American Indians to Fight Sandinista Regime

Militant American Indian leader Russell Means, saying that “Marxists are racists,” left for Central America on Friday on a mission to bring “warriors” to Nicaragua to join Indians fighting the country’s Sandinista government.

Means, a Sioux Indian who led the 1973 Wounded Knee uprising in South Dakota, said as he left for Costa Rica that there will be up to 100 American Indian Movement members from the United States and Canada in Central America “by the first week of April.”

Once there, they will help the Costa Rica-based Misurasata Indian organization and the U.S.-backed contra rebels battle Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega’s Marxist-led government.

Means said before leaving Washington that “if it was possible for the Marxists to justly deal with the Indian people, I would very strongly champion the Sandinista government. But you can’t even consider it, because the Marxists are racists.”

Forced Off Their Land

Misurasata is an organization representing the Miskito, Suma and Rama Indians who live in Nicaragua and neighboring Honduras. The Indians were forced off their land during the 1979 Sandinista revolution and have been fighting the government ever since.

Means, wearing leather-covered braids with silver studs, two turquoise necklaces and rattlesnake skin boots, said, “We’re going down there as Indian warriors.”

“We are going to assist the Indian people in rebuilding their villages, replanting the fields, rebuilding their canoes so they can fish and we will defend ourselves at (that) time.”

Means said he will form an advance team in San Jose, Costa Rica, to prepare for more New AIM members coming to Central America.

Once the Indian warriors are in Costa Rica, Means said, they will join the contras and Indians in Nicaragua, but he did not specify when or how they would enter the country.

Marlon Brando Involved

He said he is funding the mission, along with Hank Adams, director of Survival of American Indians in Olympia, Wash., and actor Marlon Brando.

Brando, who also was at Wounded Knee, made headlines at the 1973 Academy Awards when he sent a Mexican actress dressed as an Indian princess to pick up his Oscar and read a statement from Brando on behalf of American Indians.

Means, 46, who lives on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in southwest South Dakota, said he is expanding his Indian activism to Central America because “it involves our spirituality as Indian people.”

“I come from an organization that one of its axioms is ‘we refuse to turn the other cheek and bend over and get the other two kicked.’ When my people are maimed, massacred, imprisoned and jailed anywhere . . . all I can do is support those who are in the struggle,” he said.

Not Aligned With U.S.

Means does not see his alignment with anti-Sandinista forces as placing him on the same side of the conflict with the U.S. government. “I’m on the Indian side,” Means said.

“Ronald Reagan is anti-Indian. The Reagan Administration is involved in very similar crimes against Indian people as the Sandinista government,” he said, referring to recent attempts to relocate Hopi Indians in Arizona.

Means’ American Indian Movement occupied Wounded Knee for 71 days in 1973 seeking investigations into the ouster of an elected tribal leader of the Oglala Sioux and of charges of mistreatment of the tribe.

Means was tried for conspiracy, assault and theft in 1974, but the charges were dismissed because the FBI was suspected of planting an agent on the Indians’ legal defense committee.