Teaching an Old Fox New Tricks
By Questioning Everything To Find Truth You'll Find New Understanding
Whenever you think you know what you know about something, every once in a while you learn something new that informs you that you really didn’t know what you thought you knew.
The most recent example for me being when I began to write a reply about the American Indian Movement on a Chris Bray’s Substack, “Tell Me How This Ends” post, We Haven't Rejected Political Violence. I intended to focus on political violence the group used in the 1970's and how their members who used political violence are now celebrated. I've been no fan of AIM, in fact, I've often shared the name most tribal leaders of the time referred to the group as, "Assholes In Moccasins":
"Treuer is not afraid to take on some of the more high-profile Native Americans, including addressing corruption among the hierarchies of some tribes and the leadership of the American Indian Movement, a radical and sometimes violent group from the 1960s and 1970s. He says many Indians muttered under their breath that AIM really stood for "Assholes in Moccasins.""
I'm old enough to remember stories of AIM violence, Russell Means as the radical protagonist. And when I saw the news of Nathan Phillips confronting Nick Sandmann in DC, portrayed as "brave Vietnam Vet Native American elder, facing the smirking white privilege MAGA teen who calmed his fears singing an old inspirational AIM song for strength" I knew Phillips was a long-time activist experienced in using political violence. I also knew that the corporate media powers no longer saw AIM political violence as a bad thing, their violent history now celebrated. When political violence succeeds its often characterized as, "brave and courageous." Practitioners of it celebrated, lionized.
Even when they're criminals. Seems as though George Floyd was just one in a long line of criminal media heroes serving a larger purpose.
But...
…Then I came across this old speech by Russell Means delivered in 1980 that I had never heard or read.
"“I Am Not a Leader”: Russell Means’ 1980 Mother Jones Cover Story"
Which made me rethink how I've thought of Russell Means, what he stood for. Compared to what I was told to believe he stood for. By both those who supported him and those who opposed him. He has some profound insights he shares that were prophetic. He dishes the radical Marxists who tried to ride on his movement's coattails to usher in their Marxist revolution. And he dishes the capitalists found on the right who exploit the people and lands they control. Highly suggested reading.
Highlighted excerpts and comments:
"Each one of these “thinkers” took a piece of the spirituality of human existence and converted it into a 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."
I.e., Atheism is now the official state religion, even the Pope no longer honors authentic Catholicism, Rabbi's no longer honor authentic Judaism, all places of worship are now subservient to government orders.
"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 stop-gaps, only temporary, and must be continuously discarded in favor of new stop-gaps which support the mechanical models and keep them (the models) alive."
I.e., Boys are girls, girls are boys if they believe it and child genital mutilation is enlightened and empowering; paper and cloth masks aren’t are aren’t effective barriers to respiratory disease, natural immunity is superior inferior superior to experimental concoctions that are unsafe safe unsafe and ineffective effective ineffective, man controls the climate of the planet by driving SUV’s and eating cows that create flatulence.
"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 de humanizing 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 other wise 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."
I.e., The "othering" of non-maskers, unvaxxed, freedom-loving and patriotic MAGA, climate-deniers.
"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."
I.e. Biden, Newsome Pelosi, Cheney, Big Media, Big Tech all claim to be protecting freedom as they revoke civil liberties and constitutional freedom from Americans, while calling Trump, DeSantis "dictators" and their supporters "dangerous insurrectionists.”
"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 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."
Substitute "tribal peoples" with “semi-Fascist Republicans,” "bitter clingers," "deplorables," "patriots," those living in “flyover country.” Who are an "acceptable sacrifice" to progress.
"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.e., Follow The Science (TM). Not God. Not the human spirit. Follow a leader who declares, "I am Science."
"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."
"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 overpopulating 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 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."
"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."
"A culture which regularly confuses revolution with continuation, which confuses science and religion, which 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 it."
My whole life I would have taken issue with Russel Means' characterization of European society and our systems that I've believed to be superior. Reading his words in 2022, especially having witnessed these past three years, the rapid and willing abandonment of reality by so many among us - even among the American Indians he was speaking to who allowed their minds to become "Europeanized" - has been astounding.
And while I enjoy the benefits and ease of life within the society that the European mind has created, I find myself sympathetic to the concerns and beliefs Russell Means shared with those who would listen to him in 1980. I was not one of them. My mind was not open to his message before 2022. Now I see that he makes many valid, sensible points. And in light of the transhumanist push that Biden’s latest Executive Order enables, and the push for a comprehensive US and global digital surveillance and a social credit system of mind control pushed by Marxist and Capitalist powers a return to ways of living that are more in harmony with nature looks more and more desirable every single day in comparison to a Dystopian future. Proving that as long as our minds remain open we're never too old to learn new tricks, or ways of perceiving the world around us. Old Foxes seeking truth have open minds.
One of the best articles I've read on Substack or anywhere else.
Excellent!
