"For America to Live, Europe Must Die"
The following speech was given by Russell Means in July 1980, before several
thousand people who had assembled from all over the world for the Black Hills
International Survival Gathering, in the Black Hills of South Dakota. It
is Russell Means's most famous speech.
The only possible opening for a statement of this kind is that I detest writing.
The process itself epitomizes the European concept of "legitimate" thinking;
what is written has an importance that is denied the spoken. My culture,
the Lakota culture, has an oral tradition, so I ordinarily reject writing.
It is one of the white world's ways of destroying the cultures of non-European
peoples, the imposing of an abstraction over the spoken relationship of a
people.
So what you read here is not what I've written. It's what I've said and
someone else has written down. I will allow this because it seems that the
only way to communicate with the white world is through the dead, dry leaves
of a book. I don't really care whether my words reach whites or not. They
have already demonstrated through their history that they cannot hear, cannot
see; they can only read (of course, there are exceptions, but the exceptions
only prove the rule). I'm more concerned with American Indian people, students
and others, who have begun to be absorbed into the white world through universities
and other institutions. But even then it's a marginal sort of concern.
It's very possible to grow into a red face with a white mind; and if that's
a person's individual choice, so be it, but I have no use for them. This
is part of the process of cultural genocide being waged by Europeans against
American Indian peoples' today. My concern is with those American Indians
who choose to resist this genocide, but who may be confused as to how to
proceed.
(You notice I use the term American Indian rather than Native American or
Native indigenous people or Amerindian when referring to my people. There
has been some controversy about such terms, and frankly, at this point,
I find it absurd. Primarily it seems that American Indian is being rejected
as European in origin--which is true. But all the above terms are European
in origin; the only non-European way is to speak of Lakota--or, more precisely,
of Oglala, Brule, etc.--and of the Dineh, the Miccousukee, and all the rest
of the several hundred correct tribal names.
(There is also some confusion about the word Indian, a mistaken belief that
it refers somehow to the country, India. When Columbus washed up on the
beach in the Caribbean, he was not looking for a country called India. Europeans
were calling that country Hindustan in 1492. Look it up on the old maps.
Columbus called the tribal people he met "Indio," from the Italian in dio,
meaning "in God.")
It takes a strong effort on the part of each American Indian not to become
Europeanized. The strength for this effort can only come from the traditional
ways, the traditional values that our elders retain. It must come from the
hoop, the four directions, the relations: it cannot come from the pages of
a book or a thousand books. No European can ever teach a Lakota to be Lakota,
a Hopi to be Hopi. A master's degree in "Indian Studies" or in "education"
or in anything else cannot make a person into a human being or provide knowledge
into traditional ways. It can only make you into a mental European, an outsider.
I should be clear about something here, because there seems to be some confusion
about it. When I speak of Europeans or mental Europeans, I'm not allowing
for false distinctions. I'm not saying that on the one hand there are the
by-products of a few thousand years of genocidal, reactionary, European intellectual
development which is bad; and on the other hand there is some new revolutionary
intellectual development which is good. I'm referring here to the so-called
theories of Marxism and anarchism and "leftism" in general. I don't believe
these theories can be separated from the rest of the of the European intellectual
tradition. It's really just the same old song.
The process began much earlier. Newton, for example, "revolutionized" physics
and the so-called natural sciences by reducing the physical universe to a
linear mathematical equation. Descartes did the same thing with culture.
John Locke did it with politics, and Adam Smith did it with economics.
Each one of these "thinkers" took a piece of the spirituality of human existence
and converted it into code, an abstraction. They picked up where Christianity
ended: they "secularized" Christian religion, as the "scholars" like to say--and
in doing so they made Europe more able and ready to act as an expansionist
culture. Each of these intellectual revolutions served to abstract the European
mentality even further, to remove the wonderful complexity and spirituality
from the universe and replace it with a logical sequence: one, two, three.
Answer!
This is what has come to be termed "efficiency" in the European mind. Whatever
is mechanical is perfect; whatever seems to work at the moment--that is,
proves the mechanical model to be the right one--is considered correct, even
when it is clearly untrue. This is why "truth" changes so fast in the European
mind; the answers which result from such a process are only stopgaps, only
temporary, and must be continuously discarded in favor of new stopgaps which
support the mechanical models and keep them (the models) alive.
