John Trudell
Overview
 
John Trudell is a Native American
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

-Mexican
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

 author, poet, actor, musician, and former political activist. He was the spokesperson for the United Indians of All Tribes
Indians of All Tribes
Indians of All Tribes may refer to one of two organizations:*Indians of All Tribes, based out of San Francisco, and responsible for the Occupation of Alcatraz...

' takeover of Alcatraz
Occupation of Alcatraz
The Occupation of Alcatraz was an occupation of Alcatraz Island by the group Indians of All Tribes . The Alcatraz Occupation lasted for nineteen months, from November 20, 1969, to June 11, 1971, and was forcibly ended by the U.S. government.-Background:...

 beginning in 1969, broadcasting as Radio Free Alcatraz. During most of the 1970s, he served as the chairman of the American Indian Movement
American Indian Movement
The American Indian Movement is a Native American activist organization in the United States, founded in 1968 in Minneapolis, Minnesota by urban Native Americans. The national AIM agenda focuses on spirituality, leadership, and sovereignty...

, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Minneapolis , nicknamed "City of Lakes" and the "Mill City," is the county seat of Hennepin County, the largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota, and the 48th largest in the United States...

.

After his pregnant wife, three children and mother-in-law were killed in 1979 in a fire at the home of his parents-in-law on the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes Duck Valley Indian Reservation
Duck Valley Indian Reservation
The Duck Valley Indian Reservation was established as a homeland for members of both the Shoshone and Paiute tribes of Native Americans. It lies directly on the state line between Idaho and Nevada in the western United States...

 in Nevada
Nevada
Nevada is a state in the western, mountain west, and southwestern regions of the United States. With an area of and a population of about 2.7 million, it is the 7th-largest and 35th-most populous state. Over two-thirds of Nevada's people live in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, which contains its...

, Trudell turned to writing, music and film as a second career.
Quotations

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

The past is more than a memory.

Every human being is a raindrop. And when enough of the raindrops become clear and coherent they then become the power of the storm.

[George Bush] is the Peter Jennings --the anchorman for the real problem. And this has been going on for awhile.

From Georgia Indymedia interview

"When I go around in America and I see the bulk of the white people, they do not feel oppressed; they feel powerless... We see the physical genocide that they are attempting to inflict upon our lives, and we understand the psychological genocide that they have already inflicted upon their own people...

From "We Are Power" speech, 1980; excerpted from _The Indigenous Voice_, Vol.2, Roger Moody, ed, UK.

We can't out-fight them, but we can out-think them. Every provocation throughout history has been to get us to out-fight them. And if you look at some of the little things about it, right, we're surrounded [with] a reality where you have to have permission to think. That's called 'Chain of Command'. See, so if you really really think about it...in their legions they don't have permission to think. See, this starts to equalize out the numbers!

The strength of the poetry as we enter into whatever it is we are entering into, will be determined by the clarity of the thinking we put into it.

 
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