NATIVE AMERICAS: John, I see from your performance the other night that you are still reaching for your truth about what’s going on in the world. You travel a lot, you deal with young people, that youthful energy of the music business. How is the new generation different from our generation, and how is it similar?
JOHN TRUDELL: That is hard to answer because in many ways when I’m not working I’m pretty reclusive. But when I’m out in the world, I think that the energy is the same for the youth now as when we were young. The technology is a little different and the information that new technology brings is a little different, but I think that what is really the essence of us, from our youth to the youth now, that essence is still there. In fact, I think that this essence is part of the fuel that runs America.
In your message, I hear the idea that America runs on siphoning human energy, dominating consciousness. You speak of the manipulation of that consciousness, by whom and doing what with it?
I see at this time basically a continuation of the same system that decimated our nations. To me this system, which came over from Europe, manipulates everything, even our consciousness, in order to feed off of it. In that context, if we see what technology does to this planet, many of us, especially as Native peoples, can see that this system isn’t even about incidental destruction anymore. It’s more an actual war against the land, taking the fat and the marrow, taking it all. We know the results of this war are crude deforestation and the generation of toxic waste, so that this whole “toxic reality” has been created. What I see plainly and point out to young people is that that “reality” has developed authoritarian systems to reinforce it, and these systems are called government or they’re called religion or they’re called civilization. These authoritarian systems, that clearly spring from Europe, they run on energy. To get the products that produce the energy that they run on, they clear-cut living forests and dig deep holes in the ground without respect, like ripping up the uranium and using it without knowing where its waste will go, and generally destroy everything they touch basically to fuel automobiles. Because what we are dealing with are energy systems, we as human beings are just physical spirit. Our DNA is made up of the metals, minerals and liquids of the earth, that would be our own flesh and blood, so we’re just different parts of the earth. I love it when I hear that we humans are of the same DNA as the rest of the Earth. It proves the Indian point that everything is related. We’re just a different shape from uranium or from a tree, just a different shape, but we all have the same DNA. Truly, what happens to the Earth happens to us. So reality to me is that certain ways have been devised and through a similar refinement as the mining process, they are geared to take our spirit and convert it into a form of energy that fuels the authoritarian, genocidal, very materialistic, consumeristic, technological reality. I think that spiritually we’re the gasoline. They take it from us.
You said one time that young people now have to deal with more refined forms of that confusion?
Well, on the one hand yes, I think that. But on the other hand I think we’re operating on the same level as the world of 500 years ago. Whatever form of the Spirit Eater our ancestors had to deal with, the young have to deal with it now. This thing has changed forms, so to speak, but it’s the same energy, it’s the same mining process. I can’t say that it’s more complicated or that it’s less complicated than it was way back then. I just know that this mining process came, the Spirit Eater came, and since that energy got here, our perception of reality has been completely distorted. A distorted reality has been imposed upon us through aggression, murder and violence.
That Spirit Eater, describe that a little bit more. Not only in terms of mining process, but who is it?
Who is it? I say now it’s a perception of reality, because I’m not going to accuse, I can’t accuse who it is. But if one just looks at the natural logic to this, there is an industrial ruling class on this planet that benefits greatly from the present state of things. This is not a secret. Now I don’t know the names of the individuals in this industrial ruling class. I don’t have the names of these individuals who are that 5 percent or 6 percent of the total world population controlling 40 percent or 50 percent of the wealth. I don’t look for these peoples’ names. I don’t know who they are. But I know they are there, and they’re an industrial ruling class. And within that class, there is a perception of reality within which the destruction of the earth is justified. In a way I feel it’s like a disease, it’s like some kind of cancer came into what was the Western Hemisphere, which we Native peoples were a part of, as a life form. Because most Indians will agree we had here a reality of our own. Sure, we fought each other, sometimes, but we understood the world in our own spiritual terms. The cancer that came, what I call The Great Lie, brought its illusions. A whole lack of understanding of reality as we knew it came out of Europe. So I’ll just call it the Great Lie, and that was a kind of cancer. This hemisphere had never had that kind of lie before, so it had no defense. In the common energy that is the hemisphere itself, there was no defense. Because it takes time and contact for the living body to develop what would be the immunity or the antibiotic that naturally would defend us.