Hegel and Marx were heirs to the thinking of Newton, Descartes, Locke and
Smith. Hegel finished the process of secularizing theology--and that is
put in his own terms--he secularized the religious thinking through which
Europe understood the universe. Then Marx put Hegel's philosophy in terms
of "materialism," which is to say that Marx despiritualized Hegel's work
altogether. Again, this is in Marx' own terms. And this is now seen as
the future revolutionary potential of Europe. Europeans may see this as
revolutionary, but American Indians see it simply as still more of that same
old European conflict between being and gaining. The intellectual roots
of a new Marxist form of European imperialism lie in Marx'--and his followers'--links
to the tradition of Newton, Hegel and the others.
Being is a spiritual proposition. Gaining is a material act. Traditionally,
American Indians have always attempted to be the best people they could.
Part of that spiritual process was and is to give away wealth, to discard
wealth in order not to gain. Material gain is an indicator of false status
among traditional people, while it is "proof that the system works" to Europeans.
Clearly, there are two completely opposing views at issue here, and Marxism
is very far over to the other side from the American Indian view. But let's
look at a major implication of this; it is not merely an intellectual debate.
The European materialist tradition of despiritualizing the universe is very
similar to the mental process which goes into dehumanizing another person.
And who seems most expert at dehumanizing other people? And why? Soldiers
who have seen a lot of combat learn to do this to the enemy before going
back into combat. Murderers do it before going out to commit murder. Nazi
SS guards did it to concentration camp inmates. Cops do it. Corporation
leaders do it to the workers they send into uranium mines and steel mills.
Politicians do it to everyone in sight. And what the process has in common
for each group doing the dehumanizing is that it makes it all right to kill
and otherwise destroy other people. One of the Christian commandments says,
"Thou shalt not kill," at least not humans, so the trick is to mentally convert
the victims into nonhumans. Then you can proclaim violation of your own
commandment as a virtue.
In terms of the despiritualization of the universe, the mental process works
so that it becomes virtuous to destroy the planet. Terms like progress and
development are used as cover words here, the way victory and freedom are
used to justify butchery in the dehumanization process. For example, a real-estate
speculator may refer to "developing" a parcel of ground by opening a gravel
quarry; development here means total, permanent destruction, with the earth
itself removed. But European logic has gained a few tons of gravel with
which more land can be "developed" through the construction of road beds.
Ultimately, the whole universe is open--in the European view--to this sort
of insanity.
Most important here, perhaps, is the fact that Europeans feel no sense of
loss in all this. After all, their philosophers have despiritualized reality,
so there is no satisfaction (for them) to be gained in simply observing the
wonder of a mountain or a lake or a people in being. No, satisfaction is
measured in terms of gaining material. So the mountain becomes gravel, and
the lake becomes coolant for a factory, and the people are rounded up for
processing through the indoctrination mills Europeans like to call schools.
But each new piece of that "progress" ups the ante out in the real world.
Take fuel for the industrial machine as an example. Little more than two
centuries ago, nearly everyone used wood--a replenishable, natural item--as
fuel for the very human needs of cooking and staying warm. Along came the
Industrial Revolution and coal became the dominant fuel, as production became
the social imperative for Europe. Pollution began to become a problem in
the cities, and the earth was ripped open to provide coal whereas wood had
always simply been gathered or harvested at no great expense to the environment.
Later, oil became the major fuel, as the technology of production was perfected
through a series of scientific "revolutions." Pollution increased dramatically,
and nobody yet knows what the environmental costs of pumping all that oil
out of the ground will really be in the long run. Now there's an "energy
crisis," and uranium is becoming the dominant fuel.
Capitalists, at least, can be relied upon to develop uranium as fuel only
at the rate which they can show a good profit. That's their ethic, and maybe
they will buy some time. Marxists, on the other hand, can be relied upon
to develop uranium fuel as rapidly as possible simply because it's the most
"efficient" production fuel available. That's their ethic, and I fail to
see where it's preferable. Like I said, Marxism is right smack in the middle
of European tradition. It's the same old song.
There's a rule of thumb which can be applied here. You cannot judge the
real nature of a European revolutionary doctrine on the basis of the changes
it proposes to make within the European power structure and society. You
can only judge it by the effects it will have on non-European peoples. This
is because every revolution in European history has served to reinforce Europe's
tendencies and abilities to export destruction to other peoples, other cultures
and the environment itself. I defy anyone to point out an example where
this is not true.
So now we, as American Indian people, are asked to believe that a "new" European
revolutionary doctrine such as Marxism will reverse the negative effects
of European history on us. European power relations are to be adjusted once
again, and that's supposed to make things better for all of us. But what
does this really mean?
