Russell Means Quotes (10 Quotes)

I don't want to talk about the environment and the American Indian viewpoint, I hate the word Native American. Its a government term, which was created in the year 1970 in the Department of the Interior, a generic term that describes all the prisoners of the United States of America.

Wounded Knee happened because Indian people wanted to survive as Indians and there wasn't any way to survive, so we made a stand and made a statement, but now Indian people are beginning to rebound, rebound according to their concept of Beauty. And that's really what's necessary. to understand Indian people have to become free again.

So Indian policy has become institutionalized and the result has been that American people have become more dependent on government and that the American people have become more dependent on corporations.

In the government schools, which are referred to as public schools, Indian policy has been instituted there, and its a policy where they do not encourage, in fact, discourage, critical thinking and the creation of ideas and public education.

Let me go to Clinton's new proposal: to have uniforms in public schools. And people are doing that. How come they're doing that? Dress codes! I find that abhorrent.

So I'd much rather get across the concept of freedom. It's what's important to Indian children. The only way you can be free is to know is that you are worthwhile as a distinct human being. Otherwise you become what the colonizers have designed, and that is a lemming. Get in line, punch all the right keys, and die.

"Indian policy" has now been brought down upon the American people, and the American people are the new Indians of the 21st Century.

Young people and Indian people need to know that we existed in the 20th Century. We need to know who our heroes are and to know what we have done and accomplished in this century other than what Olympic athletes Jim Thorpe and Billy Mills have done.

I'd like to talk about free markets. Information in the computer age is the last genuine free market left on earth except those free markets where indigenous people are still surviving. And that's basically becoming limited.

Governments and corporations have yet to find a way to control this last free market of ideas. And why is the Internet the last free market of ideas People better start addressing these types of questions, otherwise what has happened to the news media will happen to the computer as an information tool.