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I have been very moved by the global outpouring of love and support that has been sent to me and my wife, Pearl, since reports of my new illness became public. At times such as this, it is common for innaccurate information and rumors to circulate. A recent rumor that I had passed to the spirit world, is inaccurate. I, like all of us, will eventually join my ancestors, and when I do, my hope is that you will all continue to dedicate yourselves to the work to which I have tried to commit my life — liberation and freedom for my Lakota people, for all indigenous peoples, and, in fact, for ALL peoples. It is true that I am very ill, but my spirit and humor remain strong. Whatever the future holds, the truth is that the work of the TREATY Total Immersion School, the Republic of Lakotah, and the freedom principles of AIM will continue, and hopefully grow. For the most accurate information about me, and my health status, please rely, first and foremost on this website, my official method of communicating to you all. May the Great Mystery continue to watch over you and your loved ones.
Before AIM, there were few national advocates for American Indians. Means was one of the first to emerge. He sought to restore Indians' pride in their culture and to challenge a government that had paid little attention to tribes in generations. He was also one of the first to urge sports teams to do away with Indian names and mascots.
"No one except Hollywood stars and very rich Texans wore Indian jewelry," Means said, recalling the early days of the movement. And there were dozens, if not hundreds, of athletic teams "that in essence were insulting us, from grade schools to college. That's all changed."
AIM was founded in the late 1960s to demand that the government honor its treaties with American Indian tribes. The movement eventually faded away, Means said, as Native Americans became more self-aware and self-determined.
The European materialist tradition of despiritualizing the universe is very similar to the mental process which goes into dehumanizing another person. And who seems most expert at dehumanizing other people? And why? Soldiers who have seen a lot of combat learn to do this to the enemy before going back into combat. Murderers do it before going out to commit murder. Nazi SS guards did it to concentration camp inmates. Cops do it. Corporation leaders do it to the workers they send into uranium mines and steel mills. Politicians do it to everyone in sight. And what the process has in common for each group doing the dehumanizing is that it makes it all right to kill and otherwise destroy other people. One of the Christian commandments says, "Thou shalt not kill," at least not humans, so the trick is to mentally convert the victims into nonhumans. Then you can proclaim violation of your own commandment as a virtue.
Most important here, perhaps, is the fact that Europeans feel no sense of loss in all this. After all, their philosophers have despiritualized reality, so there is no satisfaction (for them) to be gained in simply observing the wonder of a mountain or a lake or a people in being. No, satisfaction is measured in terms of gaining material. So the mountain becomes gravel, and the lake becomes coolant for a factory, and the people are rounded up for processing through the indoctrination mills Europeans like to call schools.
Right now, today, we who live on the Pine Ridge Reservation are living in what white society has designated a "National Sacrifice Area." What this means is that we have a lot of uranium deposits here, and white culture (not us) needs this uranium as energy production material. The cheapest, most efficient way for industry to extract and deal with the processing of this uranium is to dump the waste by-products right here at the digging sites. Right here where we live. This waste is radioactive and will make the entire region uninhabitable forever. This is considered by the industry, and by the white society that created this industry, to be an "acceptable" price to pay for energy resource development. Along the way they also plan to drain the water table under this part of South Dakota as part of the industrial process, so the region becomes doubly uninhabitable. The same sort of thing is happening down in the land of the Navajo and Hopi, up in the land of the Northern Cheyenne and Crow, and elsewhere. Thirty percent of the coal in the West and half of the uranium deposits in the United States have been found to lie under reservation land, so there is no way this can be called a minor issue.
There is no difference as to the outcome one should expect from whichever -ism. That is cristial clear today.
Revolutionary Marxism, like industrial society in other forms, seeks to "rationalize" all people in relation to industry--maximum industry, maximum production. It is a doctrine that despises the American Indian spiritual tradition, our cultures, our lifeways. Marx himself called us "precapitalists" and "primitive." Precapitalist simply means that, in his view, we would eventually discover capitalism and become capitalists; we have always been economically retarded in Marxist terms. The only manner in which American Indian people could participate in a Marxist revolution would be to join the industrial system, to become factory workers, or "proletarians," as Marx called them. The man was very clear about the fact that his revolution could only occur through the struggle of the proletariat, that the existence of a massive industrial system is a precondition of a successful Marxist society.
Originally posted by antoinemarionette
The Lakota Nation had just declared it's sovereignty from the USA on it's remaining lands in the 5 state area.
It was announced on Cosmic Vision News a couple of weeks ago. Jeffrey West, the speaker on CVN said that Means invited all to join with them, as long as they renounced their US citizenship.
Not 3 weeks after this, Russell Means dies.
May he rest in peace.
CosmicVisionNews