IINTERVIEWER: On the notion of the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ first voyage to the New World being an opportunity to re-evaluate the history of the Americas.
JOHN TRUDELL: Among indigenous peoples, we don’t need to re-evaluate. This predatory energy arrived on our hemisphere 500 years ago and there’s only one evaluation…it has been genocidal and destructive to all living aspects of the hemisphere. And that behavior has not changed at all. It still continues on its destructive path. Many indigenous peoples will protest this anniversary and tell their truths. I haven’t found many people in the circles I move in who endorse it or find anything to celebrate.
Personally, I think Columbus was like a virus symbolizing a diseased spirit which lived on in the thought processes and mindset. This disease must be cured and that will come from our consciousness and respect for ourselves. The virus feeds off people if they are insecure and afraid. You can have a proud people but that doesn’t mean they respect themselves. It can be a mask.
Understandably mistrustful of the traditional political processes, Trudell says he hasn’t fallen into cynicism.
There are times when I can be, but overall I’m fairly realistic. I’ve learned we shouldn’t be afraid to think what we really think. We should think our truths as best we can. Through my writing and now recording – I can speak my truths unhindered by the processes. If others can identify with them, then we are not as alone as we think we are.
Looking back on the occupation of Alcatraz, Trudell says he recognised then that Native Americans’ demands opened up a bigger agenda than politicians were then, and by implication now, prepared to deal with.
We had no expectations at all, we just went for it. We were young and America handled it how it would handle it. The majority of citizens had no quarrel with us, so the American Government, through the manipulation of the media, tried to turn that tacit support against us. We were threatening to the Government because America is supposed to be about democracy and freedom and respect for the rights of the individual – but if America were to respect the rights of indigenous peoples, then other citizens would want their rights respected too. People truly thinking and taking responsibility is the biggest threat to that predatory mind set.
On the importance of recognizing that Native Americans are of the here and now, part of the post-Elvis baby-boom generations who share common experiences with more mainstream American society.
There are many things we all have in common in this industrialised culture and are affected by the same information from television. People want us (Native Americans) to look a certain way but that denies us our present and therefore denies us a future.
But we will come through. It’s the wearing away of the stone. ~
SOURCE: elsewhere.co.nz