A Regimen That Passes Means’ Test
No wonder a guard at Universal CityWalk smiled when I said I couldn’t find Russell Means. I’d been wandering around a few minutes--so had the American Indian activist and actor, looking for me. The guard indicated with a nod to turn around. I did and saw a big man with long black braids and American Indian jewelry cut a swath through the crowd. Means is 6 feet, 1 inch and 204 pounds.
He would have been as hard to miss as the Washington Post quote on the front of his autobiography, “Where White Men Fear to Tread” (St. Martin’s Press, 1995): “One of the biggest, baddest, meanest, angriest, most famous American Indian activists of the late 20th century. . . .”
Means, 58, co-founder of the American Indian Movement, shot it out with the feds 25 years ago during AIM’s 71-day takeover of Wounded Knee, S.D. Today, he spends a quarter of his time at his Santa Monica-based Treaty Productions office, where he’s working on the film “Rising From the Ashes.”
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Question: Let’s divvy up how you exercise when you’re in L.A. and then home, on the reservation.
Answer: I like to get up at 5:30-6 o’clock, do my stretches and my sit-ups. Ideally what I like to do when I’m in Santa Monica is ride my bike 2 1/2 miles and then run anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour and 20 minutes on the beach. After I bicycle back, I go to the gym and do a 35-minute routine with the free weights. And that’s essentially my workout Monday through Friday. I just love to be in shape. I’m not trying to win any prizes.
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Q: So is your routine different when you’re home? [Home is the Pine Ridge Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota.]
A: Oh, very much different. I love running over hills and on dirt roads, among the horses and the cows and out in the pasture lands. And I have my own set of weights.
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Q: Feel like talking about food?
A: Sure. Well, when I get up, I have a large glass of orange juice and a yogurt. Once in awhile, I’ll have a bowl of cereal. More often than not I’ll also eat an orange and an apple for breakfast. I usually don’t eat again until supper time. Now, sometimes I change because I love a chorizo breakfast. I’m a firm believer that people have to eat fat. Natural fat. So maybe every two weeks I’ll have chorizo, black beans and fried potatoes with the skin still on them at the Ocean Park Cafe.
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Q: Then what do you do for dinner?
A: Well, for a year and a half I was a vegetarian, stone vegetarian. But I eat so much in restaurants, and there’s just nothing for vegetarians. So I eat fish. I love fish. I don’t like to eat chickens and turkeys because of the way they’re raised. But I have one weakness.
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Q: What’s that?
A: Cookies, especially chocolate chip. That gets me.
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Q: When you’re home, do your eating habits change?
A: Oh, very much so. That’s meat and potatoes country. I’ll have corn, beans, potatoes, and I try to stay away from the beef, but we have chickens that we eat.
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Q: Earlier when we were talking about Europe, you said that you were made to feel more comfortable there than here in the States.
A: Let me say this. Prior to my becoming a minor celebrity, being in the movies [“The Last of the Mohicans,” 1992; “Pocahontas,” 1995, the voice of Chief Powhatan], I found America to be very, very unfriendly and very racist. But because I’m a minor celebrity now and people recognize me, I get treated differently.
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Q: How did you feel more welcomed in Europe?
A: I felt comfortable and included in Europe. And that was when I first went over in 1977, and I’ve never felt that way as an American in America.
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Q: Give me a “for instance.”
A: For one, a glaring example in America, people don’t consider us human beings because they can’t talk to us as a human being. They have to talk about “Indian things.”
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Q: Like what? What do they say?
A: Oh, “I like nature.” Or they ask about the reservation. Now the favorite question is, what do I think about gambling and casinos?
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Q: Is there anything you wanted to say about health that I didn’t ask
A: Well, let me say this. The reason I like keeping fit goes to an Indian teaching that I learned. I was standing by a still pond one day with an elder from my nation, Lakota. He said, “Pick up a rock. Throw it in the water.” So I threw that rock in the water.
He said, “That rock is your heart, and that first ring is your immediate family, the second is your extended family, and the third is your community. Fourth ring is your nation, fifth is your world. The next ring is the universe, and the outer ring is infinity.”
That’s all he said. In an oral society, you have to really listen. I saw that rock as my heart and what comes out from that heart affects infinity. So if I’m going to affect something, then I want to be healthy while I’m affecting it.
I keep fit to make sure that my mind can be exercised in a good way. And that’s why this conversation has been so far-reaching, because I enjoy exercising my mind and talking with you.
Are we done with the interview? Because I don’t think I can top that.
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Guest Workout runs Mondays in Health.