“For us, as a native people, our real truths and the reality of who we are are much more effectively conveyed through culture and art than through politics and economics. Politics and economics are imposed on us. We can’t be as real. Art comes from us. So our truths become more real.” – Trudell on the best way to convey the experience of native peoples today
“In the technology-driven world, the electric guitar is the new drum. When they amplified that guitar and rock “n’ roll came out of it, it became the new drum. Its shape is different and you play it different, but the effect is the same.” – Trudell on guitars.
“I’m just trying to mix this poetry with the music. I’m not trying to make product that’s going to get Top 40 play. That’s not my goal. If I could economically support myself from it, that would be great. But what I’m doing is trying to get this to people.” – Trudell on what drives him to make music.
“But I know what I write, or whatever it is I’m doing now, is a result of my collective experience. It goes from my childhood in Nebraska to the activism to the writing. It’s helped to shape my perception. Nothing I’m ever going to do in my life is going to escape that. I don’t feel a need to escape it.” – Trudell on incidents influencing his poetry, music and acting.
“In Hollywood, a lot of people still have what I’ll just call the fascistic romanticism that keeps us locked into the cliches. Film reality keeps us in the past. That’s denying reality of how we are now — how we are by somebody else’s calendar in 1999 after 500 or 600 years of genocide and spiritual destruction have been waged against us…That’s missing so much of what we are. No matter how down and dark it gets, somewhere we are laughing. Hollywood doesn’t get it, people generally don’t get it. That (humor) may have been the thing that helped us to survive. The ability to laugh overrides a lot of other things that happen.” – Trudell on how Hollywood treats Indians.
“It’s not so much a physically unifying thing, but it’s an identity thing. It’s a thing of the spirit. Native people still know who we are — we have an identity. The rest of the people in this land have no idea who they are. They are Republicans, Democrats, Catholics, Protestants. But that doesn’t say who they are. They don’t know who their ancestors are beyond their immediate family. I think that’s one of those things that are critically important.” -Trudell on Indian bands, music and culture. ~