[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.
All this happened because the man has been arrogant to the community because he has to answer to no one except the BIA. We have had a tribal work experience program for some of the welfare people. The BIA had run the program previously, but it had just contracted the program to the tribe. The BIA was late in transferring the money to the tribe’s account, so no checks could be issued and some people were three weeks late in getting their money. The trading post cut some of their credit off. Now, it wasn’t their fault, it was totally beyond their control. The same day, I was in the trading post and a woman came in and she wanted to change from food stamps to commodities because she had no money to buy food stamps, but she was denied any food.
That trading post has made a lot of money off the welfare people, and yet it doesn’t have the decency to treat the people respectfully.
As far as violence is concerned, no violence was used. I discharged a firearm into the ceiling, maybe injured a can of tomato juice, but if I had wanted to be violent, I’d have used violence on him.
The trading post participates in a violent system. It is protected by racist federal laws and a racist federal institution, the BIA. It is protected by these things so it can perpetuate its violence of racism, of disrespect, of arrogance. I’m just as against violence as anyone else, but I’m against all violence.
What happened in the trading post was an argument. It got out of hand. I’ll admit to that. But because I belong to AIM and am the national chairman of AIM, I was not accorded due process the night of the incident.
After the shot was fired, I got into my car and went home. I was watching television when the policemen came and said they had to arrest me for attempting to rob the trading post. I said, hey, I didn’t try to rob that man; we had an argument. I said I won’t go with you, I want to talk with someone from the tribe, because I don’t want to be railroaded, and that’s what I see coming.
So they made arrangements for me to see the tribal police, the tribal judge, and the tribal chairman. But the head criminal investigator for the BIA, a man named Moran from Elko, a hundred miles away. As soon as he had heard a complaint had been filed against me, he put on a total news blackout. He moved all the BIA police in from eastern Nevada, and established a roadblock around my house.
My wife went to find the tribal chairman to get him to the scene. About five hours had transpired by this time until finally the tribal judge got to the house. I talked with him and one tribal policeman. They told me I was now charged with assault with a deadly weapon. I asked if they would guarantee my safety. I said I would not surrender to the Bureau, but I would surrender to the tribe. So they took me to the tribal jail.
Then Moran just took me off the reservation.
Under the present setup, the U.S. would have had the right to arrest me, if they would have followed the legal procedures. If they want to remove someone from the boundaries of the reservation, they have to show cause and have a warrant to present to a tribal court and then the tribal court makes a ruling allowing the removal. But that didn’t happen in my case, they just came and picked me off.
If due process would have been allowed, the tribal court would have heard both sides of what happened. There is the possibility there would have been no charges, or if there were some, they wouldn’t have been among the “Eleven Major Crimes.”
It wasn’t a major crime. Although I was accused of assault with a deadly weapon, there was no injury to anyone. But by the “assault with a deadly weapon” charge, it implied I hurt someone. Emotionally, maybe, but physically no. But if we’re going to go on the basis of emotional hurt, the entire reservation has been hurt emotionally, but that man hasn’t been charged.
As it came down, it was a white man’s word against an Indian’s word, and the U.S. Government is doing everything they can to back that white man. They’re using the taxpayers’ resources, they’re using the racism of the federal law, the racism of the local politicians, the local BIA structure. They’re using the institutionalized racism of those structures to deny me with due process.
The Victim Becomes the Villain
[NOTE: After Trudell’s arrest, Jack Keith, a special FBI agent in charge of Nevada, put out a press release that was circulated to the major wire services stating Trudell was drunk at the time of a “robbery.” He said Trudell had automatic weapons, that there was a shootout, and Trudell was finally subdued by federal police.]
The U.S. over-reaction, lies, overt show of paramilitary force, the heavy charges. It’s standard operating procedure for “militant Indians.” They put out all this false information, but the people of the community could see who the liars were. They could see right out front from the beginning that the Federal Government was lying. The people would have known if there was a shootout, or if I was drunk and raising hell.
I see a close correlation to the thing that happened in Nevada and the thing that happened in Oglala with the dead FBI agents. Here’s the government making a lot of insinuations, accusations, and outright lies. Ambush, FBI agents executed, 100 Indians in a house, 16 Indians in a house, 40 Indians in a house, things they have never proven or backed up. As a result, they can set any kind of bonds, they can charge any number of people, they can run any kind of game, just on the basis of lies and accusations.
Fortunately, I had been in Owyhee long enough it just didn’t work. But I would hope that by now, all people would start asking valid questions. I would hope they would see the FBI is just an extension of a criminal government.
As far as jurisdiction goes, when you really get down to it, the people on the reservation, the tribe itself, must have their own legal system, and their own law. Through this system, they maintain the proper peace and law and order within the community by holding all people on the reservation subject to those laws. This includes the white BIA agent, it includes the Indian BIA worker, it includes the Indian welfare recipients, the white public health administrator, the school teachers, everyone should be held accountable to the laws of the people of the reservation.
