Russell Means, Lightning, And Sexiness: The Toughest Indian In The Whole World

Russell Means was loud. And eloquent. And flawed. And dangerous. And sexy. He made the image of a huge Native male being politically active something acceptable, even ideal. He wasn’t a bookworm that people could easily ignore; he spoke loudly, and powerfully, with so much confidence in himself that those that were threatened by him just wished that they’d hear some bad news about him someday so they could stop hearing about him. “Y’know that Russell Means was in a plane crash …” Never happened; heck, he even whooped cancer for a long time. Sexy. Long hair, leather jackets, brown skin–he was the image of a Native person that all of us have, whether it’s politically correct to say so or not. Men wanted to be him, women wanted to be with him: the Indigenous James Bond. At a time of lagging self-esteem for Indigenous people, where we were taught to believe, after 500 years of ugly genocide, forced assimilation and conquest, that everything “Native” was ugly, dirty, evil, stupid, he made “looking Indian” cool again.

He made being Native sexy. Imperfect, but a start to reclaiming our collective sense of self-worth.

Every single Native person on this continent owes him a debt of gratitude. Thank you, Russell Means–the toughest Indian in the world.

Gyasi Ross is a member of the Blackfeet Nation and his family also belongs to the Suquamish Nation. He wrote a book called Don’t Know Much About Indians (but i wrote a book about us anyways) which you can get at DKMAI.com. He is also co-authoring a new book called “Of Course I’m a Boy, Silly!” and the website and publishing company for that handy-dandy book is CutBankCreekPress.com (coming soon). He also semi-does the twitter thing at @BigIndianGyasi

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