The Many Faces of Russell Means

Russell Means, the fiery, controversial Indian activist, is planning to relive the violent Wounded Knee siege--this time on film, starring, he says, his former “The Last of the Mohicans” co-star Daniel Day-Lewis.

The restaging of the violent 1973 71-day standoff on the Pine Ridge Sioux reservation in South Dakota is only one of the many film projects Means, 54, has in the fire. Among his other efforts:

* A documentary about 20th-Century Indian women.

* A hefty co-starring role in Oliver Stone’s prison drama, “Natural Born Killers,” due later this year.

* A co-starring role opposite John Candy in Carolco Pictures’ “Wagons East,” currently filming in Durango, Mexico, ( see accompanying story, Page 24 ).

* Playing the ghost of athlete Jim Thorpe in the upcoming “Wind Runner,” with Margot Kidder.

The Wounded Knee saga, Means says, “will mainly be a courtroom drama, taking it partially from my experience in 1973,” referring to the eight-month trial that followed the siege. “Daniel’s character would be an amalgamation of all the lawyers who represented Dennis Banks and myself.” The $30-million film, he says, will be produced by himself and Nancy Gaelin, whose background is in TV and music production.

Banks and Means led the American Indian Movement’s armed seizure of the tiny reservation hamlet in February, 1973. While the standoff left a federal marshal paralyzed for life, two young Indians dead, and Banks and Means arrested on 10 felony counts, the episode sadly did little to change the plight of those living on the country’s reservations. The case against Means and Banks was eventually thrown out on grounds of prosecutorial misconduct.

Means hopes his film will serve as a reminder of the living conditions and broken spirit of the country’s native peoples. “Wounded Knee was the third most photographed event of the 1970s. Only Watergate and the Vietnam War were photographed more,” he says. “Nothing definitive has ever really been written about Wounded Knee.” The spot was previously site of the 1890 massacre where 267 Sioux men, women and children were wiped out by the U.S. Cavalry, the last blood bath of the U.S.-Indian Wars.

But Day-Lewis’ London attorney, Julian Belfrage, says the actor, currently nominated for an Oscar for “In the Name of the Father,” isn’t committing to any roles right now.

“Daniel is so exhausted after his last two films he has no plans to consider anything. He just wants to rest,” says Belfrage. He did confirm that he wrote Gaelin a letter in 1992 saying Day-Lewis would be interested in the film, depending on contractual availability, choice of director and cast.

Means says he’s been pitching the concept around Hollywood, but no script exists yet. He wants Erik Bergen (“The Elephant Man”) to pen the screenplay. And he says he’s scouting a director and production money. He hopes to begin production next winter.

But this summer holds a much more concrete project, a documentary on Indian women of this century and their accomplishments, a film that Means plans to co-direct with Jema Lockhardt, a Lakota documentarian who lives in Rapid City, S.D.

“It is the Indian women who have kept our culture alive in the home,” he says. “They have always been depicted as an appendage of a macho culture, but in reality they are the keepers of the culture,” he says.

This week, Means, who keeps homes in Chinle, Ariz., (on the Navajo reservation) and in Sioux Falls, S.D., is in Mexico filming the comedy “Wagons East,” a Western from Native Americans’ point of view, for Carolco.

“I did this period piece because it’s funny and I liked the overall script,” says Means. “One of the reasons I wanted to act in Hollywood is to show we’re human beings with emotions.”