This is the key issue in this whole incident. The tribe does not have jurisdiction over the people on its reservation. They do not have total legal control, that’s how come trading post people can operate like racist thieves. They don’t have to answer to the tribe, they just answer to the Bureau. And we should know by now that a white businessman living in an Indian community isn’t going to get any flak from the Bureau.
Lack of jurisdiction by the tribe was one of the conditions which led up to the confrontation with John Gray anyway. The tribe couldn’t do anything about the way he operated. They were always told by the Bureau, take him to the state court. But the issues are not ones for the State of Nevada to decide, they are for the Indian community.
So as to the government’s right to arrest, they don’t have the right to arrest me along racial lines. They don’t have the right to arrest me on political lines, or along religious lines. But that’s the only time they exercise their right to arrest.
The only two reasons they took me off the reservation were that I belonged to AIM, and because I was accused of attacking a white man.
A Legal Basis to do Whatever They Want
About a week after I was charged, the tribal council passed a resolution demanding that my trial be held on the reservation. Also, the people on the reservation circulated a petition demanding the same thing.
When I was arraigned in Reno, the tribal council presented the petition and the resolution to the court, because that’s where I was accused of committing the crime, and where I could have a trial by my peer. My lawyers also filed some motions, and the court set October 24 as a jurisdiction hearing date.
The hearing was well attended. Many people came in from the reservations, from northern California. It was a pretty full courtroom. Three motions were filed by my attorneys. One was that the U.S. lacked jurisdiction, another was that if it had jurisdiction, it should be turned back to the reservation, and third, they asked that all my FBI, CIA, and other intelligence files be turned over for my defense.
The judge ruled against all of them. He told the community of Owyhee that “responsible citizens” had assured him that the trial could not be held in Owyhee, so he ruled against them too.
After my preliminary hearing, the executive director of the Nevada Indian Commission had met privately with my judge, and told him the trial could not be held on the reservation. By ruling in his favor and ruling against the tribal council and the people, the court was telling me the people of the reservation were not “responsible citizens.”
The court agreed with the prosecutor saying that well, yes there were treaties, but that the U.S. Congress had the right to nullify and change the treaties, and in the past the U.S. had pretty well done what it damn well wanted to, so you guys got a legal basis to do what you damn well want to now.
What I got out of that was that the judge was a part of the overall conspiracy. He pretends that he is a person of “judicial background.” He pretends he has respectability. But in the end, he is just part of the overall conspiracy of white supremacy, because he will not recognize the validity of agreements made between nations just because now those nations are now surrounded by his nation.
That judge didn’t give the slightest most remote possibility to the idea of a fair trial for me. He didn’t waste twenty seconds thinking about trial by peers and the so-called principles of the so-called constitution which he is supposed to have sworn to uphold. He just played the federal game.
It would have been foolish for me to sit there and be railroaded.
I have not been accused of committing any crimes in Reno, why the hell should I stand trial in Reno. I’ve always been told that I should tell the truth in a courtroom, so I just told them the truth of the way I felt.
Passive Resistance to a Charade
[NOTE: At Trudell’s hearing in Reno, he addressed the court. He categorically stated that he would not come voluntarily to be tried in Reno, and he demanded to be locked up, saying he’d already been found guilty by the justice system. He demanded to have his bail bond revoked. Trudell said he did this not because he wanted to go to jail, but because he would no longer participate in a charade that justice was being done. At that time, and after the hearing, he made these statements:]
The jurisdiction issue is no longer a point of law. The judge has caught a lot of pressure to keep my trial out of the Indian community. He’s got it from the U.S. Attorney’s office, from the FBI, from the Governor’s office. But if he were a fair man, if he believed in the U.S. Constitution, he would have closed his eyes to that pressure and sent me back to the reservation to be tried.
The people of Owyhee aren’t here just because I’m an Indian, they’re here because they want to see justice served in their community. They want to see what kind of an excuse the Government can come up with to deny them that justice.
We have people here who have never been two hundred miles from their home, but they’ve come down here to Reno to see just how this federal system” operates. They want to see if this thing the politicians talk about is going to work in their favor.
I have no intention of coming back to court here in Reno again. If they want me here on trial, they can come to get me. I have no intention of fighting with the police, or of running away from the police. I’ll be at my home. I’ll no longer go along with this charade of justice. I’m not shelling out another penny and spending another nine hours behind the steering wheel of a car to make one of these rinky-dink court appearances.
