On Russ Means...
I tried to explain this to Susie just the other day, but Suzan Harjo, proffering this year's Mantle of Shame Awards, gets to the heart of the matter:
Russell Means - for his mid-December announcement in D.C. that he is unilaterally withdrawing the Lakota Sioux from treaties with the United States. News flash to Means: treaties are made between nations; you are a person and not a nation; you are not empowered to speak for the Great Sioux Nation; as an individual, you can only withdraw yourself from coverage of your nation's treaties. (Means is the same Oglala Sioux actor who tried to beat domestic violence charges by challenging the sovereign authority of the Navajo Nation to prosecute him - he took it all the way to the Supreme Court and lost.)
While I don't agree with everything Harjo writes, e.g., her views on the Cherokee Freedmen debacle, this para is dead on. Thank you, Suzan.
Comments
There appear to be Native Americans, including at least one highly educated Lakota, who disgree with Suzan Harjo with respect to the extent to which Russell Means speaks for the Lakota. Which isn't to say that she's entirely wrong... just that she's not entirely right either.
Posted by: Kevin | December 25, 2007 10:18 PM
I'm sorry, I can't anything Russ Means does seriously anymore. The fact that he almost rewrote Federal Indian Law and tribal sovereignty just to beat a domestic violence rap negates everything he's done or will do in the future.
That some Lakota support Means' actions regarding Indians withdrawing unilaterally from US treaties does not change the fact this is clearly a PR move by Means, who sorely needs an image makeover after Means vs. Navajo Nation.
With all the Lefty blog hullabaloo over the Pretty Bird Woman House shelter, it's rather shocking that any feminist would give an inch of pixel praise for Means.
Posted by: MB | December 26, 2007 11:08 AM
I don't speak for anyone other than myself but... I don't believe that those Lakota voicing agreement (at least in principle) with what Means said and did necessarily do so because they agree with everything Means has said or done. There is a difference between the message and the messenger.
Posted by: Kevin | December 26, 2007 11:23 AM
I don't get it. Suzi sez screw me (with a splintered 2x4 and nothing nice) 10 thousand times and because Means figures it out he's out of step. Suzi must be a Democrat. She listed how many ways to leave your lover? Leave her waiting, yeah.
Time, place, cycle - the USSR devolved when it couldn't continue. Means strikes me as expressing that. Oceania, Arcadia, Lakota Nation. Nation states will break up to tribal - maybe there are a number of ways to define that. We need that; the world needs that - break up the US.
Call Means an idiot and go lobby your congressman instead? Yeesh. I'm bummed that Means' five state area doesn't include Maine. So the DOJ/INS/Homeland Stasi deports me to an airplane at 5000 feet over Casco Bay? Sooner or later.
We are all indigenous people. Them is the "corpos".
cfm in Gray, ME subtropic to arctic
Posted by: Chris Miller | December 26, 2007 10:18 PM
Kevin,
Thanks for bringing Homeless on the High Desert to my attention, I've added it to our sidebar. I suppose I should add PK as well, neh?
Posted by: ebw | December 26, 2007 10:37 PM