Lorelei DeCora Means

Lorelei DeCora Means ( DeCora; born 1954) is a Native American nurse and civil rights activist. She is best known for her role in the second siege in the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. She was also a co-founder of the American Indian organization, Women of All Red Nations.

Early life Lorelei DeCora was born on the Winnebago Reservation in the state of Nebraska. She is an enrolled citizen of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska (Thunderbird Clan) and a descendant of the Minnecojou Lakota through her mother. Anna Mae, a MikMaq woman from Nova Scotia, was having an affair with Dennis Banks, founder of the American Indian Movement while he was still involved in a common-law marriage with Darlene "Kamook" Nichols. The affair did not sit well with the women of different tribal affiliations within the movement, and these women (as well as the Pie Patrol) viewed the relationship as a threat to AIM's stability.

Lorelei was also present during the interrogation of Annie Mae, where Madonna Thunder Hawk slapped Annie Mae around.

Post Wounded Knee incident

In 1974, Lorelei and Madonna were also co-founders of the Women of All Red Nations organization. The grassroots group was created as a solution to the leadership vacuum which surfaced following the aftermath of the Wounded Knee incident. The Women of All Red Nations addressed devastating socioeconomic problems American Indians living on the reservation dealt with, such as a poor state of nutrition, insufficient and inadequate healthcare, compulsory sterilization programs, and domestic violence in response to a constellation of poor social determinants, including poverty, lack of employment, substance abuse and mental health illness.

In 1974, Lorelei De Cora, along with Madonna, founded and established, the 'We Will Remember Survival School,' a place where American Indian youth whose parents were facing federal charges or who had dropped out of the secondary education system. Specifically, the school was founded for the children of participants who were defendants in the Wounded Knee trials which followed the American Indian Movement occupation of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. This alternative model was a component of the National Federation of Native-Controlled Survival Schools that was established during the movement.

In 1979, Lorelei was a co-founder and organizer who helped establish the Black Hills Alliance. The Black Hills Alliance was responsible for preventing the Union Carbide corporation from mining uranium on sacred Lakota land. Lorelei was the innovator responsible for the conception of Diabetes Talking Circles. She was able to launch the program in conjunction with the Seva Foundation in 1996. The method employed is a form of highly specialized training that helps Native people cultivate a set of self-managed strategies for diabetes prevention and treatment while simultaneously observing the importance Native spiritual and religious beliefs, in addition to using the basis as an education tool. Lorelei currently serves as the Project Director of both, the Seva Foundation - Native American Diabetes Project and the Diabetes Wellness: American Indian Talking Circles Project. Lorelei serves on the National Diabetes Education Program - NDEP, American Indian Work Group.

Lorelei also managed to spearhead the opening of the first community-owned and operated clinic on a tribal reservation in the United States. In 1980, a community meeting inspired Lorelei to open a clinic to better serve the needs of residents living in the region, which was first funded by the SEVA Foundation.

Awards Lorelei is a 1993 recipient of the Robert Wood Johnson Community Health Leadership Award, a recipient of the 1997 William Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice Award.

Legacy Lorelei has also been mentioned in numerous publications, including Ghost Dancing the Law: The Wounded Knee Trials, authored by John William Sayer, The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia, edited by Andrew R. L. Cayton, Richard Sisson, Chris Zacher, The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance, edited by M. Annette Jaimes, Red Power: The American Indians' Fight for Freedom, edited by Alvin M. Josephy, Joane Nagel, Troy R. Johnson, Ojibwa Warrior: Dennis Banks and the Rise of the American Indian Movement, authored by Dennis Banks and Richard Erdoes, and Beyond Nature's Housekeepers: American Women in Environmental History, authored by Nancy C. Unger.