Subject: Europe Must Die

From: [email-masked] (CoE)
Date: Sat, 23 Nov 1996 22:23:40 -0800 (PST)

This text is also available at www.paranoia.com/coe/e-sermons/means.html
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                 "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 a 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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