The following speech was given by Russell Means in July 1980, before several thousand people who had assembled from all over the world for the Black Hills International Survival Gathering, in the...
It is good to be comfortable with the inevitability of one's own death, but I draw the line at anything that would impair our ability to keep death at bay. Death is inevitable. Death from influenza or pancreatic cancer is not. These are surmountable challenges, and to do so is unequivocally good.
I take issue with spiritualism as an ideological outlook precisely because it has a strong tendency to say that something is good because it is natural.
It is good to be comfortable with the inevitability of one's own death, but I draw the line at anything that would impair our ability to keep death at bay. Death is inevitable. Death from influenza or pancreatic cancer is not. These are surmountable challenges, and to do so is unequivocally good.
I take issue with spiritualism as an ideological outlook precisely because it has a strong tendency to say that something is good because it is natural.