Where White Men Fear to Tread:
The Autobiography of Russell Means

by Russell Means
(with Marvin J. Wolf)

Paperback: 592 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (November 15, 1996)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312147619
ISBN-13: 978-0312147617
Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 2 pounds

Review:

courtesy The San Francisco Chronicle
by Patricia Holt

He is both admired and shunned as a leader of the American Indian Movement, was considered lethally charismatic during the armed Indian takeover of Wounded Knee and outrageous if not repulsive (to some) when he urinated on the Mount Rushmore likeness of George Washington. But however one regards the volatile personality and ongoing crusade of Oglala/Lakota Native American Russell Means, it's impossible to stop reading his gripping autobiography -- despite and even because of its taunting title, ``Where White Men Fear to Tread.''

Means begins by inviting us to roam ``the grassy, gently rounded prairie hills and river knolls'' of his childhood near the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. There, during sleepy boyhood summers, his Grandpa John took Means on long, rambling walks in which the two discussed Native American lore, natural law and animal tracks.

``Domesticated dogs are much like domesticated humans in that their toes are closer together, explained Grandpa, but wolves or coyotes are free, so their toes are open. When we were free Indians, he said, our toes were spread apart.''