Excerpts - Extremely Eloquent, Therefore Extremely Dangerous

California State University/ Hayward | 1994

“We’re all children of earth. It’s about the DNA, the ancestors and the descendants. Us. We have the responsibility to take care of the life that this planet is.”

“We’re not here to run high tech economic slave states, and pretend that that’s not what’s going on. We’re not here to mentally beat one another up, or be abusive towards one another, or ourselves. That’s not why we’re here. We’re here to take care of life. We need to understand about our spirit. We have a spirit. We are Spirit. But see, the religious mindset of the male-dominating god doesn’t recognize spirit. It recognizes religion. And authority. And chain of command. And obedience. But it doesn’t recognize spirit.”

Farm Aid VI | April 24, 1993.

“I can’t let this opportunity pass without remarking on a couple of things. I come from the tribes. And we are in support of anyone that understands the relationship to the earth, and to the land. And we see what’s happening to the farmers. You’re the new Indians. They will drive you off your land. But the Cavalry is a banker now. It’s a mortgage. And they talked about giving 3.4 billion dollars to the Soviets and I think they should give it here and let the multinational corporate state invest in the Soviet Union, because that’s who wants to make the profit.”

“The other thing. I’m from the tribes. And a terrible thing happened in Waco, Texas on Monday. And there is no excuse. There is no rationalization for doing what was done to those people in that house.”

Incident At Oglala (Film) | 1992

“They were there to make trouble.”

“You’ve got two FBI agents, there to serve a warrant, that they don’t have, on someone who’s not there. It’s pretty thin.”

“In 1972 during the Nixon election we went to DC and we ended up occupying the Bureau of Indian Affairs national headquarters. We kept it for like a week but it was highly embarrassing to the Nixon administration. We had gone too far. It seemed like by January of 1973 that the FBI had sent some people into Pine Ridge to start training the BIA and tribal police on how to deal with subversives or counter-subversive activity, whatever the thing is. They started bringing heavy weapons in. Now this is before the Wounded Knee Occupation…it’s like they had picked this as the grounds to have this stand off.”

John Trudell: Excerpts from an Interview | 1978

We are still going to them and asking them to recognize our sovereignty, like we go to them and ask them for program money. Like we go to them and ask them for everything it is that we need. We still do that too much.

If the movement continues to grow we can work on defining our values and our philosophies so that we can understand them more specifically than just in the terms that our ancestors were very spiritual people and were good people. We cannot live in the glory of our ancestors. We must create our own way to go.

Why Peltier is on Trial | Mid-Winter, 1976-77

[NOTES: Rallies in support of Leonard Peltier’s campaign against extradition from Canada were held all over North America. At one of them, in California, John Trudell, national chairman of the American Indian Movement, spoke. These are excerpts from his speech, explaining the background of Peltier’s case.]

To understand the Leonard Peltier case, we have to understand what was going on at Pine Ridge long before any FBI were shot. For two years, Indians were being killed, Indian after Indian after Indian. Indians were being wiped out on the Pine Ridge Reservation, but no one cared enough to stop it. We looked at the list of dead people and we saw the Indian names. We saw the FBI’s failure to solve these crimes. We saw that prior to the arrival of the FBI on the reservation, that kind of violence did not exist. So we understood we were involved in an organized campaign of violence against us. A decision was made at Oglala that if people had to shoot back at law enforcement officials in order to save the lives of innocent people, then they would shoot back.

Interview with John Trudell | Akwesasne Notes, 1975

[NOTE: John Trudell statements compiled from an interview conducted by Runa Simi.]

On the evening of July 17, I had an argument with John Gray, the man who runs the trading post. We argued about his high prices, his credit practices, the way he treats the people, and his racist attitude toward the community of people he’s supposed to be serving. We had an argument and it got out of hand and I fired a pistol through the ceiling and I left.

Indians Will Gather at Plymouth Rock to Mourn Decline of ‘First Americans.’ | November 24, 1970

“It means the white society has ripped us off to get everything they’re thankful for. We’re thankful we’re still alive and haven’t been assimilated into American culture.” – On the meaning of Thanksgiving. ~

SOURCE: The Boston Globe

John Trudell: Radio Free Alcatraz | August 11, 1970

Well, I guess there has been what you would call quite a bit of action going on concerning Alcatraz, a lot of activity somewhere. On the island itself, we are in good shape, we have quite a few people, morale is high, everyone is happy, so I guess we really couldn’t ask for much more than that. Well, we could, but we’ve got a working system going here and we are content with that. As far as the other side, now, we have been getting a lot of attacks, verbal attacks by Thomas Hannon, the GSA regional director, here in San Francisco. He is trying to paint a really ugly picture of us so that he can justify something that is going to happen to us, something that is not going to be too good for us I guess. I don’t know. We will see what happens.

John Trudell: Radio Free Alcatraz | August 4, 1970

Number one, everything on the island is in pretty good shape. Everyone out here is in good spirits, good mood, high morale, the baby is fine. Quite a few things are in the news today, I guess. The number one thing was in yesterday’s newspaper, I believe, or on the news yesterday, about the government, Congress, has authorized the Coast Guard, or someone, to restore power to the lighthouse because of the pressure put on them by the unions, the waterfront unions in San Francisco, the maritime union. And that is really pretty strange, you know. All of these unions in San Francisco can put pressure on the government to restore power. But Indian people can’t put enough pressure on the government to give Indian people title to the island.

John Trudell: Radio Free Alcatraz | July, 1970

It’s been kind of warm out here the last couple of days and the water has been bad in the late afternoon. Our boat is barely holding together at some times, but we make it. The situation is still the same as far as water and electricity with the government. We had a man come out and repair some of our generators, so our electrical situation isn’t as bad as it was last week. Buffy St. Marie bought us 400 gallons of water and sent it up, and we are working right now in any way possible to pick up some more, some way.

John Trudell: Radio Free Alcatraz | July, 1970

Well, I guess the biggest piece of news that has happened out here this past week is the birth of a new boy, Wovoka. My wife had the baby Monday evening. There are some really good feelings out here. The feelings were already here and they seem to have been strengthened. His name is Wovoka, no middle name, no last name, and he is about what I would call the first free Indian born in the past 500 years, because the government is not going to get him. We have somewhere around sixty or seventy people out here. We’re all hanging tough.

John Trudell: Radio Free Alcatraz | June, 1970

Right now everything on the island is fine. We are in good shape morally. Morale is high and we are still in the same position as far as electricity goes. We had our lighthouse burned out, we blew some bulbs a couple of nights ago when we went without a lighthouse for a night, but things are running all right again. But our biggest problem we have now is running into this deal about water. We are out of water. I think we have fifty gallons of water left and that is it. So now our biggest worry is getting water. We need water because we have children out here. We need the water for them. We need the water for ourselves.