In 1989, Lakota activist and AIM leader Russell Means stood before Congress to deliver a fiery and unapologetic speech about Native sovereignty and independence. Speaking not as a “minority” within the United States, but as a representative of sovereign nations, he challenged the very foundation of U.S. policy toward Indigenous peoples.Means declared that American Indians are not “wards of the state,” but citizens of their own nations, bound by treaties with the United States, treaties that the