Right now, today, we who live on the Pine Ridge Reservation are living in
what white society has designated a "National Sacrifice Area." What this
means is that we have a lot of uranium deposits here, and white culture (not
us) needs this uranium as energy production material. The cheapest, most
efficient way for industry to extract and deal with the processing of this
uranium is to dump the waste by-products right here at the digging sites.
Right here where we live. This waste is radioactive and will make the entire
region uninhabitable forever. This is considered by the industry, and by
the white society that created this industry, to be an "acceptable" price
to pay for energy resource development. Along the way they also plan to
drain the water table under this part of South Dakota as part of the industrial
process, so the region becomes doubly uninhabitable. The same sort of thing
is happening down in the land of the Navajo and Hopi, up in the land of the
Northern Cheyenne and Crow, and elsewhere. Thirty percent of the coal in
the West and half of the uranium deposits in the United States have been
found to lie under reservation land, so there is no way this can be called
a minor issue.
We are resisting being turned into a National Sacrifice Area. We are resisting
being turned into a national sacrifice people. The costs of this industrial
process are not acceptable to us. It is genocide to dig uranium here and
drain the water table--no more, no less.
Now let's suppose that in our resistance to extermination we begin to seek
allies (we have). Let's suppose further that we were to take revolutionary
Marxism at its word: that it intends nothing less than the complete overthrow
of the European capitalists order which has presented this threat to our
very existence. This would seem to be a natural alliance for American Indian
people to enter into. After all, as the Marxists say, it is the capitalists
who set us up to be a national sacrifice. This is true as far as it goes.
But, as I've tried to point out, this "truth" is very deceptive. Revolutionary
Marxism is committed to even further perpetuation and perfection of the very
industrial process which is destroying us all. It offers only to "redistribute"
the results--the money, maybe--of this industrialization to a wider section
of the population. It offers to take wealth from the capitalists and pass
it around; but in order to do so, Marxism must maintain the industrial system.
Once again, the power relations within European society will have to be
altered, but once again the effects upon American Indian peoples here and
non-Europeans elsewhere will remain the same. This is much the same as when
power was redistributed from the church to private business during the so-called
bourgeois revolution. European society changed a bit, at least superficially,
but its conduct toward non-Europeans continued as before. You can see what
the American Revolution of 1776 did for American Indians. It's the same
old song.
Revolutionary Marxism, like industrial society in other forms, seeks to "rationalize"
all people in relation to industry--maximum industry, maximum production.
It is a doctrine that despises the American Indian spiritual tradition,
our cultures, our lifeways. Marx himself called us "precapitalists" and
"primitive." Precapitalist simply means that, in his view, we would eventually
discover capitalism and become capitalists; we have always been economically
retarded in Marxist terms. The only manner in which American Indian people
could participate in a Marxist revolution would be to join the industrial
system, to become factory workers, or "proletarians," as Marx called them.
The man was very clear about the fact that his revolution could only occur
through the struggle of the proletariat, that the existence of a massive
industrial system is a precondition of a successful Marxist society.
I think there's a problem with language here. Christians, capitalists, Marxists.
All of them have been revolutionary in their own minds, but none of them
really means revolution. What they really mean is continuation. They do
what they do in order that European culture can continue to exist and develop
according to its needs.
So, in order for us to really join forces with Marxism, we American Indians
would have to accept the national sacrifice of our homeland; we would have
to commit cultural suicide and become industrialized and Europeanized.
At this point, I've got to stop and ask myself whether I'm being too harsh.
Marxism has something of a history. Does this history bear out my observations?
I look to the process of industrialization in the Soviet Union since 1920
and I see that these Marxists have done what it took the English Industrial
Revolution 300 years to do; and the Marxists did it in 60 years. I see that
the territory of the USSR used to contain a number of tribal peoples and
that they have been crushed to make way for the factories. The Soviets refer
to this as "the National Question," the question of whether the tribal peoples
had the right to exist as peoples; and they decided the tribal peoples were
an acceptable sacrifice to the industrial needs. I look to China and I see
the same thing. I look to Vietnam and I see Marxists imposing an industrial
order and rooting out the indigenous tribal mountain people.
I hear the leading Soviet scientist saying that when uranium is exhausted,
then alternatives will be found. I see the Vietnamese taking over a nuclear
power plant abandoned by the U.S. military. Have they dismantled and destroyed
it? No, they are using it. I see China exploding nuclear bombs, developing
uranium reactors, and preparing a space program in order to colonize and
exploit the planets the same as the Europeans colonized and exploited this
hemisphere. It's the same old song, but maybe with a faster tempo this time.
