Trudell participated in the occupation of Alcatraz Island by Indians of All Tribes, becoming a spokesman for Indians of All Tribes. After the occupation ended in 1971, Trudell worked with the American Indian Movement, becoming national chairman of AIM from 1973 until 1979. In February of 1979, Trudell’s mother-in-law, wife and three children were killed in a fire of unknown origin. It was through this horrific tragedy that Trudell began to find his voice as an artist and poet. Trudell now lives in Southern California and performs around the country to both Native and non-Native audiences. He believes that his purpose and that of the movement was, and is, to “Light the fire of Native spirit…of Native consciousness.”
Frank J King III: So what do you think of the American Indian Film Festival? You’ve lived in this area for quite a while now.
John Trudell: Well, you’ve got to define “this area.” I’ve lived in California for a long time, but I live in L.A. Actually I like it. I like the fact that they’re here and they have been for a long time so it’s almost like a powwow. It’s a gathering point for Native people that are in film or various aspects of the arts. People get together. Then you get into the fact that they showcase different Native people, acknowledge different Naive people by showcasing their work. I think it’s good all the way around.
I know you’re a poet and an artist. Did you ever do any documentaries, or films, or anything like that yourself?
No I haven’t produced anything, but I’m very interested in working on a documentary. I may get involved in doing some documentary work here in the next year or so.
I read about how you got started in the world of activism. What motivated you to do that? To jump into that with everybody and become one of the leaders? You went from there to Wounded Knee right?
Yeah. I went on to A.I.M. But, really what it was is I left home when I was 17 and joined the military. Prior to that they said get a high school education and make something of yourself and crap like that. Right. I didn’t get a high school education and I needed to get out of where I was at because it was jail time and things like that – age 17, young Native male…so I needed to get out. I joined the Navy in 1963 and came to San Francisco; spent four years in the military and then worked some and went to college in San Bernardino. This took six years. By the end of that six years, I realized that, one, I didn’t like the military and I couldn’t make it there. And then I had a job and I didn’t really like that, and I went to college and anyway I had applied for another job and I didn’t get it. They just gave me some lame reason for why I didn’t get it. I just realized well, I don’t belong here. So, when Alcatraz happened I came to see it. It gave me an opportunity to go back into my own Native community even though I couldn’t go home to be in it. That’s what drew me in. As soon as I got up there, I saw that, you know, here’s Native people changing things. That’s how it was for me. That’s really how I got here.
Do you think that has an effect on the things happening today? Alot of these filmmakers are making film about activism and things like that, Native issues that affect the community and the tribe on a whole. Do you think that those protests a long time ago motivated these people to do more of that?
Yes I do. The activist movement changed everything for us. It’s almost like to me that in Native country the spirit was just kind of diminishing. I think what the Alcatraz and A.I.M., that whole activist period did, was to rekindle the spirit. I think that was the main accomplishment of the activist period. We raised consciousness about sovereignty. You have sovereign issues now that tribes are handling, back then none of this was going on. Native student programs, it was all very limited. We changed, everything changed as a result of what we stirred up in that period of time. The whole activist movement, whether it was some nationally recognized organization or somebody in their local communities, it’s almost like we stimulated a way of being and thinking. We took a heavy political hit for it. It was more than a political hit because America literally waged a war to destroy the activist movement. I think at some point, and to some degree they were successful in destroying the form of political activism that took place, but what seems to have evolved out of that is a cultural, artistic activism. So when I see film and I see songwriters and storytellers and I see where the culture is in the arts I think that’s direct result of that time, only today I think it’s better and healthier.
Not as dangerous…
In many, many ways. Because one of the things that was the most dangerous about the political activism, besides the physical threat, was that it wasn’t our politics. We were operating by somebody else’s definition, by somebody else’s rules, so we couldn’t really speak our truth, even though we wanted to. I think through culture and art that’s the reality of who we are. I think that the way one speaks their truth is through their culture and through their art. But through their politics, nah. I don’t think is the way we express the truth. I haven’t seen the case yet where it really does. This needs to be fixed, too.
Are today’s Native leaders the same? Or are they less willing to take a chance at jumping off that boat, or taking over that church? Back then there was hardly anything for media…there was no Native film-markers and definitely no Native newspapers that existed in those areas. Do you think young people today are more afraid to take the chance?
I don’t think that they’re more afraid. I think that they just kind of by osmosis get it – that it’s not going to solve the problem. Activism I think, has got to be an activism of consciousness through our culture and our art. But in the body politic, you get right down to certain basic realities of it. I think that the body politic of physical, political activism, it served its time and its purpose. However it can to be deluded, because it served its time and its purpose, right? and this new begins to emerge through culture and art which is now filling its time and purpose. Because I think we can tell more truth, alright; we can express more reality. Only through that…through that form the gains we make will be of more substance.
So it’s better to tell our own story from the Indian point of view than the non-Indian point of view.
The non-Native people can’t tell our story. They can tell their version of our story but they don’t even know their own story. ~