More ominous, in non-economic terms, the plight of the Indians is shocking. Twenty-five of every 100,000 Indians will be murdered in a given year, two-and-a-half times the national average, and 22 will kill themselves--twice the national average. Diseases like diabetes, pneumonia, influenza and tuberculosis are generally three times as likely to take Indians' lives as others.

Even more destructive is the alcoholism that plagues both Indians on reservations and those who move to cities like Los Angeles (which with 50,000 Indians has the largest population of any city in the country), Denver, Chicago, New York and Boston Indians are eight times as likely as the general population to die of alcoholism related causes, from diseases like cirrhosis or in drunk-driving automobile accidents. The alcoholism, leaders say, stems from a sense of powerlessness and frustration.

The energy bonanza, morever, won't last forever either. For instance, income from mineral production dropped $7 million in 1983 to $26 million for the 4800 Arapahoe and Shoshone Indians in Wyoming.

But what irritates, Indians most of all is the hypocrisy involved in the government's ostensible push for more localized authority. While preaching the "new federalism." Reagan officials are axeing areas of the budget needed to make that mean something. Federal cuts in the comprehensive Employment and Training Act damage hopes for development by, for example, forcing the closing of a vocational-technical center at the Wyoming Indian High School which serves the Arapahoe and Shoshone Indians. As Robert Rowan, the principal of the school, remarks: "They want to see Indians control their own destiny, but they're cutting the areas that would provide the Indians with the direction to do so."

Moreover, for many tribes Reagan'a cheerful plans for business development are simply unworkable, given reservations' desolation and isolation. The Navahos of Arizona live on top of $2.5 billion worth of coal, but can't get to it without a $100 million railroad. And this is not to mention the potential envrionmental problems posed by such an endeavor.

THIS CATCH-22 situation has to be in Russell Means's mind as he tries to get elected president of the Oglala Sioux tribal council. While he watches the young move out to the cities and the old die off or die in the bottle, he knows that answers to all his problems could be right at his feet in the form of uranium and other valuable minerals.

But Russell Menas also knows the classic land-rape as practiced-by the American corporation, and knows the ongoing 100-year epic of brutal wars and ignored promises. He also knows that the miners will use huge amounts of water--possibly the whole of Pine Ridge's aquifer--in the process of extracting the uranium and zeolite, and he knows what strip-mined land looks like, what the acres and acres of barren, torn up, lifeless land could look like. His is the classic Indian dilemma--between development or poverty, neither palatable options--and Reagan has done nothing to get at this.

What is so tragic about Means's campaign is that be sees no hope in anything but separation. The few services still offered by the government will be jeopardized when a tidal wave of $180 billion in red ink rolls into Congress is spring. And the current Administration seems to have no concern for protecting the landscape from developers. The end result of such a tragedy can only be polarization, annihilation, and despair.