This Big Lie, did you ever believe it?
In my life I’ve chased every kind of lie. Knowing me, some of it just because I wasn’t thinking right, so I went ahead and chased many things because I didn’t want to take the time to think. But not the Big Lie. No. If I had chased it, I wouldn’t have come back. Because wherever I go, I don’t seem to come back. When I was young, and I was trying, maybe, to participate in the mainstream society, I was looking for this kind of a place to go or that kind of a place, work, college, doing all this, but the contacts I had with the different large American institutions during my time told me that I didn’t want to be part of it. And it wasn’t just about school. It’s about the way that the institution relates to the individual. Later, the military didn’t do a lot for me, either. I was in the military, I joined it, and so I went into it, and it wasn’t patriotism or lack of patriotism. I went in it because I had to be someplace. If I didn’t leave where I was at that time I would have ended up in prison or someplace, and I knew that when I was 16, 17, so I joined.
In the intuitive sense of how you do things, there is a thread to everything you’ve done. We can go back to your early interviews back at KPFA and Alcatraz, and there is a consistent impetus to get a handle on the new historical reality that ended up here, on the way it works. How do you grow, creatively, intellectually?
I don’t read a lot. I read the newspaper and I read Time Magazine and Newsweek Magazine just to see what the lies are that are being told. Because I think, what is it? Because even when there’s no news in the news, that tells you something. When one looks at what the no news is about, to me, that’s one of the intense forms of the forced feeding of mind sets and perceptions of reality. News and other forms of entertainment serve these mind-setting functions, I believe. So I read those things. Sometimes I read some political things, sometimes I read about historical things, maybe about how certain intelligence operations go, how the disruption of movements occur. I don’t necessarily mean the cloak-and-dagger black-bag job, I’m talking about all levels, what is in their minds?
You look for an understanding of the motivations?
Yes. But I don’t do it consciously, I mean, I just do it. This is what I read because this is what I’m interested in, then whatever it is comes into my head comes into my head.
Does reading history give a sense of this?
Yeah. I’ve read a little bit about the history of Europe, to help me to understand what came here, because once Europe was populated by tribes, and then the process started, and it went on through the millennium, so by the time it got here, it had progressed to the point where its technology was more rapidly developing than everything else in their world. What got here started out some time before. I don’t know if this evolved in the minds of man or if some bad-behaving energy got exiled from space, something that could limit the minds of people down here on Earth, I don’t know, and the tribes of Europe had to succumb to it. I figured out that when Columbus got here, and the way Europeans behaved when they got here, was because they had been treated that way for the last 400 years. Through all of Europe, that’s how they had been treated. So, my sense is, given the immediate and even present behavior, that by the time they got here they didn’t know what a human being was anymore, they didn’t know anything about the reality of life, because the inquisitions and the seizing of control by religion and churches as agents of God on Earth. See, all that stuff was going on in Europe prior to them coming here, so by the time they got here they didn’t know reality anymore. They had already been mined. Their spirit was being eaten. Big time. And they had no real perception of reality anymore. All they could see was the illusion.
How do you think this works?
The whole purpose is to fog the memory. In order for the Spirit Eater to feed off of you, it’s got to dull the memory of who you are. So a part of the process of civilizing one is to erase the memory of who you are. But we know as Native people, our traditions at least teach us that we are an extension of the ancient ones. And that we are the ancient ones to those who are coming. But you look at America and you look at Europe and most of the civilized, industrialized world, the people don’t have a clue who they are because their tribal ancestors got attacked a thousand, maybe three thousand years before us and the memory of their ancient instructions as Native peoples got erased, almost completely eradicated in many places. And when we don’t know who we are, then we can hide behind other things. Then it’s easy to hide behind certain prides and certain other things. See, when we don’t know who we are.
What happens in the confusion?
