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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. "

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" 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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" I knew I had to stop running. I had to be in a place. Los Angeles became that place. "

" 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. "

" Life is all about the spirit. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

John Trudell

Music

Words

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

" 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. "

" 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

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I'm basically a starving artist. "

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