Russell C. Means: The European Ancestry of a Militant Indian (1939-2012)

The information offered in this book is the result of research in the mostly European ancestry of the illustrious American Indian man named Russell Charles Means (1939–2012), who took pride in being an “Oglala Lakota Patriot.” As a young man, he made headlines during the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee, Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota, and continued to seek fame as a militant for the American Indian Movement. Russell Means was hailed as a symbol of courage by a generation of American Indians who joined the ranks of AIM in the ’60s and ’70s and by supporters in America and abroad, while acquiring an international reputation for his anger, rebellion, and often outrageous conduct. In later years, he added followers among moviegoers as a Hollywood actor in films and television. The book is also somewhat of a personal memoir, recounting moments of a relationship between the author, a French Moroccan anthropologist, and this famous American Indian activist, which spanned over thirty years of their lives, and it includes vignettes of her fieldwork among the Oglala Lakota people of Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the 1980s and memories of her stay at Yellow Thunder Camp in the Black Hills, along with unique photographs illustrating some facets of that work with numerous individuals, young and old, men and women, of the Oglala Lakota nation.