Russell Means Quotes - Page 2

When a woman grabs my braids and says "How cute!" I crab her breast and say "How cute!" She never touches me again!

If I want my people to be free, Americans have to be free.

The United States is a fake country.

If you learn from an experience, that's good - so nothing bad happened to you.

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.

America always put forth this phony melting pot theory, but it's a reality now. They couldn't accomplish the melting pot economically; they couldn't accomplish it politically, or through education and science. But America has become a consumer society, and I see young people in the cities - of all colors and races - hanging out together over consumerism.

I don't want to be remembered as an activist; I want to be remembered as an American Indian patriot.

The one thing I've always maintained is that I'm an American Indian. I'm not politically correct.

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.

Hollywood hasn't changed. It is the most racist, anti-Indian institution in the world.

I knew at that young age that going to the Bureau of Indian Affairs was useless, absolutely useless. I grew up having no faith in the bureaucracy of government.

I say to the Christians and to every missionary on the reservations, you're welcome to have a church here if you can support yourself. But if these churches can't support themselves, then take the hint and quit using our poverty for your direct mail solicitations.

Being an Indian means living with the land. And the only way we'll be able to do that is to gain our freedom.

I've always thought it was arrogant to write about yourself, particularly when you're still alive.

Even though the American Indian Movement on a national-international scale has proven to be extremely dysfunctional, the American Indian Movement I was associated with I'm very proud of. We were a revolutionary, militant organization whose purpose was spirituality first, and that's how I want to be remembered.

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.

I had often wondered how to best decolonize my people... It must be done one human being at a time. Without that kind of help, Western society does not allow people to come to terms with their feelings. With honesty and therapy, my people can be made whole again.

I never knew I was an artist until I did 'Last of the Mohicans'.

Children in poverty aren't trying to get out of poverty; they're just trying to rip off a pair of Nikes. So we Indian people are a microcosm of what's happening in America. We are now consumers, and our culture has gone.

Colonialism has completed the destruction of the American Indian in the United States - the cultural destruction.

I tell the truth, and I expose myself as a weak, misguided, misdirected, dysfunctional human being I used to be.

Tourists came around and looked into our tipis. That those were the homes we choose to live in didn`t bother them at all. The untied the door, opened the flap, and barged right in, touching our things, poking through our bedrolls, inspecting everything. It boggles my mind that tourists feel they have the god-given right to intrude everywhere.

Indian people are relics; we do not exist in the present.

I've always considered myself a man of integrity as a leader of the American Indian Movement and of Indian people. I will stand that test against anyone at anytime, anywhere.