ANDRE TABABOO: You have been involved with the American Indian Movement since the early 1970s. What has been your experience? Where do you see us now?
JOHN TRUDELL: We are part of an evolution. The cultural spirit is still very strong amongst the people and I think we are still quite active. The Movement is about consciousness. Political structures, they’re at different levels and forms, you use them for a while, then you use another one. It’s the spirit I’m concerned about.
The Indian Health Clinic was recently closed down here in Portland; effecting a lot of the youth. Do you feel that Native American youth are coming up more involved in their spirit?
I don’t know, because I just wander through these realities with my own views, so I don’t really know what is going on in the mind of the youth. What I do think is happening is that there is a spiritual awareness. A cultural spiritual awareness… people recognizing who they are, and they are grateful and thankful for these things. I think that this spirit lives in all of the ages. For some of our youth today, the odds are really against them, they have a difficult time. There aren’t many chances for them. Other ones, they have varying degrees of protection from the culture or the community or whatever. So you can’t make a general statement about what’s happening to all of the youth. But we are going to loose a certain percentage of them, that is the reality that exists right now.
What do you see is going on within the cultural aspects of Indian views. Do you think that it’s more of a fad rather than an absolute statement involving the Indian population?
Do you mean do I think that it’s a fad among us? Or are people paying attention to us?
Do you think it’s a fad among the white culture so to speak?
No it’s not so much about fads… it seems to be that the consciousness of the tribes is raised amongst the non tribal people and it seems to happen in cycles. We are in one of those cycles right now where the non tribal people have a certain awareness about the tribes. To me, it’s just something that comes and goes, historically. And it’s what we do with each period of time that says what we will receive out of it. I know that America has a short attention span. They got so many problems and troubles of their own, that even if they truly wanted to do something about our problems and troubles, they can’t. Because they can’t even do anything about their own. We as a community have a responsibility ourselves to do the best that we can with the best that we got and accept the reality that there are certain obstacles in our way. The obstacle of genocide. We have to deal with that obstacle. But we have to take a responsibility ourselves and do it.
There is a fine line between turning our back on our responsibility and getting out of it by blaming someone for oppressing us, by blaming someone for committing genocide against us. What I’m trying to say is that it does absolutely no good to blame anybody for anything. We have to do something.
Where does it all start? Is there a point in time, let’s say with government factions, or is it something that is going to have to come from the tribal affiliates themselves? Is there a starting point? Do you have an idea?
It starts when we enter this reality. It starts when we are born. It’s going to have to come from us, the people. The people are going to have to take responsibility because the governing entities can’t. The tribal governments, and this is nothing against tribal governments, but this˙pp1˙is the reality, they have to answer to the Interior Department. It is a colonial system. They do have to answer to someone else. No matter how good their intentions or motives may be there is always that colonial master above the tribal council, tribal governments, tribal self rule concept. The American government is not going to change. It is a form of Nazism. Democratic Nazism. It has been here in this form for a couple of hundred years, it’s not going to change. So, we as a people are going to have to make the change. That’s where it starts, and its got something to do with how we perceive things. This is reality to me. I get very concerned that we get so busy blaming. I don’t blame the American government for anything. I hold the American government responsible for committing genocide against us. And I feel that we as individuals and as communities must act in a responsible way to stop that genocide. But we are blowing away a lot of breath. The reason I keep coming back to this is because I think when we get conditioned then blaming becomes easier than acting responsibly.
I think you are probably the most renowned activist right now for taking things into your own hands. Your music, your messages in your music. Is there anybody out there, over and above yourself, that can bring this message to the American Indian people?
More frequently, I hear terms like: ‘role model’. I think that that is the community’s responsibility. It’s every individual’s responsibility to act. We don’t need any more leaders right now. What we need is people to represent us in a respectful way, in a coherent way, not in a reactionary manner. We need representation, and we have to do that ourselves. Because that whole idea of activism, it’s a part of who we are, but it’s not the total of who we are. Any time we make it the total of who we are then we lose who we are. The best way that I can say it is each individual has to do the best that they can with the best that they have. I’m doing what I can with what I have and I know many people that are. There are people who are working much harder serving the community than I am. But I have a certain public visibility, so that’s not really fair to the people who are working in the anonymity of everyday life. Community awareness and local action are happening in many places and I think that’s what should be encouraged.
We have a lot of tribal things happening here in Portland, the Native American population in the inner city is growing and they are absolutely going nowhere. Is there some concept that you can think of to pull these people together and get them out of the trenches?
Part of it is that there really is nowhere to go in this system. It’s slavery. mental or physical or whatever. So there really isn’t anywhere to go in this system. We have to deal with it and cope with it and work with it because it’s there. We can’t completely ignore it and we shouldn’t surrender to it. I think the way out, because we are all individuals, is that we shouldn’t lie to ourselves. We shouldn’t lie to ourselves about what we do or about what is going on in this world. Even if we don’t feel we can do anything, we shouldn’t lie to ourselves about what is going on. We need to take responsibility for what it is we say we are. We need to take responsibility for who it is we say we are. We need to take responsibility as individuals, the best that we can.
Different people are going to take it in different ways. It’s not time to be judging one another, it’s time to take responsibility and accept the reality that we all have our dark sides and our light sides, our strengths and our weaknesses. And find a way to build a community around that. Even if we are not living next door to one another, we can still be community because we are of the culture and the spirit.
Do you have something that you would like to share with our audience? It has been a pleasure talking with you. Share something with us here.
(laughs) I don’t have a clue what to share. How about peace with Earth. We want our power, let’s make peace with Earth. Let’s recognize and accept that all of our power comes from our relationship to the Earth and doesn’t come from these mechanisms that man has created. Maybe if we conscientiously, individually and collectively made an attempt to make peace with Earth our power would come back to us or we would recognize that we have power. ~
SOURCE: Plazm