John Trudell Quotes

Whatever their reasons, Hollywood, or the entertainment industry, is saying something about Indians. I don't see the rest of the media knocking down any doors to do that.

A lot of my writing is basically about observation, and things that I've seen, either through personal experiences or the experiences of people around me, or society at large.

Our bones, flesh and blood are made up of the metals, liquids and minerals of the earth and everything on this planet is made up of the same things. As humans we have being, so everything on the earth does too in our culture, because we are made of the same thing.

My influences in this world have always been Crazy Horse and Malcolm X, my overall influences. But I was influenced by rock n' roll, blues, and country music. I was influenced by singers.

The thing is, it has to do with heart - we have to understand what hearts are for before we can get back to heaven or paradise or the power in our minds.

We must go beyond the arrogance of human rights. We must go beyond the ignorance of civil rights. We must step into the reality of natural rights because all of the natural world has a right to existence and we are only a small part of it. There can be no trade-off.

I have a real interest in working with younger Native artists. I think it's a very important way for Native people to communicate the realities of our culture and remember our ancestors.

The whole point is to take from our native culture and from contemporary culture without using one art form to mimic the other, so that our native identity remains the native identity, the contemporary identity remains the contemporary identity, and the mixing of these two musical identities creates a third musical identity.

One Earth, one mother - one does not sell the Earth.

I consider the electric guitar to be like a drum with strings. It became the drum of the Baby Boom generation. And the drum has always been the center of the tribe, a new electronic tribe.

It's like there is this predator energy on this planet, and this predator energy feeds on the essence of the spirit.

Class is material consumed.

Historically speaking, we went from being Indians to pagans to savages to hostiles to militants to activists to Native Americans. Its five hundred years later and they still cant see us. We are still invisible.

All that I am is me. So I'm not really a poet or a writer or an actor or an activist; I'm me, and these are things that I do.

I appreciate all of your expressions of concern, and I appreciate all of your expressions of love. It has been like a fire to my heart.

Life is all about the spirit.

For us, it's a matter of just staying alive and getting the best deal we can now. Eventually, this will all straighten out. It may be two generations away or 10 generations away, but time is irrelevant in that sense. As long as we, as a people, stay alive, we will survive.

Protect your spirit, because you are in the place where spirits get eaten.

It's always good to go home. It's strengthening to see your past and know you have someplace to go where you're part of a people.

Before Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull had dream of soldiers falling from the sky.

I think it's the responsibility of every human being, not just those who wear the identity of poet, activist, voter, religious person ... it's the responsibility of every person. Our responsibility is to use our intelligence as clearly and coherently as we possibly can.

Because we are all of an oral tradition in our beginning histories, the voice of the poet in this particular society will be heard.

Don't trust anyone who isn't angry.

Everybody interprets things differently with their own perception, and I want poetry to pull out of them their own feelings.

You go back and you read your Constitution. You read your Declaration of Independence. And you will see that the only people who could decide these freedoms were white males who owned property, and all the rest of us were excluded.

As human beings we're living in a reality of industrial madness.

We have power ... Our power isn't in a political system, or a religious system, or in an economic system, or in a military system; these are authoritarian systems ... they have power ... but it's not reality. The power of our intelligence, individually or collectively IS the power; this is the power that any industrial ruling class truly fears: clear coherent human beings.

Sometimes when it rains, it's not that simple, when the sky has reasons to cry.

Every song I've ever written always starts with the words because I want the music to be the musical extension of the feelings of the words, and not the words being the emotional extension of the feeling of the music.

We cannot change the political system, we cannot change the economic system, we cannot change the social system, until the people control the land, and then we take it out of the hands of that sick minority that chooses to pervert the meaning and the intention of humanity.

I have experienced within my own lifetime the attack of my winter camp and the killing of the women and children. It left me even angrier than I was - and I was never too calm to begin with.

I wasn't interested in having to live with a camera - I have a hard enough time getting along with myself. I don't need cameras around and all that action.

I'm a member of the American Indian Movement, and I'm from the indigenous nations of the Western Hemisphere.

From activist stage, I just spoke and said whatever I had to say. When the writing started, I would just read it. Then I had the interest into going into musical aspects. When that happened in '86, I liked the result of work we did in the studio.

I am just a human being trying to make it in a world that is rapidly losing its understanding of being human.

No matter what they ever do to us, we must always act for the love of our people and the earth. We must not react out of hatred against those who have no sense.

When I left politics in the early Eighties and started writing and recording, my idea was that I could have an influence further down into other generations. That Natives could come into the culture through arts and music.

I don't want to tell people how to remember me. I want people to remember me as they remember me.

All politics to me - Indian or white - is an illusion preventing us from being authentic because we're communicating through something that isn't real to us.

There have been some positive things that have happened for the tribes, but it's a constant, vigilant fight about protecting what resources we have in terms of land and rights.

The great lie is that it is civilization. It's not civilized. It has been literally the most blood thirsty brutalizing system ever imposed upon this planet. That is not civilization. That's the great lie, is that it represents civilization.

They're called poems but in reality they're lines given to me to hang on to