The statement of the Soviet scientist is very interesting. Does he know
what this alternative energy source will be? No, he simply has faith. Science
will find a way. I hear revolutionary Marxists saying that the destruction
of the environment, pollution, and radiation will all be controlled. And
I see them act upon their words. Do they know how these things will be controlled?
No, they simply have faith. Science will find a way. Industrialization
is fine and necessary. How do they know this? Faith. Science will find
a way. Faith of this sort has always been known in Europe as religion.
Science has become the new European religion for both capitalists and Marxists;
they are truly inseparable; they are part and parcel of the same culture.
So, in both theory and practice, Marxism demands that non-European peoples
give up their values, their traditions, their cultural existence altogether.
We will all be industrialized science addicts in a Marxist society.
I do not believe that capitalism itself is really responsible for the situation
in which American Indians have been declared a national sacrifice. No, it
is the European tradition; European culture itself is responsible. Marxism
is just the latest continuation of this tradition, not a solution to it.
To ally with Marxism is to ally with the very same forces that declare us
an acceptable cost.
There is another way. There is the traditional Lakota way and the ways of
the American Indian peoples. It is the way that knows that humans do not
have the right to degrade Mother Earth, that there are forces beyond anything
the European mind has conceived, that humans must be in harmony with all
relations or the relations will eventually eliminate the disharmony. A lopsided
emphasis on humans by humans--the Europeans' arrogance of acting as though
they were beyond the nature of all related things--can only result in a total
disharmony and a readjustment which cuts arrogant humans down to size, gives
them a taste of that reality beyond their grasp or control and restores the
harmony. There is no need for a revolutionary theory to bring this about;
it's beyond human control. The nature peoples of this planet know this and
so they do not theorize about it. Theory is an abstract; our knowledge is
real.
Distilled to its basic terms, European faith--including the new faith in
science--equals a belief that man is God. Europe has always sought a Messiah,
whether that be the man Jesus Christ or the man Karl Marx or the man Albert
Einstein. American Indians know this to be totally absurd. Humans are the
weakest of all creatures, so weak that other creatures are willing to give
up their flesh that we may live. Humans are able to survive only through
the exercise of rationality since they lack the abilities of other creatures
to gain food through the use of fang and claw.
But rationality is a curse since it can cause humans to forget the natural
order of things in ways other creatures do not. A wolf never forgets his
or her place in the natural order. American Indians can. Europeans almost
always do. We pray our thanks to the deer, our relations, for allowing us
their flesh to eat; Europeans simply take the flesh for granted and consider
the deer inferior. After all, Europeans consider themselves godlike in their
rationalism and science. God is the Supreme Being; all else must be inferior.
All European tradition, Marxism included, has conspired to defy the natural
order of all things. Mother Earth has been abused, the powers have been
abused, and this cannot go on forever. No theory can alter that simple fact.
Mother Earth will retaliate, the whole environment will retaliate, and the
abusers will be eliminated. Things come full circle, back to where they
started. That's revolution. And that's a prophecy of my people, of the
Hopi people and of other correct peoples.
American Indians have been trying to explain this to Europeans for centuries.
But, as I said earlier, Europeans have proven themselves unable to hear.
The natural order will win out, and the offenders will die out, the way
deer die when they offend the harmony by over-populating a given region.
It's only a matter of time until what Europeans call "a major catastrophe
of global proportions" will occur. It is the role of American Indian peoples,
the role of all natural beings, to survive. A part of our survival is to
resist. We resist not to overthrow a government or to take political power,
but because it is natural to resist extermination, to survive. We don't
want power over white institutions; we want white institutions to disappear.
That's revolution.
American Indians are still in touch with these realities--the prophecies,
the traditions of our ancestors. We learn from the elders, from nature,
from the powers. And when the catastrophe is over, we American Indian peoples
will still be here to inhabit the hemisphere. I don't care if it's only
a handful living high in the Andes. American Indian people will survive;
harmony will be reestablished. That's revolution.
At this point, perhaps I should be very clear about another matter, one which
should already be clear as a result of what I've said. But confusion breeds
easily these days, so I want to hammer home this point. When I use the term
European, I'm not referring to a skin color or a particular genetic structure.
What I'm referring to is a mind-set, a worldview that is a product of the
development of European culture. People are not genetically encoded to hold
this outlook; they are acculturated to hold it. The same is true for American
Indians or for the members of any culture.
It is possible for an American Indian to share European values, a European
worldview. We have a term for these people; we call them "apples"--red on
the outside (genetics) and white on the inside (their values). Other groups
have similar terms: Blacks have their "oreos"; Hispanos have "Coconuts" and
so on. And, as I said before, there are exceptions to the white norm: people
who are white on the outside, but not white inside. I'm not sure what term
should be applied to them other than "human beings."
