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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.

Russell Means

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Russell Means
Age: 72 †
Born: 1939
Born: November 10
Died: 2012
Died: October 22
Activist
Actor
Autobiographer
Film Actor
Musician
Peace Activist
Politician
Television Actor
Voice Actor
Pine Ridge Reservation
Knew
Bureau
Age
Bureaucracy
Faith
Affairs
Young
Indian
Government
Useless
Going
Affair
Absolutely
Grew

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I’m a human being, I’m not anyone’s mascot! And I am America’s conscience. And that’s what they don’t want to look at. They would rather look at a cartoon character than at the deceit of this country and this government.
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I've always thought it was arrogant to write about yourself, particularly when you're still alive.
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That's our charge as ancestors of unborn generations: to once again become free.
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Indian people are relics we do not exist in the present.
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True to your own ancestors, therefore true to yourself.
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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.
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Colonialism has completed the destruction of the American Indian in the United States - the cultural destruction.
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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.
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Imagine going to the holy land in Israel, whether you're a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim, and start carving up the mountain of Zion. It's an insult to our entire being. It's bad enough getting four white faces carved in up there [on Mount Rushmore], the shrine of hypocrisy.
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It’s just unconscionable that America has become so stupid.
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