[The following is an interview freelancer Iretta Tiger conducted with recording artist, poet and champion of indigenous issues John Trudell.]
Iretta Tiger: Musical & Literary Influences:
John Trudell: My literary influences? I can’t think of any literary influences. In the sense of literature–cause I like to read so I always liked to read. When I was a kid I read everything from true romance magazines to the Farmers Almanac, true crime to Reader’s Digest. Whatever I could get my hands on just for the read-ing. Following specific writers–I don’t really remember following a specific writer. “Now that being said, I was always into music; lyrics in songs. Music–but also the lyrics in songs. To me in a way my literary writers were the people that wrote lyrics for songs; the John Pines’ and the Bob Dylan’s and the Kris Kristofferson’s and the Buffy St. Maries’. But as a writer that’s where I got most of my influences.
Activism Trudell:
I’m not a political activist anymore. I learned what I needed to learn from that period of my life. I’m still who I am, I still think like I think, I still perceive reali-ty like I see it but I’m me doing what I do. So I’m supportive of the issues that make sense to me, not just emotionally but appar-ently; they make sense. “I’m supportive of these issues because I think to prioritize my ener-gy I got to put it some-where it makes sense rather than just emo-tionally doing some-thing that still in the end no matter how good your motive con-tent is, in the end it doesn’t make any sense. So I don’t like to wear the labels and the jackets. I find my consciousness is what it is, so I’m going to have to find whatever my consciousness is. “I have an area in my life that I work on that is specifically oriented to supporting native issues because I work with an organization called the All Tribes Foundation. We give small grants to different native efforts, usually more grassroots oriented. “So in that context, see that’s something I do but I don’t consider myself an activist because I’m doing that, alright, on the other hand I think that a lot of issues I support, see I think that any issue you sup-port that’s got to deal with the consciousness and qual-ity ofhuman life is supporting native issues. Because that’s what native issues are all about but if there’s any direct involvement it’s through the All Tribes Foundation.
Protests Trudell:
The protests don’t work because the people that are protesting and organizing are based on emotion. Protests are emotionally based, they’re not coherence based. Clarity and coherency to what we’re doing is extremely important. This emotionally based reaction to any situation, then whoever is provoking your emotion is always going to remain in control because you’re having an emotionally based reaction. “But I’m not trying to say that we shouldn’t protest or do what we should do. I think we need to add clarity of thinking to what we’re doing. Think this stuff out. The problem is, and this applies in the native community and the non-native community, I hear it everywhere, ‘I believe this, I believe that’ and that’s scary because when people say ‘I think this, I think that’ then I can live with that. It’s more reassuring because they’re thinking. “Whatever is happening they’re turning us into believers rather than thinkers and that to me is–if there’s an ultimate doom for us that’s where it’s at? Because when I believe then in reality that means ‘I don’t know.’ Americans they look at ‘We’ve got the free-dom to protest so rah rah rah go freedom.’ The con-trolling class, they don’t care if you protest it’s prof-itable to them. You gotta buy magic markers to make the protest signs with right? You’ve got to buy lots of bottled water and sand-wiches and bus tickets and all that. But it lets the protesters believe that they have some influence and some say with what’s going on but in reality, honest-ly they don’t. “So it’s about how we per-ceive reality, it’s the thing we really have to consider. I don’t think we really recognize ourselves anymore, and this applies in the native com-munity and the non-native commu-nity. See I think that a larger issue here is one of recogni-tion. See we don’t rec-ognize ourselves, we don’t recognize that we’re human beings anymore, so we don’t think like human beings. We don’t perceive reality like human beings so we don’t partici-pate like human beings. “For us, the human beings that are called the Indians or the natives are so busy, we’re busy protecting the Indian identity that we’re forgetting the reali-ty that we’re human beings and it gets us into a lot of trouble. The ways we go about protecting the Indian iden-tity, because we’re not Indians. If you look back in life, let’s just take the number 600 years ago, the human beings on this hemisphere never heard the word Indian–never. “The sound wasn’t even made. God, Christianity, sin, heaven, devil–none of those sounds were made here. The human beings never heard those sounds. When the people who had these deranged perceptions of reality, and it was programmed into them so it’s not a moral thing, but they came and they didn’t recognize spiritu-al reality anymore and they met the human beings. The human beings said “We’re the people, we’re the human beings. “The people that came, conceptually, they didn’t understand so they said ‘Indians’ and then immediately started attacking. Genocide against the Indians and created an identity for the Indians. ‘Indians can’t get along, Indians are this, Indians are that.’ An act of genocide and it created an identity and here we are now this many generations later fighting over whose more Indian than us. It makes it difficult for the ancestors to hear us.
Casinos Trudell:
Casinos are just another thing going on. Poverty or excessive wealth they undermine equally. Poverty just eats at you in different way than having too much but in the end they eat you away. With the casino stuff if people can get away from the money part and look at the other parts besides the money part. In many of the casino areas I don’t agree with a lot of the economic behavior that takes place. See some are providing certain services to their com-munity and to some degree spreading it around a little bit. Then you’ve always got that group that’s taking more than their share. When I look in some of these communities, see they didn’t have it before, there was nothing for anybody to take but it’s in what they do with it. “Give it a generation. See the first generation the people never had anything. They get an overabun-dance and the first generation is just going to go nuts with it because they never had it before. See, how the second generation makes the adjustment. That’s why the money should be put into strengthening the Tribal identity and that prepares the second generation to have this abundance but also a strong sense of Tribal identity, community. When it comes to certain levels we have the sense of Tribe but we don’t have the same sense of community. I think it would just really be a good tradi-tional, cultural thing if they use some of those resources to sponsor things from the culture and the arts. Like the NAMMYS as an example. Use some of that not just in their local area but to create this natural thing where they go in and they sponsor the culture and the arts and emerging artists. “The people want to follow spiritual ways and keep that alive and being supportive of those aspects of our culture. If it ever evolves to that then I would say overall it’s [casinos] really a good thing.
