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" 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. "

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" 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

" What I view life like is about energy. Everything is about energy - everything. We physically are little units of electrical energy, and we vibrate and project electromagnetic thought. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

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

" I'm not a musician making words to go with my music. "

John Trudell

Music

Words

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" I'm basically a starving artist. "

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

" 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. "

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

" White people don't seem to have many Elders. They do have a lot of oldsters. "

" 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. "

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