We forget there is a difference between spirituality and religion. We forget it’s not about freedom; it’s about responsibility. There’s a world of difference there. Two different realities. We come from a people of responsibility. We were free. But freedom as a concept to fight for or to become is an idea that came about after the European tribes were taken over by the Spirit Eater. The whole idea of freedom itself conflicts with the church in Europe, which had the Inquisition in full swing when Columbus came here. This was the church taking authority as God’s agent on the earth. That was what the Inquisition was really about. At that time the people on the land in Europe were peasants and serfs. But they were also the descendants of the tribes of Europe. Many still had a relationship with the land and the spirits. They were no longer tribes because that had been taken away by the fiefdoms. But they still followed old traditions by praying to natural elements the way that their ancestors prayed. The Church was establishing its authority on the earth. It was trying to capture souls, and it was picking up property. This was basically what the Inquisition was about: if you were accused of thinking or acting the way the church didn’t want you to think or act, then you were guilty of heresy. If the accusation was made, then you pretty much had to be guilty. First, you had to be tortured, then executed and then the church seized your property. It was very organized, and this went on for hundreds of years in Europe. They were 400 years into it when Columbus came. We’re talking about mass murder, we’re talking about genocide. A great deal of that attack in Europe was against women because the church was establishing the authority of the dominator, the male was deemed removed from, or above, the earth. As that process developed itself, it seems these peoples are the ones always seeking freedom. It’s part of the whole religious mindset, it’s part of the whole idea of freedom. But we who now live in this society should think that in reality maybe freedom is an abstraction and it has no meaning. It’s a religious perception, it’s a religious concept. It’s alien to our way of life. In our way of life, to be free is to be responsible. That’s all there is to it. But we fight for freedom now. And I think, and I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, but I think we really need to think about some of these terms we throw around. There are some things that really have to be thought about.
Is one of the pillars of the Big Lie that progress makes things better, that for every generation things get more cohesive, the world gets more understandable, science illuminates and so on?
That’s exactly why I call it the Great Lie. It is destroying the world and putting up an illusion that everything gets better. And it does, for some people. There’s the Great Spirit and the Great Lie. And the Great Lie is based upon that illusion but the Great Spirit is based upon what is real, because we humans have spirit, we can connect with the natural world, therefore it is real. Great Spirit is based on the perception of life as a continuum. The Great Lie is based upon greed and the fear of death. So the Great Lie, in the end, is about death and damnation. The Great Spirit is about Life and continuing on. So each reality has defined itself. So the one that’s about life and continuing on will continue on, because that’s it’s reality. The one that’s about death and fear has to die. It has no choice because that is its’ reality. And it will bring its own death, because fear brings death. Our own ancient prophesies warned of this. Our old people have said it clearly that there is reality and there’s not, and which ever one you step off to — be careful. Because if you step off into the wrong one, then these things will come to pass. And it will never be in the shape and form that we expect. It will come in its own shapes and forms, because it is a disease, primarily, of spirit. The Spirit Eater is a disease. It’s a misperception of reality, it’s fear, it’s insecurity, it’s disregard for life. In that kind of a sense, we have to look what they’re doing to the environment, the life-support systems. The water, the earth, the land. Just look at what they’re doing to the physical, necessary lifeform providers, total disregard for it. But they no longer know who they are.
You have a broad sense of these two forces in the world, these two ways of looking at the world. The Big Lie and Great Spirit, but you don’t rail against education, or against the white man, or against Christianity per se. You seem to think that these forces play themselves out throughout all these different systems. Is that accurate?
Yeah, I see the white man society as diseased. The spirit is diseased and can’t see reality clearly. But unless that poses an immediate physical danger to me, I have more pity than hatred or anger. I also believe that if we don’t get it, if we don’t see what is happening, then we will see all that fully internalized in us, because they came from tribes, just like us. We’ve had 500 years of contact with this diseased perception of reality. They’ve had thousands of years. And it has created nations of powerless-feeling people for whom any lie is acceptable.
Do you hate it?
No, I don’t hate. To hate somebody or to love them requires the same devotion. So if I don’t like what someone is doing, why would I want to have a devotion toward them? Because I think hate clouds my perception. Then I’m not going to see something which maybe I should see. Every time we get angry about something, we miss a lot. And, see, they’re victims too. So my whole attitude is that we have to deal with the reality of racism, classism, and those manifestations, we do have to deal with that reality. That can’t just be ignored, but we must recognize it for what it is. Because, overall, these are the manifestations of a diseased spirit that eats up cultures.