What I'm putting out here is not a racial proposition but a cultural proposition.
Those who ultimately advocate and defend the realities of European culture
and its industrialism are my enemies. Those who resist it, who struggle
against it, are my allies, the allies of American Indian people. And I don't
give a damn what their skin color happens to be. Caucasian is the white
term for the white race: European is an outlook I oppose.
The Vietnamese Communists are not exactly what you might consider genetic
Caucasians, but they are now functioning as mental Europeans. The same holds
true for Chinese Communists, for Japanese capitalists or Bantu Catholics
or Peter "MacDollar" down at the Navajo Reservation or Dickie Wilson up here
at Pine Ridge. There is no racism involved in this, just an acknowledgment
of the mind and spirit that make up culture.
In Marxist terms I suppose I'm a "cultural nationalist." I work first with
my people, the traditional Lakota people, because we hold a common worldview
and share an immediate struggle. Beyond this, I work with other traditional
American Indian peoples, again because of a certain commonality in worldview
and form of struggle. Beyond that, I work with anyone who has experienced
the colonial oppression of Europe and who resists its cultural and industrial
totality. Obviously, this includes genetic Caucasians who struggle to resist
the dominant norms of European culture. The Irish and the Basques come immediately
to mind, but there are many others.
I work primarily with my own people, with my own community. Other people
who hold non-European perspectives should do the same. I believe in the
slogan, "Trust your brother's vision," although I'd like to add sisters into
the bargain. I trust the community and the culturally based vision of all
the races that naturally resist industrialization and human extinction.
Clearly, individual whites can share in this, given only that they have reached
the awareness that continuation of the industrial imperatives of Europe is
not a vision, but species suicide. White is one of the sacred colors of
the Lakota people--red, yellow, white and black. The four directions. The
four seasons. The four periods of life and aging. The four races of humanity.
Mix red, yellow, white and black together and you get brown, the color of
the fifth race. This is a natural ordering of things. It therefore seems
natural to me to work with all races, each with its own special meaning,
identity and message.
But there is a peculiar behavior among most Caucasians. As soon as I become
critical of Europe and its impact on other cultures, they become defensive.
They begin to defend themselves. But I'm not attacking them personally;
I'm attacking Europe. In personalizing my observations on Europe they are
personalizing European culture, identifying themselves with it. By defending
themselves in this context, they are ultimately defending the death culture.
This is a confusion which must be overcome, and it must be overcome in a
hurry. None of us has energy to waste in such false struggles.
Caucasians have a more positive vision to offer humanity than European culture.
I believe this. But in order to attain this vision it is necessary for
Caucasians to step outside European culture--alongside the rest of humanity--to
see Europe for what it is and what it does.
To cling to capitalism and Marxism and all other "isms" is simply to remain
within European culture. There is no avoiding this basic fact. As a fact,
this constitutes a choice. Understand that the choice is based on culture,
not race. Understand that to choose European culture and industrialism is
to choose to be my enemy. And understand that the choice is yours, not mine.
This leads me back to address those American Indians who are drifting through
the universities, the city slums, and other European institutions. If you
are there to resist the oppressor in accordance with your traditional ways,
so be it. I don't know how you manage to combine the two, but perhaps you
will succeed. But retain your sense of reality. Beware of coming to believe
the white world now offers solutions to the problems it confronts us with.
Beware, too, of allowing the words of native people to be twisted to the
advantages of our enemies. Europe invented the practice of turning words
around on themselves. You need only look to the treaties between American
Indian peoples and various European governments to know that this is true.
Draw your strength from who you are.
A culture which regularly confuses revolt with resistance, has nothing helpful
to teach you and nothing to offer you as a way of life. Europeans have long
since lost all touch with reality, if ever they were in touch with who you
are as American Indians.
So, I suppose to conclude this, I should state clearly that leading anyone
toward Marxism is the last thing on my mind. Marxism is as alien to my culture
as capitalism and Christianity are. In fact, I can say I don't think I'm
trying to lead anyone toward anything. To some extent I tried to be a "leader,"
in the sense that the white media like to use that term, when the American
Indian Movement was a young organization. This was a result of a confusion
I no longer have. You cannot be everything to everyone. I do not propose
to be used in such a fashion by my enemies. I am not a leader. I am an
Oglala Lakota patriot. That is all I want and all I need to be. And I am
very comfortable with who I am.
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