearts,” Doherty wrote.
Despite this political defeat, Means continued in his activism. In 1989, Means gave powerful testimony before the U.S. Senate’s Special Committee on Indian Affairs calling attention to rampant corruption in the nation’s tribal governments, the mismanagement of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and widespread abuse of women and children on reservations.
“Needless to say, every time the U.S. government has interfered with American Indian lifestyles, it has been proven to be disastrous,” he said.
In the latter period of his life, Means entered the mainstream through acting, including a role in the 1992 film “The Last of the Mohicans” and voice acting role in 1995’s “Pocahontas.”
He would continue his activism, however, through the end of his life. He supported the presidential candidacies of Ralph Nader and Ron Paul, and ridiculed Barack Obama’s presidency as “Bush’s third term.”
Means died Oct. 22, 2012, but his memory lives on and so does the fight to free all Americans from the grip of incompetent and intrusive government.
