Over a year ago, he knew he had inoperable esophageal cancer. It spread to his tongue, lymph nodes and lungs. It was just a matter of time. On October 22, it took him. His journey to the spirit world began.
. . . In 1968, he joined the American Indian Movement (AIM). In 1970, he became its national director.
. . . With Dennis Banks and Leonard Peltier, he participated in the 1973 Wounded Knee siege and tragedy. For 71 days, they and other AIM activists held off hundreds off FBI thugs, federal marshals, National Guard troops, and complicit Indian vigilantes. They were called "GOONS (Guardians of Our Oglala Nation)." They sold out for whatever benefits they got in return.
On February 27, Oglala Sioux activists reclaimed Wounded Knee. They wanted their 1868 treaty rights honored.
. . . Means once said, "Every policy now the Palestinians are enduring was practiced on the American Indians. What the American Indian Movement says is that the American Indians are the Palestinians of the United States, and the Palestinians are the American Indians of Europe."
He called Indian lands open air concentration camps, saying: "If you chose to stay on the reservation, you are guaranteed to be poor, unless you are part of the colonial apparatus set up by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, set up the United States."
. . . On December 17, 2007, Means and other Lakota people went to Washington. They declared independence. They called it "the latest step in the longest running legal battle" in history.
It's not a cessation, they said. It's a lawful "unilateral withdrawal" from treaty obligations permitted under the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.
Means said: "We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us."
"We offer citizenship to anyone provided they renounce their US citizenship."
"United States colonial rule is at an end." . . . On September 29, 2012 Means reiterated what he and others declared in December 2007. . . . Means had three weeks to live.
Full story: Remembering Russell Means by Stephen Lendman