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" In a personal context, I'm not in the ground, and I'm not in an institution. So I guess I'm doing pretty good. "
John Trudell
Good
Personal
Doing
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" 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. "
John Trudell
Culture
Way
Think
" 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. "
John Trudell
You
Rules
Political
" When one lives in a society where people can no longer rely on the institutions to tell them the truth, the truth must come from culture and art. "
John Trudell
Art
People
Truth
" I don't want to tell people how to remember me. I want people to remember me as they remember me. "
John Trudell
Tell
Remember
People
" 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. "
John Trudell
Work
Result
Said
" I was going mad. One day, I just started writing, and it was like therapy because I was in a position where I couldn't rage. I never expected to be a writer; it's a different world than I ever expected to be in. "
John Trudell
Writing
Day
Mad
" 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. "
John Trudell
Camera
Action
Time
" 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. "
John Trudell
People
Sick
Political
" I wanted to take the power of thought and the word, along with the power of speaking and heart, and see if we could wire what was coming out of us as humans with electric instruments. "
John Trudell
Power
See
Thought
" 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. "
John Trudell
Good
Know
Past
" Before Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull had dream of soldiers falling from the sky. "
John Trudell
Soldiers
Dream
Falling
" Because we are all of an oral tradition in our beginning histories, the voice of the poet in this particular society will be heard. "
John Trudell
Beginning
Voice
Tradition
" 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. "
John Trudell
Crazy
Blues
Music
" Life is all about the spirit. "
John Trudell
Spirit
Life
About
" 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. "
John Trudell
Resources
Rights
Fight
" I'm a member of the American Indian Movement, and I'm from the indigenous nations of the Western Hemisphere. "
John Trudell
American
Movement
Nations
" The average human being in America is going through some sort of hard times - physical, emotional, psychological. Everybody's carrying a bit of bone days in them. "
John Trudell
Human
Hard
Bone
" 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. "
John Trudell
Song
Words
Feeling
" I'm basically a starving artist. "
John Trudell
Starving
Artist
Basically
" One Earth, one mother - one does not sell the Earth. "
John Trudell
Mother
Earth
Sell
" 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. "
John Trudell
Survive
Time
Alive
" I am just a human being trying to make it in a world that is rapidly losing its understanding of being human. "
John Trudell
Just
World
Understanding
" They took all our land; I don't have any land to toil. My crops have to grow somewhere else. "
John Trudell
Land
Toil
Somewhere
" 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. "
John Trudell
Art
Culture
Identity
" 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. "
John Trudell
White
Real
Us
" 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. "
John Trudell
Culture
Music
Early
" White people don't seem to have many Elders. They do have a lot of oldsters. "
John Trudell
People
Seem
White
" I knew I had to stop running. I had to be in a place. Los Angeles became that place. "
John Trudell
Los Angeles
Knew
Stop
" 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. "
John Trudell
I Am
Actor
Poet
" 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. "
John Trudell
Own
Children
Women