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Russell Means

1939–2012 · 73 years Tier II

A reservation clinic called him drunk. He lost an ear

Portrait of Russell Means — Carolmooredc — 1987-03 — CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

He was born at Porcupine on the Pine Ridge reservation in November 1939, Oglala Lakota on his father's side and Yankton Dakota on his mother's, and the family left for California in 1942 so that his father could work the Vallejo shipyard. He grew up in the Bay Area, finished San Leandro High School in 1958, started four colleges and finished none. His own account of those years is truancy, crime and drugs, with an alcoholic father at home. Moving between reservations looking for work in his twenties, he turned up at the Rosebud clinic with severe vertigo. The doctors decided he was drunk and would not examine him for days. A visiting specialist eventually found the ear infection. By then the hearing in that ear was gone.

He came into the American Indian Movement at the end of the 1960s — Wikipedia's own article says 1968 in one place and December 1969 in another — and was its first national director by 1970. On Thanksgiving Day that year AIM seized the Mayflower II at Plymouth. In 1971 he helped lead a takeover of Mount Rushmore, which stands on Lakota ground. In November 1972 the Trail of Broken Treaties ended with AIM inside the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters in Washington, records taken or destroyed and more than two million dollars of damage. Then Wounded Knee, February to May 1973: 71 days, more than 300 armed Lakota and AIM people against the FBI and state police, two men shot dead in April and a third who was never found. Means was the movement's voice through all of it.

He was a difficult ally. The AIM Grand Governing Council counted six resignations from him between 1974 and 1988 and finally asked the press to stop describing him as a founder or a leader of the organization. In the 1980s he backed MISURASATA, the Miskito group allied with the Contras, against the Sandinistas, and other AIM members took the opposite side — the movement split partly over it. He turned libertarian, ran second for the party's presidential nomination in 1987, and lost to Ron Paul. In 1999 he publicly accused two AIM leaders of ordering the murder of Anna Mae Aquash. And on December 29, 1997, at 58, he was arrested for assault and battery on his 56-year-old father-in-law, Leon Grant.

From 1992 he acted — Chingachgook in The Last of the Mohicans, the voice of Powhatan in Pocahontas — putting a Lakota face and voice into rooms that never had one. In December 2007 he and a small delegation declared the Republic of Lakotah, withdrawing from the treaties and claiming ground in five states, and dismissed the tribal governments that objected as Vichy Indians. Diagnosed with inoperable esophageal cancer in August 2011, he refused conventional treatment, later took radiation, and by December said he had beaten it. He died at Porcupine on October 22, 2012, at 72. His ashes went into the Black Hills. One writer said his face belonged on Mount Rushmore — the monument he occupied in 1971.

Lifespan

15401700180019002030

Russell Means's life against the full span of the corpus.

Notable works

Seizure of the Mayflower II mission
Thanksgiving Day at Plymouth, and AIM's first action in Boston 1970
Occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters mission
The end of the Trail of Broken Treaties 1972
Occupation of Wounded Knee mission
71 days, and the action AIM is still known by 1973
The Last of the Mohicans film
He played Chingachgook, and an acting career followed 1992
Where White Men Fear to Tread book
His autobiography 1995
Republic of Lakotah declaration other
A claimed withdrawal from the treaties, rejected by tribal governments 2007

Life in brief

with age at each point

1958 aged ~19 Graduates from San Leandro High School in California The family had left Pine Ridge for the Bay Area in 1942.
March 1964 aged 24 Occupies Alcatraz for 24 hours, following his father He took part in the longer occupation in 1969.
1968 or 1969 aged ~30 Joins the American Indian Movement Wikipedia gives both years in the same article. He was national director by 1970.
Thanksgiving Day 1970 aged ~31 Seizes the Mayflower II at Plymouth
November 1972 aged 32 Occupies the Bureau of Indian Affairs building in Washington
1973 aged ~34 Wounded Knee — a 71-day armed standoff on Pine Ridge Frank Clearwater and Buddy Lamont were killed in April.
January 8, 1988 aged 48 Announces his retirement from AIM The AIM council called it his sixth resignation since 1974.
December 2007 aged 68 Declares the Republic of Lakotah a sovereign nation
October 22, 2012 aged 72 Dies at Porcupine, on the reservation where he was born