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Subject FW: American Indian activist Means says he has cancer
From  "Marinez, Juan" <marinezj@anr.msu.edu>
Date Thursday, August 18, 2011 8:35 am
To undisclosed-recipients

American Indian activist Means says he has cancer
August 18, 2011

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/08/18/american-indian-activist-russell-means-says-he-has-cancer/


Porcupine, S.D. (AP)  Russell Means, a former American Indian Movement
activist who led the 1973 uprising at Wounded Knee, says he has inoperable
throat cancer.

The 71-year-old said doctors told him the cancer was too advanced for
surgery, the Rapid City Journal reported. Means, who is also an actor
known for his role in "The Last of the Mohicans," said he would not have
chosen surgery anyway because it would have meant the removal of his
tongue and his ability to speak.

Means is forgoing mainstream medical treatments such as radiation and
chemotherapy, saying that being fed through a tube and being confined to a
wheelchair by extreme fatigue are "unacceptable options."

"I'm not going to hang on to life under those conditions," he said. "No
way am I going to hang on for that."

Means said he'll turn to alternative treatments and traditional American
Indian remedies. Herbal teas and other plants with cancer-fighting
properties have come to him from tribes in Guadalajara, Mexico, and the
Ojibwe tribe in Minnesota, he said. He is also receiving cancer treatments
approved in Europe and Canada but not in the United States at an
alternative cancer center in Arizona.

He knows his prognosis isn't good, but said he is at peace with the
possibility that he might die.

"I'm not going to argue with the Great Mystery," he said. "Lakota belief
is that death is a change of worlds. And I believe like my dad believed.
When it's my time to go, it's my time to go."

Means said he feels his most important accomplishment is the founding of
the Republic of Lakotah and the "re-establishment of our freedom to be
responsible" as a sovereign nation inside the borders of the United
States.

His efforts to have his proposed country recognized by the international
community continue at the United Nations, he said, even as it is ignored
by tribal governments closer to home, including his own Oglala Sioux
Tribe.

In 1975, murder charges were filed in state court against Means and Dick
Marshall, an AIM member, in the shooting death of Martin Montileaux of
Kyle at the Longbranch Saloon in Scenic. Marshall served 24 years in
prison. Means was acquitted.

Means ran unsuccessfully for the Libertarian nomination for president in
1988.

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