The way I look at it, I’m innocent until I’m proven guilty, and I’m entitled to a trial by my peers. It is the obligation and responsibility of the state, the U.S. attorney’s office, and the federal court system to treat me as an innocent man. They have not done so. They have placed exorbitant bonds on me. The FBI has slandered my name. The news media has tried to build me up as being a “militant” by carrying distorted information. They have convicted me in their own minds. The bureaucracy has already found me guilty. The hell with them. Let’s not even have a trial. Just lock me up today, or they can send the police to pick me up when it’s time to come, because I’m not coming in on my own free will. I will not.
I’m not going along and help them put on a charade that justice is taking place. I’m not going to play that game. It’s a matter of conviction. If they want me to be here for trial, they can lock me up today, or they can send the police to pick me up when it’s time to come, because I’m not coming in on my own free will. I will not.
I think it’s time for Indian people around the country to start assuming jurisdiction on their land. They should start treating all people equally under their law; red, black, white and yellow. I don’t care what their cultural background or religious background, but when someone commits a crime on a reservation, the people of that reservation should administer the justice.
It’s not a matter of people around the country helping me here. They should seize control of their own jurisdiction and help themselves. The days of the double standard of justice, the days of more protection by the law because your skin is white, these days have got to end.
It’s time for the Indian community to recognize that the white bureaucrat running the BIA, and the white bureaucrat running the state political system, and the white bureaucrat running the federal political system aren’t going to help us. They won’t help us until we make them help us. If we go around with our hat in our hand, they’ll give us the same lies that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Jackson and the rest of those fools gave us. They’ll continue the lies because the white political system has learned that, hell, it’s easy to lie to those Indians, so we’ll just lie to them and pretend that we’re going to help them.
So take control. Get the tribal councils to tell the police to stop anyone who commits a crime and take them before the courts. Take control and have elections that will direct the council. Take control means if you have to sit down and rewrite your tribal constitution, do it, but take control. Don’t let this charade go on any longer.
The People vs. “Responsible Citizens”
After the hearing, quite a few Owyhee people were upset, because they had considered themselves responsible citizens, and the judge had ruled that they weren’t. We had worked through the elected system within the reservation. We worked through the establishment. We had followed the proper way the feds told us we were supposed to follow. And still, they turn around with an arrogant remark about “responsible citizens.” That antagonized the community.
When they did that, it became more evident to the community there was no way I could get a fair trial off the reservation. Even more evident, the community saw they had every right to go ahead and hold that trial themselves.
So, a tribal member signed a complaint against me, using as the basis John Gray’s written statement to the FBI about the incident in the trading post. The tribal court issued an arrest warrant. The BIA agency superintendent and the criminal investigator, Moran, refused to serve that warrant for 18 hours. They holed up in the agency office, doing everything they could to prevent the tribe from assuming jurisdiction.
But finally, the tribal chairman said they’d better serve it. I was then arrested, taken to tribal court. I pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to 90 days in jail, and a $150 fine. I could either serve the 90 days, or pay it at the rate of $2 a day. I didn’t have the money, so I figured I’d sit in jail. I would be in the jail and if they wanted me to come to Reno to stand trial, they could come and break me out of this jail and take me to stand trial again, which would be double jeopardy — trying me twice for the same incident.
The first federal reaction was to say that the federal charge against me, because “dual sovereignty” applied in my case, whatever that means. Then five days later, the feds said they would drop the charges because I “was not an Indian.” You know, someone’s going to have to tell the BIA that half the Indian population in the country isn’t recognized by the BIA.
After the U.S. dropped charges against me, the community took up a collection and paid the rest of my fine and the $2 a day so I could be released.
Once again, the government’s lies didn’t affect the community. The government lied because they didn’t want to admit that the tribe had every legal and moral basis for doing what it did. The government didn’t want other Indian communities to see that someone had been told no, but they went ahead and did it anyway. That’s the last thing they want people to think about, so they tried to cover it up with a lie.
I was born. I have lived my entire life on the face of this earth. For 29 years, I never heard the government going around calling me white. I never heard white people going around calling me white. Everybody always called me an Indian.
The second thing 1 did was to produce my birth certificate which shows I am an Indian, and I produced an affidavit from my father saying he is an Indian. The tribal court had a hearing because they wanted the BIA and the U.S. Attorney’s office to present the documentation showing that I wasn’t an Indian. The government never responded. The only reaction they could give was, “It wasn’t documented.” That was their total response, so that is just another tactic they used.
Now the state of Nevada wants to get involved. That’s why I’m saying it’s politics. The state wants to get in on this political gang-jump and attack me because I happen to belong to the American Indian Movement. Yet I wasn’t accused of any crimes against the state, I was accused of a crime against the peace and dignity of the Shoshone/ Paiute people.
I Belong to AIM & I’m Proud of It
The Government has said that if you belong to the American Indian Movement, you have no credibility.
They’ve always said the AIM people do not have the same philosophy as the Indian people in general.
