John Trudell the 29-year old chairman of the American Indian Movement, describes his organization as “the extension of the old renegade Indian membership.” Trudell, a Sioux living on the Duck Valley Reservation near the Idaho-Nevada border, was interviewed last week by reporter Thomas J. Lewis of The Idaho Statesman.
“AIM is maturing a little bit,” Trundell said. “We’re coming to the point now where we have a fluid membership.”
“The real question and issue is what about the system that uses the illegal tactics when it comes to its not dealing with issues like alcoholism and other problems. Those are the tactics we’re concerned with.”
“We will not change our philosophy, and tactics are meaningless because you have to be realistic if someone comes after you. If my chances of ending up in an institution are good…then why not stand up and fight?”
“Indians who are alcoholics commit emotional suicide. Their spirit has died so there’s no constructive way for them to use the body.”
“We don’t hate white people, we’ll never fight a man because he’s white, we’ll fight him because he’s the enemy. We want them to accept the truth of what the American system has done to the nonwhite people.”
“I don’t think the real enemy in this country is the average run of-the-mill white man. The enemy is the value system.”
“The white system has imposed their culture on us and that makes it race.”
“AIM, as far as I’m concerned, has been the most productive Indian organization of this century.”
“What made us such a threat to the system is the fact that they couldn’t buy us off.”
“How can we be militant if we didn’t invent the gun? The white man does not object to an Indian, Chicano or black getting his head beat in, but yet he’s nonviolent. It just doesn’t make sense.”
“If they arrest me on anything, they’re going to have to work like hell to do it. I’m not going to let the pigs get me on anything emotional. That’s why I say if they arrest me they’re going to have to work for it.”
“We’ve caught hell from everybody and we’ve survived. If the community itself did not like us, they’d shut the door.” ~
SOURCE: The Times News (Idaho).