Where White Men Fear to Tread
autobiography of Oglala Lakota activist Russell Means
Where White Men Fear to Tread: The Autobiography of Russell Means is the autobiography of Oglala Lakota activist Russell Means. Published in 1995 and written in collaboration with Marvin J. Wolf, the book examines his childhood, his activism for the rights of Native Americans, including his role in the famous standoff with the FBI at Wounded Knee in 1973, and his later forays into politics, film and television.
Reception
The book received mixed reviews. Publishers Weekly called the book a blunt and "absorbing epic" which demonstrates his "resourceful activism", while making no attempt to whitewash the messier aspects of Means' life, such as his drinking, failed marriages, and anger issues.
The Los Angeles Times called it a self-congratulatory "exercise in propaganda and polemic" which grinds an axe against a white-dominated society.
The New York Times wrote, "Mr.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Where White Men Fear to Tread” is autobiography of Oglala Lakota activist Russell Means. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Where, White and Fear, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16886532. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1995 and 1973.
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This entry incorporates text from “Where White Men Fear to Tread” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.