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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

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" 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. "

" 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. "

" They took all our land; I don't have any land to toil. My crops have to grow somewhere else. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

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

" Life is all about the spirit. "

" 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. "

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

John Trudell

Music

Words

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" I'm basically a starving artist. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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 find there is room in music to talk with music. It may expand ways people can participate with music. It doesn't sound hokey or like some kind of voice-over. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "