John Trudell
John Trudell
John Trudellwas a Native American author, poet, actor, musician, and political activist. He was the spokesperson for the United Indians of All Tribes' takeover of Alcatraz beginning in 1969, broadcasting as Radio Free Alcatraz. During most of the 1970s, he served as the chairman of the American Indian Movement, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth15 February 1946
CountryUnited States of America
good home someplace
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.
art creates form identities mimic mixing musical native point remains third using
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.
authentic indian politics preventing
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.
dealing solution understand
For decades, my identity was political, but I've come to understand that there's no political solution when you're dealing with someone else's rules.
crops grow land somewhere took
They took all our land; I don't have any land to toil. My crops have to grow somewhere else.
appreciate love
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.
people
I don't want to tell people how to remember me. I want people to remember me as they remember me.
became boom center consider drum electric electronic
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.
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.
book writing long
I don't write as much now as I used to, but I write. The lines still come, maybe periodically, and I'll go through these little bursts of time where I write a lot of things then a long period of time where maybe I don't write anything. Or these lines will come into my head and I'll write 'em down in a little book, just little sets of lines, but I won't try to make stories or poems out of them. I'm doing a lot of that now, just the lines.
creative use creative-intelligence
We use our intelligence, our creative intelligence, because we create with intelligence.
song reality essence
In the society of illusion, reality must manifest itself. The story songs of Joel Rafael are that manifestation... the essence of minstrel.
reality way given
As human beings, we're given intelligence. This is how we make our way through this reality, how we manifest our reality clearly and coherently.
years worry people
I've never not been pleased with one of my albums. I figure because it's spoken word, there will be people who relate to it, and people who don't, so I don't worry about any of that. I've been doing it for over twenty years. I've always written because it was something I had to do, never for the glory.