One factor in the loss of human contact and human memory is how much more sophisticated television has gotten at capturing the inner world of young people. There is quite a difference from the dullness of the programs back in the `50s and `60s. When you talk about Spirit Eater that sucks our humanity, the increasingly refined techniques of television come to mind. How do you see that change?
I think that’s just going to naturally happen, because that’s the way the Spirit Eater works. We should be surprised by nothing that gets worse. But part of the reality is that we can’t keep the TV from coming in, so we must help the young to find an understanding of what the TV is. From the very beginning, I’ve always told my kids, none of that’s real, its only TV. But these messages are all around, in TV for sure, but also in the education system, in every media. I see our kids surrounded by many things that deny our reality. Clearly, every one of those avenues, their job is to distort our Native perception of reality. So as one individual, I have not figured out how to fight the TV, but I just try and make sure that any kids I’m around understand that that’s not reality as we can know it. On the other hand, I look at the acceleration of this society, the way things seem to be going into a spiraling madness, and I find that kids who watch TV, they understand other things besides TV. They pick up certain perceptions of awareness very quickly. It’s the good that comes with the not so good. In everything there’s some good. So, in a way, some kids seem to learn things quicker. Maybe, they’re not things we want them to learn, but maybe the point is for us is to find a way to tell it to them, because they want to learn.
They are accelerated learners.
Yes they are, that’s exactly right. And whether I like it right now or not, I know realistically, there’s nothing I can do to stop that TV from coming in. But I also understand that maybe in the long generational evolutionary sense we may need those elevated learners, they’ll understand that system, just so we make sure they stay in tune with our deepest reality. That’s our part of the responsibility. Because who is to say that maybe in the future there will not be a reason for these accelerated learners. You know what I mean? There was a reason for the drunken Indian. That was so we could be here, so they would not have to exterminate us. There are reasons why things happen when change happens on a large scale with most of the people, even though bad circumstance may bring it. But that doesn’t mean that only bad has to come out of it.
How do you see the AIM years now?
A lot of good came out of those years. I think the best thing that came out of that was a re-energizing of Spirit. You go prior to the fishing rights battles in the middle 1960s, then Alcatraz, and AIM, and Wounded Knee: our people were very depressed as Indian people. All that movement activity built its momentum to rally the people about how they felt about themselves. Because everyone had been beaten down for so long that we needed something for the spirit. And, it’s interesting that TV played a role, because that was the medium that helped to take it everywhere. So, in the sense of spirit, I think it was a revitalization for us. But in the human sense, it was a very confusing time for us. Still, it was something that we needed to go through, so that the spirit could reemerge. Everywhere now I see that the identity of our people is alive, and not only is it alive but it’s alive on a conscious level, it feels good about itself. So, to me, the fire burns because of the experience of those years. But in the material sense, education, government, housing, health, we’re in the same situation that we were in 30 years ago, with some minor modifications. What we didn’t do in the movement days is we didn’t think. We reacted and called it thinking, but we didn’t think. That’s why the spirit got revitalized but we got limited in our other accomplishments, because we didn’t think. We were too young, we were too…whatever we were…but we didn’t really think.
It did not go where it could have?
We weren’t encouraging our people to think, we were encouraging them to react and to follow. If it were to be done again, I wouldn’t encourage us to do it the way it was done. Because real changes in our people, if they’re going to get through our spirit, they’re going to go through our mind. They have to come through the mind, they can’t get there any other way. They got to come through our mind in order to get to our spirit. Or we use our mind to keep them from doing it. But all the battles, so to speak, take place there. That’s exactly what it boils down to. We went through many different experiences, but about the Great Lie as an ongoing threat, about the continuing intent to mine our spirit, we didn’t really take the time to think things out.
For example?
We thought that money, guns and laws, that’s power. But in reality it’s authority. It has nothing to do with power. Power is us, we are human beings. Spirit. We have power, individually and collectively. We have even more power when we think about this and we understand its reality, because it manifests as consciousness, and as will. Now our spirit, even now understands this because that’s the very same power in us that was attacked to destroy our perception of reality. And they still use their own powers of manipulating consciousness to run their systems of genocide and oppression. If we are not careful, the very systems we use to oppose them will use us, and we end up supplying the energy that it needs to continue its behavior.
