John Trudell

“Every song I've ever written always starts with the words because I want the music to be the musical extension of the feelings of the words, and not the words being the emotional extension of the feeling of the music.”

“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.”

“From activist stage, I just spoke and said whatever I had to say. When the writing started, I would just read it. Then I had the interest into going into musical aspects. When that happened in '86, I liked the result of work we did in the studio.”

“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 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.”

“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 have experienced within my own lifetime the attack of my winter camp and the killing of the women and children. It left me even angrier than I was - and I was never too calm to begin with.”

“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.”

“White people don't seem to have many Elders. They do have a lot of oldsters.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“We cannot change the political system, we cannot change the economic system, we cannot change the social system, until the people control the land, and then we take it out of the hands of that sick minority that chooses to pervert the meaning and the intention of humanity.”

“One Earth, one mother - one does not sell the Earth.”

“Everybody interprets things differently with their own perception, and I want poetry to pull out of them their own feelings.”

“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.”