Congressional Investigation into Political Sponsorship through Indian Gaming
We are having an impact but to me it’s an issue as to what kind of impact that we’re hav-ing that threatens them. I think it’s just because the Tribes are making too much money and that threatens the local constituencies in the different areas, because I don’t think they’re threatened by the fact that the Tribes are hiring lobbyists and putting a lot of money into political campaigns. I don’t think they’re threat-ened by that on its own because that helps instill the belief in the Tribes that they have a say in the political system. “See in reality the Tribes don’t have a say in the political system. Maybe temporary things but in the long run they don’t. They’re just being indoctrinated into putting on the white man’s clothes in the sense of ingraining their political system as apart of their belief. There are things that aren’t obvious that are going on here if they’re trying to stop the native money coming in to the lobbying thing. “It’s not really about the native people are getting too much clout. They’re messing with somebody’s program some where with the politi-cal clout they’re getting. I think it’s more about that because the way the system is designed we’re a minor-don’t and in the long run because we’re a minority, I care how much money the dragnet and segments of the minority have, they can’t accumulate enough to really have real significance say in what’s going on in the overall picture. “Let’s say some Tribe is making a billion dol-lars, and that’s a lot of money to us but the controllers of the system that’s nothing. So they’re not threatened by these few billions put together. It’s a part of what I see going on. So any political power that they feel that indians are gaining I think in the long run they’ll absorb that because the Tribes, the Indians always have to cut a deal to operate whatever they’re operat-ing. So it’s a behind-the-scenes fight over who’s gonna get the money.
Tribe or Nation Trudell:
Another thing that concerns me is the thing about nations. See I come from a Tribe; my grandma told me I come from a Tribe. Now I have people telling me I come from a nation, when my grandma told me I come from a Tribe, and I’m gonna listen to my grandma. “Tribes are part of the nation but they are not the nation in itself. They have the rights and responsi-bilities of the nation. I worry about that – the big rush to be nations because I think a lot of it has to do with the political terminology of our oppressor class. “If you read the consti-tution, just take the words very specifically, read the consti-tution of the United States it says that the constitution and the treaties made with the various Indian Tribes are the supreme laws of the land. So the government technically made these legal agreements with Tribes not nations. By making the agreements with the Tribes they recognized the native nation itself as a nation and then they dealt with the entities, the Tribes. “I’m not trying to disrespect or get on any-body’s case that wants to go with the nation thing but my grandma told me I come from a Tribe. See I like the sound of Tribe; nation is too civilized for me. “It’s the subtleties of these kinds of termi-nologies that attack the sense and feeling and reality of community. This is how this stuff happens. Sometimes I feel like we substitute things because we go with nation and makes us appear to ourselves to be bigger than we are. “Sometimes I wonder about the psychology of that. That’s what it’s all about and in some kind of way it makes us appear to be bigger than we are but in reality we should be fine with who we are. We don’t need to be bigger we just need to be more coherent. “These things that I’m saying to you and it’s not that I expect people to believe me or not believe me, and actually I would prefer if they didn’t believe me, it really is about ‘Well, let’s think about some of these things.’ Because something has to happen to stimulate the thinking and I prefer to approach from the whole idea of human beings. “Human beings can communicate and express. It isn’t about agreement it’s about communi-cating and expressing. I mean it’s not about agreement and disagreement but as a Native American or Indian I think that we’re too ready to attack each other so soon as somebody expresses something we don’t agree with. As a republican or democrat, Christian or Wiccan, so it’s not just limited to us. When we had the memory of being human beings we didn’t behave this way. “I think the real origin of being called nations is it became apart of the strategy to deal in the legal system with issues of sovereignty. So then it became a political and legal tactic to deal with them as nation to nation. “I’m not disrespecting anyone that wants to view it that way I’m just expressing what my grandma told me. I come from a Tribe and that’s my way so I don’t mean anybody is doing it wrong. I think that it comes from having to deal with the legal system because treaties are made between, the way the termi-nology is now, nations. So I think that’s when ‘nations’ got put on the table.
Pride Trudell:
Pride and things are a factor in all this but generally when pride is a factor it usually starts trouble. I think pride is not something we should have for ourselves. I think pride should only be given… but I don’t think pride is something we should keep. “I’m one of the people that went out and tried to help sell the idea ‘Indian and Proud’. Now I see it completely in reverse. I’m a human being and I’m grateful, I’m thankful. I’m a descendant, we all are. We’re descendants of human beings that were grateful and thankful for life but now I have the identity of an Indian that’s proud. Do my ancestors recognize me? “When you’re grateful and thankful you don’t get into as much trouble. “In the long run I’ve never seen pride really fix anything. I mean the appearance maybe there but I think it’s something else that’s really happening.
Leonard Peltier
A few years ago an article was written about Peltier in a Native newspaper and the author of the article presented his “facts” at a Native conference. The article claimed that Peltier had admitted to the shooting.
The reporter who wrote that [article] lost his way. Leonard never confessed to killing anyone. Regardless of whether Leonard is guilty or innocent that’s not the point, the point is that the FBI was waging war against AIM and its supporters and what happened in Oglala was apart of that war, only this time the people in the camp defended themselves. Would you support Crazy Horse? Of course you would. “The government had sent an operative to infiltrate AIM. And it is because of the operative that the fire fight hap-pened in the first place. The peo-ple in the AIM camp at Jumping Bull and the FBI were both set up by the operative.”
Trudell also talked about how Peltier will never get another trial because the government still has too much to cover up.
If Leonard were to go to trial again he would walk out a free man. ~