Most Awe-Inspiring Man I've Ever Met

I met him a few years before I ever thought of doing a blog, so hence I didn't bring a camera to a friend's college alumni luncheon where he was speaking. But still today he remains the most awe-inspiring man I've ever met in person and the only one for which my stomach went jittery, as I was awestruck to be shaking his hand.

Those who know me are probably wondering which actor I'm talking about, and in a way, they'd be right, because he is an actor now. But it isn't because he's an actor that meeting him filled me with awe that day. And it isn't even because he's an activist or sees his acting as a way to reach more people as an activist than he could on the lecture circuit.

What struck awe in me as I went up to say hello and shake his hand was that this was talking to a very important part of history. In 1972, this man, with others, had stood up against the might of our soldiers and FBI agents armed with guns, facing those guns for the rights of his people. In a standoff at Wounded Knee -- a place of a terrible massacre of Sioux Indians in the 19th century -- he faced down getting shot and killed by modern-day, fellow citizenry white men who hated him for the color of his skin and for his unwillingness to sink with his culture down into oblivion, who hated him for protesting against all the broken promises and stolen land and treaty violations our government has perpetrated on his people.

I've marched in protest with other like-minded college students, I've supported causes for the rights of people, I've written letters and stuffed envelopes and collected food and clothing. I've written stories and scripts to spread my beliefs. I even helped collect food and clothing to be backpacked through the mountains and hence smuggled past the US government blockade of those brave members of AIM (American Indian Movement) who stood up in defiance so bravely for weeks. But I've never faced guns pointed at me out of hatred and with the full blessing of my government and I'm not even sure that I could. To be truthful, I never want to find out.

I've never been shot or stabbed or incarcerated in prison for my beliefs like this man has. I never want to have to find out whether I can take it and bounce out the other side still fighting to have the voice of my people heard. I don't want to find out how it feels to have that kind of pain or suffer that kind of anguish. I truly doubt I'd have the strength.

But that's why meeting Russell Means, the first national director of the American Indian Movement (AIM), in person was such a momentous and awesome encounter. Because he's the real thing. While we write and act it out in our fantasy worlds of screen and TV, he's the one who actually did it -- put his life on the line for what he was saying.

That he doesn't do that now, and puts his efforts more into acting and producing stories about his people I fully understand. Few people heard of the standoff at Wounded Knee because there was no Internet back in 1972 and the government was pretty successful at getting a media blackout. Yet millions have seen what Native Americans and Native American cultures are all about in movies such as Last of the Mohicans, Black Cloud, Into the West, and various other television shows that raise awareness while entertaining.

Even our humanitarian efforts at supplying food and warm clothing for those protestors went for naught. While we figured many would be caught, we figured that some of the backpackers would get through... and aid was being sent from all states in the Union. What we didn't know then and didn't find out until much later was that all that aid was stopped at the borders of the various states it was collected in and hence none of it got through. It was illegal to stop it and the ACLU successively fought it in the courts, but it mattered little because by then the protestors were starved into submission. And in the grand scheme of things, very few people ever heard of any of it.

So maybe the most effective ways to change people's minds and hearts are through movies like Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and Flags of our Fathers. But I still stand in awe of meeting the real life person, who laid it all the line in real life, and took being shot and stabbed and incarcerated in stride to try to help his people.