Just subscribed. As a low-income 79 Y.O, living in Minnesota's most low-income county, the place where Mother Earth gives birth to the Father of Waters; I'm not at this time able to support your work by a pledge.
That said, your personal renaissance in discovering the depth of Russell Means and the original Aim movement, is most pleasing to me. Back in the mid 70's a friend invited me to attend an AIM happening at the Schermerhorn Ranch on the White Earth Rez. One of the other white guys in attendance was a famous actor who was born in Omaha...a very short dude who starred in "On the Waterfront".
Means' Ojibwa counterpart was Clyde Bellecourt, whose family lives maybe 30 miles from my home. The day after the AIM rally, I followed up on an invitation from Dewey Goodwin, to go horseback riding out at the Shermerhorn. That old ranch is now being used by the Tribe for various civic purposes.
When I was publishing a monthly newspaper which was sold in more than a hundred mom n' pop retail outfits across the Northwoods of Minnesota, a man from the village of White Earth, became my NAG...Native American Guru.
My home on Echo Ridge is located almost exactly halfway between White Earth Rez and the Red Lake Nation. Many personal connexions with people from both places. Perhaps you have heard the common Native term used to describe natives who have completely taken on Whiteman ways: "Apple"...that is red on the outside and white within. It's a spiritual thing, mostly. The Missionary Position messed up a lot of natives...and still haunts them.
Back in the 80's I enjoyed a close relationship with one whose family comes from the village of Ponemah, close to where Lower Red and Upper Red are divided by a peninsula. Those folks, when I attended a powwow there a few years back, include some who still traditionally bury their dead in little houses, right there in the front yards. They are Traditionals. Both of the Treuer brothers, whose mother was from the Leech Lake Rez and father a Jewish refugee from Austria, have written several books about the traditions of their tribal nation. A late friend served them as the copy-editor for those productions.
The Lakota people, specifically the Hunkpapa (Sitting Bull's people) who live in the village of Rosebud on the Rosebud Rez in So.Dak., are very hospital to those "Wasichu" who show respect to them.
In the late 80's, on the way to doing an antiques show in Denver; I pulled into that place on a hot summer day. Kinda sweaty, I drove up to a bunch of boys on bicycles and asked if there was a place to cool off in the water. They escorted me to a large pond, which the people had made by damming up a small stream. Instead of jumping in right away, I sat amongst trees nearby until invited in.
After the water a couple of men, one who was born there but now lives on the Standing Rock Rez in N.D., where the people fought the pipeline. The other was just graduated from the Indian School in Yankton, S.D. I shared some holy smokum (never sold or bought) with them. We talked a bunch and as the day wore on, many people left the area. The guys asked me if I would like to have them guide me to any place in the area.
My request was for us to drive my van up to a high-place where there would be good views. So we drove up this long hill. Their cemetery was to one side of where we parked and shared some more holy smokum. The vision presented itself. Looking up into the sky, two clouds were separated by some blue sky. The sky that was surrounded by those clouds made the perfect form of a flying eagle. From that visualization of a native sense of reality, I was granted then and understood fully only days later, a Lakota name.
Many years ago, I was the last white man who stayed after dark at the powwow at Red Lake. At the center were the drummers and the jingle-dancers. It was full moon on that Fourth of July night, then still the only way that the people could "come out" and drum and dance their traditions.
The dancers were moving counter-clockwise in a circle. Inspiration induced me to dance outside their circle, but clockwise. Wearing my old hippie patch jeans and an old hat I'd found at the Sago township dump a few years previous that had been a target for a shotgun...very holey..my role had become that of "Crazy Man". Accepted.
After awhile I felt motivated to walk over into the parking area overlooking that largest freshwater lake in the south 48. The drumming and dancing emanated a vibration as I looked across the lake, with the moon shining behind me. At that point, the skies became infused with Northern Lights. They too were dancing...in perfect synch with the drumming and the chanting.
Spiritual Magic resonance is well understood by native people who have not lost sight of their traditions. Some have called me as being the opposite of one of those "Apples", being white on the outside while red within.
I walk the Spirit Path, which many tribal nations call the "Red Road".
Means was indeed a seer, a visionary, a prophet. It is my honor to have pre-school niece and nephew who possess some native DNA. That they may survive is a great gifting.
The 20th Century was gifted with a Jewish prophet, Bob Dylan. In one of his songs, a short bit of his channeled lyricism from back in the day, both resonated and reverberated within my being. Don't even remember the exact song, but the singular line remains: "Your spirit and your soul". Soul is our DNA, our heritage as humans. Spirit is that part of us which is eternal, as it is an effusion of Creator...that ineffable beingness which the Ojibwa call "Gitchee Manitou" and the Lakota tongue resonates as "Wakan Tonka"...the Great Mystery.
Love that fox photo as your lead-in. Have you read "Black Elk Speaks"...or Jackson's much more recent biography of the legendary Lakota Medicine Man, simply titled "Black Elk"? Highly recommended.
Blessings and Peace. -carstie