The program is The Associated Students of the University of Oregon Presents Racism. Taped at the University of Oregon by KBO-FM Portland, during the week of October 18th, 1970. This program includes the first part of a panel Wednesday morning during a week long symposium sponsored by the associated students, with the moderator, Art Jenkins, Gloria Gonzalez of the Chicano Student Union, Frank Martinez, of the Valley Migrant League, John Trudell, of Indians of All Tribes at Alcatraz Island, Kent Ford, from the Black Panther Party in Portland, Charles Evers, mayor of Fayette, Mississippi, and David Sanchez, Prime Minister of the Brown Berets from Los Angeles…The next speaker is John Trudell, from Indians of All Tribes on Alcatraz Island…
Speaking of racism and political power, things like this, I’d like to tell you a story that I heard not too long ago. There was this old Indian man that went into a restaurant. He was very hungry so when the waitress came over he ordered two steaks, lots of potatoes, lots of gravy, lots of green beans. While he was waiting for his order this white man came in. The white man sat down. He ordered a bowl soup so the waitress brought the white man his order of soup and she brought the Indian his meat, his potatoes, his gravy. And the white man looked at his bowl of soup and he looked at that Indian’s food and he said, hey chief, sure wish I had your appetite. And that Indian looked at that white man and said, you white people, you come over here and you kill all of our buffalo. You come over here and you take all of our fish and our game. You take our land and now you want my appetite. And that’s what racism is all about. Racism is a matter of economics. It’s a tool of economics for one race to control the economy of a nation or of the world. They’ve got to have things like racism. They’ve got to have things like their political power. Got to have things like stereotypes. These are just tools of making oppression. These are tools of perpetuating a cast system. A slave system. These are tools of keeping men from being free. I don’t think that, in the larger sense, I don’t think political power is the answer because I’ve seen too many nations, too many countries that have political power. Yet there are too many people that aren’t free. The answer goes back to what’s inside. Because political power, I can’t relate political power to people. People are people. Every Indian tribe that ever lived in this land. The tribal name for themselves meant, the People. It always meant the People, because that’s how one should live, is for the People. The United States of America. Nowhere does that mention People. That mentions states. Political power. And this country has been torn down and destroyed because of political power because one race has had political power and they have misused it. They have misused it in the name of their God. Their God that does not exist. God is just a three letter word that a white man created. The white man’s God is the dollar bill. Every piece of money that this country puts out says In God We Trust. One of the big things that we must watch out for is, see when we’re looking out for our people, we must not become what we do not like. See, and I very strongly believe in many of the things of the Indian way. In the Indian religion you misuse God, misuse your medicine, and bad things will happen to you. Well, this white civilization has misused God. They have misused the Creator, the Great spirit. They have used him to exploit. They have used him to oppress. They have used him to kill. And every country in the world has got to answer to its lie, and the lie of democracy and freedom of this country is catching up. You see, because the day of white superiority just doesn’t exist. Only in our minds. See because like in the past, I’ve noticed that we’ve been asking, make us equal. Give us equality. White man can’t give the Indian equality. The white man is not the Creator. Only we can give ourselves equality. And then from there we get the rest. But we, as Indian people, we do not want to get hung up and caught up into this materialistic God. We talk about being ourselves. We want the right to be Indians. Because we can see, we see the lie very clearly. We hear politicians, we hear statesmen, whoever, say that Indians have got problems. Or that America has an Indian problem. They call us, their stereotypes for us, we’re drunk. We’re lazy. We’re ignorant. Thieves. I don’t know, maybe some of this is true today, but the one thing that I do know for sure is that we weren’t like this before the white man came. So now it doesn’t hurt any more for a white man or this white society to say these things, because I know, my people know. Indians are permanent. We are people of the land. White people are people of the land in Europe. Black people are the people of the land of Africa. Asian people are the people of the land of Asia. So we know we’ve got the feeling of the land. And because we are people of the land, we have never lost our spiritualness. It is one thing we have managed to hang on to, and Indian people cannot be destroyed if that isn’t destroyed, and we’re not going to let you do it. I look at this white society as I look at the dollar bill. It is transient. It’ll be around for a while, but not forever. And the only way that this system or this society is going to work is when it stops becoming a white man’s society. And any time some politician stands up and says the majority rules, and that’s the way this country should be run, I know as well as he does that the majority of this country are white people. Whether their Democrats or Republicans or peace and freedom, they’re white. And this country will never be at peace and never be at ease until People rule. No more white man. You may find this hard to believe, but there is no great white father. He just doesn’t exist, except in your minds. And if you want to change, you want to talk about changing the system, you want to talk about changing what’s right and what’s wrong, then find out yourself. Find out what you are like. We have Indian studies classes, so I think to go along with these Indians studies classes and black studies classes, we ought to have some white study classes. Let’s find out what history is like in this country. Let’s find out about things like democracy and equality, because it’s still going on today. Subtle forms of tokenism just aren’t going to buy it. What it’s coming down to is, see we’ve had all the rhetoric, we’ve had the promises since the day the white man landed on Plymouth Rock. And in the words of Lee Brightman, we would have been a lot better off if Plymouth Rock would have landed on the white man. But we’ve had all this rhetoric, and all it comes down to, it doesn’t matter, we’ve had the rhetoric and the promises since the white man came and could start signing papers. Comes down to this now. With all the promises, hey mister white man, I’m not going to let you talk my way into hell. I am a man. My People are People. And we’ll have that right. You are not God. You can’t take that right away from us. Thank you. ~
SOURCE: Internet Archive