Russell Means

Russell Charles Means, born Waŋblí Ohítika on November 10, 1939, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, was an Oglala Lakota activist renowned for his leadership in the American Indian Movement (AIM).

The eldest of four brothers in a family that later relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area during World War II to escape reservation poverty, he grew up facing personal struggles including his father's alcoholism, truancy, crime, and drug use before finding purpose in activism.

He attended four colleges without graduating and worked various jobs, including at the Rosebud Indian Reservation, where a misdiagnosed ear infection left him deaf in one ear.

Russell Means entered activism in 1964 by joining a brief occupation of Alcatraz Island, claiming Sioux treaty rights to unoccupied federal land, and later founded the Cleveland American Indian Center in 1969 while becoming AIM's national director.

His theatrical protests gained national attention, including seizing the Mayflower II replica in Boston on Thanksgiving 1970, occupying Mount Rushmore in 1971 to protest Black Hills treaty violations, and leading the 1972 Trail of Broken Treaties caravan that culminated in a weeklong takeover of the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters in Washington, D.C. Most famously,

in 1973, he served as a key spokesman during AIM's 71-day armed occupation of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation, protesting tribal corruption and federal mistreatment, which resulted in deaths including those of activists Frank Clearwater and Buddy Lamont.

Throughout the 1970s and beyond, he advocated internationally for indigenous rights, co-founding the International Indian Treaty Council in 1977 to engage the United Nations, establishing community institutions like the KILI radio station on Pine Ridge, and protesting Native mascots such as the Cleveland Indians' Chief Wahoo.

He ran unsuccessfully for Oglala Sioux tribal chairman in 1974 and 2004, sought the Libertarian presidential nomination in 1988, and in 2007 declared the Republic of Lakotah, seeking UN recognition for an independent Lakota nation spanning parts of five U.S. states.

Transitioning to entertainment in 1992, he appeared in films like The Last of the Mohicans as Chingachgook, voiced Pocahontas' father, and featured in Natural Born Killers and Curb Your Enthusiasm, while releasing music and publishing his 1995 autobiography Where White Men Fear to Tread.

Russell Means faced controversies, including legal battles over fabricated charges from Wounded Knee, assaults, and criticism from some tribal leaders who rejected his independence declarations as unrepresentative.

He continued activism into his later years, protesting Columbus Day parades and supporting Central and South American indigenous causes, until his death from esophageal cancer on October 22, 2012, at age 72 on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

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