Politics & Power Quote by Russell Means

Means is doing two things at once: indicting an institution and reclaiming the power to name it. By putting "public schools" under suspicion and swapping in "government schools", he strips away the civic halo that phrase carries. "Public" sounds like shared ownership and democratic purpose; "government" sounds like control. That linguistic pivot is the point. He wants the listener to feel that what is sold as neutral education is, for Indigenous students, a continuation of policy.

The phrase "Indian policy" is the loaded hinge. Means isn’t describing a conspiracy cooked up by a single school board; he’s invoking a long, documented history of assimilationist schooling: boarding schools, English-only rules, punishment for language and ceremony, curricula that treat Indigenous presence as prehistory or footnote. When he claims critical thinking is discouraged, the subtext is about obedience as pedagogy. A system built to "civilize" has no incentive to produce students who question whose knowledge counts, whose land they are on, or why certain histories are omitted.

His slightly tangled syntax ("discourage, critical thinking and the creation of ideas and public education") mirrors the urgency of an argument made from lived experience rather than policy memo polish. The intent is rhetorical pressure: to make "education" sound less like opportunity and more like a pipeline to compliance. Coming from an AIM-era activist, it’s also strategic. He’s building a case for sovereignty in the classroom - tribal control, cultural curriculum, and an education that trains analysis instead of erasure.