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U.S. Indians Enlist in the Miskito Cause
By STEPHEN KINZER
Special to The New York Times

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica, Nov. 10 - Three American Indian activists have announced in Costa Rica that they are joining the cause of rebel Miskito Indians in Nicaragua.

Russell Means, 46 years old, a leader of the American Indian Movement, said at a news conference in San Jose last week that he hoped to recruit 90 to 100 "warriors from North America" to join Miskito fighters to oppose the Sandinista Government. He said send American Indian combatants in Nicaragua would "begin the process of uniting the red people of the Western Hemisphere."

Groups of Miskito Indians have been in rebellion against the Sandinista Government for more than four years. Their most prominent leader, Brooklyn Rivera, says he does not seek to otherthrow the Sandinistas, but to force them to meet demands of his organization, Misurasata, which is seeking broad "self-determination" for Nicaraguan Indians.

Change in Policy Sought

Mr. Rivera appeared at the news conference with Mr. Means, Glenn Morris, a Shawnee activist who teaches at the University of Colorado in Denver, and Hank Adams who has advised Federal agencies on questions of Indian sovereignty. "They have decided to support the struggle that Misurasata is waging in Nicaragua," Rivera said, "and have decided to provide spiritual, material political and physical help, and to give themselves to the Indian cause in Nicaragua, which is also the cause of other indigenous people in this hemisphere."

The men said no American Indians were now fighting against Sandinista troops inside Nicaragua, and expressed the hope that the Sandinistas would resolve the matter peacefully by substantially altering their policy toward the Miskitos and other groups who live Nicaragua's Atlantic coast region.

"I would go to Nicaragua with a shovel in one hand, a rifle in the other and a pipe of peace in my heart, and it would depend on the Sandinistas what would be used." Mr. Means said. He added that he had been convinced by a visit to Nicaragua and by following the progress of sporadic talks between Mr. Rivera and Sandinista leaders that "the only alternative left to use a rifle."

The Sandinista Government is embarked on a project to offer autonomy to the Atlantic Coast, and Interior Minister Thomas Borge has said the autonomy law will be decreed early next year. Mr. Rivera, whose organization has not taken part in consultations for the autonomy law, says the Sandinista project is aimed at maintaining rather than limiting the power of the central Government over the Atlantic region.

Mr. Means described the Miskito struggle against the Sandinistas as "the foremost struggle for indigenous sovereignty in the world." He rejected suggestions that his action placed him in alliance with forces supported by the Reagan Administration. Mr. Rivera has had sharp differences with the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, the largest armed anti-Sandinista group, which is receiving millions of dollars in nonmilitary aid from the United States.

"I do not support the racist policies of the United States of America, the same as I do not support the racist policies of Nicaragua," said Mr. Means, who has led many anti-Government protests in the United States, including a 71-day siege at Wounded Knee, S.D., in 1973. "I have a record of fighting against the imperialist monster my people live within."

Mr. Morris, 38 years old, said the effirt to recruit American Indians to fight in Nicaragua should be considered pro-Indian rather than anti-Sandinista. "All our organizations have a history of supporting Indian resistance wherever it is," he said.

In a written statement, the three Americans said Sandinista rule in Nicaragia was submitting Miskito, Sumu and Rama Indians to "continuing oppression" that "demands the undivided attention of every person of good conscience in this hemisphere." They said the Sandinistas were subjecting Nicaragua to an unconscionably racist, soulless Marxist experiment" and were "fast forfeiting the claim of any right or say in the future of the Atlantic Coast's indigenous people and territories."