Russell Means was no angel.
The activist, actor, and provocateur, best known for his work with the American Indian Movement (AIM), had his ups and downs to be sure. He was a bully, he was manipulative, he was selfish, he was at times stupefyingly hypocritical, and he was repetitious and self-rationalizing to the point of creating his own echo-chamber.
For example, when the famed Red Power activist collected a handsome paycheck for providing the voice of Chief Powhatan in Disney’s 1995 film Pocahontas, he didn’t try to back peddle or hide behind a stage name. Immune to embarrassment and humiliation, Means proudly and defiantly justified his handiwork. He even boasted of the movie’s supposed historical accuracy.
“For my people to ever earn respect in this country, Hollywood has to speak the truth, and Disney is the leader of the pack. They’re revolutionary. That [film] is the history of European-Indian relations. Disney is entrusting the truth with children.”
Means actually said this with a straight face. He also challenged anyone who might disagree.
“If one person finds fault with it,” he said, “I will be extremely disappointed.”
As was typical, Means would bridge no disagreement and accept no compromise on the matter. Three years later, he collected another paycheck from Disney as he reprised his role for a ludicrous fiction called Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World.
Indulging and profiting from some self-interested hypocrisy was hardly the worst thing Russell Means ever did. No stranger to occasionally trampling the truth and viciously attacking anyone who got in his way, innocent people were sometimes victims of his politicking and grandstanding. And as a younger man during the 1970s and 1980s, outright violence and intimidation were also part of his routine. People got hurt, and many of them didn’t deserve it.
For all of the ways in which Russell Means, both the person and the historical actor, rubbed me the wrong way, there is also no denying his importance and all of his positive contributions.
As a leader of the American Indian Movement and a central figure during the 1970s Red Power era, Means was one of the strongest and loudest voices standing against decades and centuries of anti-Indian bigotry.
He was fiery and unapologetic as he lambasted American culture for its routine misappropriation and exploitation of Native lands, peoples, and resources. He was righteously indignant as he skewered both racist conservatives and well-meaning but patronizing liberals. He called not only crooks, haters, and charlatans onto the carpet, but also the paternalistic do-gooders who claimed to have all the answers but didn’t have a clue as to what was actually going on in Indian country.
Most of all, Means spoke directly to Indian people. Some of them loved him and some of them hated him, but no one could ignore him, and all of them, in one way or another, embraced the essence of his message.
Don’t be ashamed of your Indianess, he said. Be proud. And by relentlessly and furiously championing that message, he helped wash away the painful stains long rendered by words like “primitive” and “savage.”
Indian isn’t backwards, he insisted. It’s better.
**
For most historians, it’s impossible to meet the people you’ve researched and written about. But as someone whose work reaches into the 1970s, I’ve had that opportunity from time to time.
The minute I first met Russell Means in 1999, I got it. I immediately understood why he was famous and successful. He had it: that X factor, that charisma, that thing that makes you a star. It emanated from him, it surrounded him like an aura.
On an overcast autumn afternoon, I was tasked with escorting Means across the grounds of the Nebraska State Penitentiary. As a longtime volunteer with the Native men’s group he was speaking to that day, it had fallen to me to chaperone him, his wife Pearl, and their son. 
I met and spoke with Means again when I was on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota to visit a friend and conduct research for my first book. Means had been born and spent his early childhood on the reservation, though he was largely raised in the Bay area of California. Later he returned to Pine Ridge as a leader of AIM, and it had been the site of his most famous activist work during the 1970s, including the occupation and siege of Wounded Knee in 1973. From the 1990s forward he lived on the reservation for part of each year. I saw Means give a speech at a sparsely attended rally in Billy Mills Hall during the summer of 2004, and I interviewed him afterwards. By then his message, largely unchanged since the 1970s, was being tuned out by many, and his efforts to capture Pine Ridge’s highest political office, the Oglala Sioux Tribal presidency, failed miserably.
Our final meeting came in late 2007, when he and some fellow activists I knew spent several days in my Baltimore home as they planned and coordinated political actions. At a press conference in Washington, D.C. on December 17, he and his compatriots announced the Lakota Sioux nation’s secession from the United States and the establishment of the Republic of Lakota. They did not speak for any of the federally recognized Lakota and Dakota tribal government on the northern Plains. Rather, they claimed to speak for the people, representing themselves and other supporters of Indigenous independence.
**
Despite Russell Means’ obvious star quality, I was never starstruck. During my meetings with him, superficial though they were in some respects, he seemed to be exactly whom I thought he was based on the research I’d conducted.
Cocksure criticism and bellowing bravado were his calling cards. And he used them to good measure on behalf of Indian people during his career. Bu
Russell Means was beautiful, righteous, and dedicated. He was also scurrilous, sanctimonious, and self-serving. He was a troubled soul with a raging fire, burning bright and hot. He did good and he did bad, and America will never be the same again for it.
Now he is gone. And we are left to remember, ponder, and live in the world he helped make.