Russell Means, RIP
The day after George McGovern’s death, we lose another icon of the early 70s left, Russell Means. One of the leaders of the American Indian Movement and one of the architects of the Wounded Knee occupation, Means did more than almost anyone else to fight for the rights of Native Americans during the last half-century. He was certainly a complex and argumentative man who a lot of people disliked for a lot of reasons, but his impact is undeniable.
Means was great, despite his later forays into cranky libertarianism.
It’s been a bad week indeed. Something about South Dakota?
If I’m Tom Daschle, I might be laying low right now.
Nah, so far it only seems to be striking people who are left of center.
Yeah yeah. But I couldn’t really think of another South Dakotan who really represents the left today.
Maybe James Abourezk? I believe he is still alive – but admittedly going back to someone who retired in 1978 is a stretch for “today”.
The South Dakota Democratic party leadership is mainly made up of pro-business moderates. The remnants of McGovern’s party are pretty much gone.
Abourezk i still alive, although not young either. He was, I think, the last Senator to live entirely off his Senator salary
Frankly, this grossly overstates Means significance and impact. He was a seminal figure in the rise of the Red Power Movement and a founder of the American Indian Movement, but the actual accomplishments of both Means and AIM were fairly minimal other than drawing media attention. Other organizations and individuals had a far more substantive impact. The National Indian Youth Council, the Native American Rights Fund, and the National Congress of American Indians all come to mind immediately.
I demand a DrDick guest post on this very topic right now!
I would be happy to do so, if you are willing to cover all my actual work for a week. Otherwise, no time.
Just post your lecture notes – I’m sure students would still attend class. [sarcasm]
I do not currently teach that class as it happens.
This article you linked, Erik, is a snotty, snide, and insulting account of Means and his life. Couldn’t you re-do it and find a better link?
The NY Times obit is pretty good: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/10/23/us/russell-means-american-indian-activist-dies-at-72.xml?f=19
One of my favorite memories of Russell Means was seeing him support Ward Churchill at CU Boulder.
Of course you’re aware that Russell Means was defending Ward Churchill from the torches and pitchforks carried by the likes of Bill O’ Reilly, David Horowitz, and Professor Paul Campos.
Ward Churchill’s A Little Matter of Genocide is actually quite a good book and not at all leftist. It is highly critical of the USSR which it accuses of genocide unlike a lot of other US scholars. It also attacks the whole idea of Holocaust uniqueness as represented by Deborah Lipstadt which was extremely politically incorrect in the 1990s when it was published. The ideas in it are not all that original. Most of the same points had already been made by David Stannard. But, I think Churchill’s basic claims in A Little Matter of Genocide still hold up.
Yeah, I just got around to reading that and boy is that ugly.
Like this one. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/23/us/russell-means-american-indian-activist-dies-at-72.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Did you even read the Boston.com article before you posted it? It’s like reading NYT coverage of Chavez’s Venezuela – biased negatively from the get-go.
I would classify Means as a Native American nationalist not a man of the left. His opposition to the Sandinista government in Nicaragua certainly showed that Native American rights and the Left were not always on the same side.
Although the Sandinistas themselves were pretty terrible on indigenous issues, which is I believe the roots of Means’ opposition.
But, most of the US left were strongly in support of the Sandanistas despite their persecution of the Miskito Indians. Means supported armed resistance by the Miskito against Managua. That was not a leftist position although it did flow naturally out of a nationalist Native American position.
That would have surprised Means. AIM was pretty clearly leftist in many ways at the outset (much like the Black Panthers, which was one of their inspirations). The organization shifted over time and finally dissolved in the late 70s.
Whatever his position in the 1970s was by the middle of the 1980s he was definitely on the right wing of US politics with regards to his position on Nicaragua. Maybe he went from being a Marxist-Leninist to being an opponent to the Sandanistas, but I think it is more logical to think of him as an indigenous rights activist opposing first violations by the US and then by the Sandanistas. While the Miskito Indian rebel groups were separate from the main Contra group (FDN) as well as Eden Pastora’s group in the south, they were considered part of the greater anti-Sandinista armed movement.
This is a totally incoherent argument and ignores Means actual history. Means clearly moved to the right over time as he aged. This in no way negates his left radicalism when he was younger (see Frum, David). Likewise, being a leftist does not mean that you automatically support all purportedly leftist governments or all of their policies. I supported the Sandanistas over the Samoza Regime and the contras, but opposed their policy towards the Miskitos (like all actual modern leftists in this country, I also condemn Stalin and Mao’s excesses). The fact that you are incapable of nuance does not mean that we on the left are equally bereft.
Almost all American Leftists supported the Sandanistas in the 1980s. Supporting armed resistance to them like Means did was a Right Wing position. Means was on the same side as the Contras objectively. Also lots of modern American Leftists are pro-Stalin and pro-Mao. Professor Grover Furr just recently made the news claiming Stalin never committed any crimes. He isn’t unique and not too long ago Maoists like Bob Avakian had cult followings among segments of the US left.
You can’t criticize the Sandinistas from the left?
I don’t know much about Means. AIM was pretty unwelcome in activist circles in Gallup (a group called Indians Against Exploitation which made it known that they wanted no help from AIM folks) during the early 70s time period I studied. At the time I was working on that era (late 90s), Means himself was quite unwelcome on the Navajo rez due to allegedly beating the crap out of his father-in-law and then claiming the Navajo Tribe didn’t have jurisdiction, which led to a repudiation by AIM itself. I would say that most folks who study Native America in the 60s and 70s never really fell into the leader worship mode of storytelling that befell other movement histories of the era. There’s usually a careful balance of political storytelling (via reactions to Termination and Relocation policies), national rise of pan-tribalism (occupation of Alcatraz), and local activism (of which Pine Ridge is but one example). Or maybe I just came to it late. I wouldn’t say that Russell stands head and shoulders above Peter McDonald much less Buffy Sainte-Marie.
Pretty much the same reaction among the tribes in eastern Oklahoma (removed from the east). They had a much bigger influence on the western (Plains) tribes. I think AIM was pretty much an Upper Midwest/Plains/California phenomenon.