Russell Means biography

Synopsis

Early Political Activism

Longtime Native American activist Russell Means, of the North American Oglala Sioux tribe, was born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota on November 10, 1939, to father Harold and mother Theodora Feather Means. His family moved west to California when Means was a toddler.

At age 25, Means and his father participated in a rally held on Alcatraz Island, located in California's San Francisco Bay, where dozens of Native Americans gathered to spoke out against the U.S. government for violating a treaty that any unused government land would be returned to the indigenous Indian tribes previously occupying it. Means was forever changed by the event, focusing his efforts thereafter and throughout the rest of his life on the rights of Native Americans.

Means was an early member of the American Indian Movement, which formed in the late 1960s in Minnesota with the goal of establishing sovereignty for indigenous American tribes. With other AIM leaders in 1973, Means led an armed takeover of Wounded Knee, a small town on sacred Indian ground, located on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation. Means resigned from the AIM the following year to run for the presidency of the Oglala Sioux tribe, but lost and quickly rejoined the AIM (he officially left the group in 1988).

In 1987, Means set his sights on the U.S. presidency, hoping to win the Libertarian Party's candidacy, but lost the nomination to Ron Paul. Means later worked as an actor, appearing in films like The Last of the Mohicans (1992) with Daniel Day-Lewis, before turning his focus back to full-time political activism in the mid-1990s.

Murder of Annie Mae Aquash

Means became heavily involved in the 1975 murder case of Annie Mae Aquash, when the case was reopened in the late 1990s. A member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, Aquash had been killed on Pine Ridge during a three-year warlike period of social unrest and violence (1973-76), spurring from 1973's Wounded Knee occupation. She had reportedly been suspected of being an FBI informant prior to her death. In 1999, Means accused two AIM members of the murder, Arlo Looking Cloud and John Graham. Both men were later indicted and convicted of the murder.

Later Years

In 2007, Means spearheaded a proposal to create a new nation for Lakota Indians in North America, called the Republic of Lakotah.