Russell Means Quotes
Golden eagles don't mate with bald eagles, deer don't mate with antelope, gray wolves don't mate with red wolves. Just look at domesticated animals, at mongrel dogs, and mixed breed horses, and you'll know the Great Mystery didn't intend them to be that way. We weakened the species and introduced disease by mixing what should be kept seperate. Among humans, intermarriage weakens the respect people have for themselves and for their traditions. It undermines clarity of spirit and mind.
Means, Russell, and Marvin J. Wolf. Where White Men Fear to Tread: The Autobiography of Russell Means. St. Martin's Press, 1995, p. 302.
At the time he was not Church president. The Mormon Church has had a very complex history regarding race; Blacks for example were prohibited from leadership positions in the Church. While not the only racist church, Mormon racism was more nuanced. Mormons aggressively sought Blacks and other ethnics for conversion into the church and on a personal and social level did not exhibit the antipathy towards non-whites that so many in other religions did. Yet their theology prohibited Blacks from certain leadership positions. Other religious racism was personal and social but not theological; Mormon racism was theological and not personal. Reforms have changed things slightly but critics of the church leadership at the start of the 21st century pointed to the attitudes of the President of the Church.
Rowan was primarily referring to the miscegenation that took place since Negro slavery in the Americas. Rape of slaves by white “masters” and their male relatives was common. In addition there have been interracial romantic relationships from the time Blacks were first in America. These have increased dramatically in the 20th and 21st centuries. However, he was slightly in error as he did not consider the origin of man, where science has traced the DNA of EVERY human on Earth back to a Black African female. Hence 100 percent of humans have “Negroid” blood in the sense that there has been inter-racial breeding in the past.
Russell like the rest of the Southern Congressional delegation, though members of the President’s own party were vehemently opposed to any civil rights legislation that would erode the legal racism and segregation that was prevalent in the South. The irony of Russell’s statement is that by Russell’s definition of a “mongrel race” the South was just that. And in a very real genetic sense all the great civilizations were characterized by interbreeding which is what Russell and other Southerners were paranoid about. The Southern institution of slavery was rife with the sexual abuse of the female slaves by the white masters and/or members of their family, overseers and other whites with power over the slaves. While many of the offspring were identifiable as mixed race (defined as Black by the laws at the time) many appeared to be white and light skinned enough to “pass” and did. A very large percentage of Southern white and black families had mixed blood in the family when Russell was complaining. More to the point, although it was not known at the time, we now know that every human being on earth can be genetically traced back through myocardial DNA to Blacks emanating from Africa. However, even using his narrow vision of race, his history was wanting. A number of great civilizations were of mixed race. One dramatic example was the great dynasties of Egypt. Cleopatra, herself, was from the union of Alexander the Great’s Greek General Ptolemy and the traditional line of Egyptian Pharos. Alexander’s Greek Soldiers interbred, as part of Alexander’s policy of occupation as suggested by Aristotle. All those societies thereafter were “mongrel” races at least in the ruling and upper classes. Actually the United States and the Soviet Union, the two super powers of the day both were ethnically and racially, highly diversified and both had a great deal of miscegenation. Scientists had made a very good argument that miscegenation strengthens a people—not weakens it.
Russell Charles Means was an Oglala Lakota activist for the rights of Native Americans, libertarian political activist, actor, writer and musician, who became a prominent member of the American Indian Movement (AIM) after joining the organization in 1968 and helped organize notable events that attracted national and international media coverage.
