“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.” – On visit to the Santee Sioux reservation in Nebraska.
“The real strengthening that came out of Alcatraz and that period of time was that it rekindled our spirit. It was a collective Native spirit. Our reality was re-energized and is now stronger than it’s been in a long time.”
“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.”
“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. It has improved to some degree for us as humans. There’s not as much political activisim coming out of the Native community as there was 25, 30 years ago, but there’s much more cultural and artistic work taking place.”
“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.”
“We’re at a time where the best way we can state the reality of who we are, whether it’s about sovereignty or anything else, is through culture and art. What can’t be done politically has to be done culturally. I don’t think it’s a movement but a consciousness.”
“The whole concept of ‘Blue Indians’ is that the civilized world has been turned into an industrial reservation with a technological reality. Everybody who lives in this techno-civilization is literally an Indian now. It’s also about the marginalization and isolation of the streets. Those that have it all many times don’t have anything. I’m trying to communicate feelings that have made us all blue at one time or another.”~
SOURCE: The San Francisco Examiner