What other positive results were there?
I see a difference in education. Education as a whole seemed to be a real enemy when the movement started because education was there to beat you down. Now young Indian people going into college or seeking higher degrees are usually going into programs where already the sense about Indian identity is positive. So more of our young people now have the opportunity to do that thinking that could not be done in those early years. Another thing I see manifesting is a big change coming to our culture in the arts. There are more young people emerging in our cultures as artists in varying forms. The ceremonies are full and the powwows get bigger.
How about the economics, John, how do you see those changes? Gaming, for instance?
Regardless how anyone feels about gambling one way or the other, the fact is that it is bringing an emergence, it’s even part of our culture. It can give strength. You see tribes that used to get beat up by their neighboring local towns now with real clout. That’s positive. Young people are given a sense of possibilities. I recognize that the possibilities are geared towards money-making activity, but that fuels other things too. On the gambling, you know, I’ve heard many things about it. But one thing that is real to me is, Indians gamble. What are stick games, what are hand games? What are any competitive things that took place? It’s not a crime. It is true that traditionally it was not necessarily a disease with us, such as it is a disease with some desperate people these days. But I don’t think it goes against our culture. Now that may vary from tribe to tribe, but generally speaking, I think that’s true. The other part is, we need to have an economic base. What are the options, we’re just going to be real here: swhat are the options? Use up what little resources we have? Or let them store their poisons on our lands? They’re trying to dump their poisons on us anyway. So there’s not a whole lot you know. A reality that really needs to be grasped is that the economic situation in the United States is drastically changing. People like tribes and other poor people are going to have less access to money. The upper echelons will have lots of money, but for those out of access, which is most of us, whatever bad times we’ve had before and remember in our memories, this is going to be worse. There is an economic change coming to America that by 2010 is going to be well in place. And our children will be the adults then.
Is the sense that you have of this economic tightening that what Indians used to be able to get by on is not going to be available anymore?
Whatever we got before, whether it came in the form of money or commodities, whatever it was, there’s going to be less. That’s just a reality we should be aware of because it is already happening to many people we know. That for most of us the access-to-cash economic situation is only going to get worse. So I think gambling is an opportunity to build an economic base. The economic base that is derived out of it, though, the primary purpose of it should be to preserve culture, and help the people. And I think that it can be healthy for everybody around. When I look at it, I don’t relate to destitution and poverty. Being poor will not make me more Indian. Destitution and poverty means there’s more internal family violence. All the escapisms that take place — because the alcohol and all that stuff is still very real in Native communities — poverty has got everything in the world to do with that. But maybe there’s a chance to really have an economic base, that truly all the people benefit from. Well how do truly all the people benefit from this? Because at some point within all these differences, at some point a conclusion could be reached that it can benefit its own people. Each tribe should do it it’s own way. Its not going to work in every area.
What’s your concern for the new Indian generation?
The thing I’m concerned about for the next generation, the youth, is that they do not know how to use their intelligence. They do not know how to understand their intelligence. They don’t understand that they have intelligence. And if they do not understand how to use that intelligence clearly and coherently, then they are going to get eaten by the Spirit Eater. If we’re going to add anything to our next generations, they have to start knowing now what the value of their Native intelligence is, because all things take place in the mind, in the end. Everything they have ever done to us is to make us think a certain way, and we’ve been so layered now sometimes, we’re not really thinking, we’re just reacting and calling it thinking. But, however they go about it, I think they’ll naturally head in the best direction on their own. But I do think that it has to be nurtured, as things were nurtured for us. Things have to be thought about. We have to use this intelligence. Because the reality of the one that is sometimes called “the white man,” a term which can be misleading, because these are very big systems not only defined by race. But in any case, the bad energy that comes from that feeling of superiority that defines for me the Spirit Eater, call it whatever you want — I want to tell our young people this: we will never out-fight it. It will never, ever, ever happen. Ever. Because its heart is violence. But we can out-think it. ~
SOURCE: Native Americas