But what’s happened in Owyhee is that I belong to AIM, and I’m proud of it, and I always will be, and we’ve proven that the people stood behind the principle that they had the right to run their own judicial system. They have the right to make anyone who lives on that reservation subject to the laws of the reservation.
Another immediate gain is that the tribe went to the Government, and the Government told them no, but the tribe did not consider that to be the end of the world. They knew that if the Government had the right to say no, they had the right to say yes. The people felt that justice was not being served, so they took their own direct action to produce justice.
I wasn’t really the issue except in the eyes of the Government. The issue in the eyes of the People was jurisdiction. They had seen too many of our own people taken off that reservation and railroaded in white courts. They have lived too long watching the BIA in its arrogance protecting the white racists. They have been lied to too long by federal officials.
We talk about a high Indian death rate, about a lack of education. We talk about alcoholism and poor public health services, and about robber trading post people. These people operate like this against us because they know they don’t have to answer to us. If we want to straighten out the social problems in our communities, the political problems, then everyone has got to answer to the law of our communities.
No more of this white trading post operator robbing the people and treating them disrespectfully because the people have no jurisdiction over him. No more of our children being pushed out of the schools because of the racism in their systems because we have no control over the school teachers and control over the school board. No more of this.
No more of the sportsmen and fisherman coming into the reservations and ignoring totally our laws of hunting and fishing because we lack jurisdiction over them.
All these things have got to be stopped, and only we can stop it. The people have got to get together and not be intimidated by madmen who call us names and tell us ‘that’s not the way to do things’.
I’ll tell you the way not to do things, you’re not supposed to lie to the people, and the politicians have done this. They are the ones who have been doing things wrong.
You’re not supposed to protect one race of people from another race of people under the name of the law. So the law enforcement agencies are the ones who have been doing things wrong.
You’re not supposed to use education as a form of warfare because of race and culture. The teachers and the school boards and the educators have been doing things wrong, and we don’t have to listen to them anymore.
The white man has told us “the majority rules.” He has pumped that into our heads from the day we were old enough to walk. He has used the majority rule lie to deny us our basic human rights.
Let’s evaluate majority rule. Majority rule on the reservation means that the Indians are in the majority, and the white people on that reservation will have to live by what the majority of the people want, and if the majority of the people happen to be Indian, I’m sorry, that’s just the way it is. If I go to live in Reno, I have to live how the white people want me to live and answer to their laws.
If the white security seekers, the white incompetents who fill up the offices of the BIA and the Public Health Services and the school rooms — if these people want to live in our communities, then they have to answer to our laws. The majority rules. If they can’t do that, then bye-bye. They can go live with the white people.
When I’m talking like this, I don’t want people to misunderstand.
We’re talking now about a realignment of people’s justice. We’re talking about a realignment of social conditions. We’re talking about creating an environment so Indian people can survive in their culture, just like the white people have managed to survive in theirs.
I’m not talking racist perspectives. I’m not a racist against the white people. I don’t want our communities to become racist against the white people. But we’ve got to recognize the truth, and the truth happens to be this: racism isn’t the issue, but the issue is that we doubt the capacity of the white man to govern fairly, and this doubt comes from the past actions of white societies.
When it comes down to Indians vs. white, the federal government always back white. The people of Owyhee are getting fed up with this type of system which denies them their human rights. They want to see justice too. They want to sit in here at Reno to see what type of excuse the government will come up with now about why I can’t be tried at Owyhee. The Government will take me 400 miles away from the community to argue before a white court why they can’t try me in Owyhee, but this time the people of Owyhee said we’re going to come down to hear their excuses.
Then we’ll understand. We’ll know where the government is coming from. There’ll be no more bullshit. Either the Government will obey its constitution, or the Government will not obey its constitution, but the Indian people are now going to know which way it is going to go.
The Indian elders have been putting up with all this crap all their lives. They have heard every promise that the last four generations of politicians have made. They’ve heard it all. And they know nothing has changed from the day they were born to today. The rhetoric and the promises remain the same, and the way we have to live remains the same.
They recognized that one step toward stopping all these bad things was to exercise their own jurisdiction. And in this case, they did that. They exercised their own jurisdiction, and they felt much better for doing it.
I don’t think the people will ever go back to totally accepting anything the way it was.
The U.S. may wipe out the individual Indians, but it can’t wipe out the philosophy.
The people in the communities have to wake up and accept the fact that just sitting back and just passively waiting for the BIA and the white political structure to change its ways doesn’t produce anything, just more hard times, more poverty, more suicides, more alcoholism, more welfare.
I would hope that other communities would look at the series of events in Owyhee, and see what was accomplished when people from a community have something they believe in, and assumed the right to carry out their beliefs. That’s all it was. The Government tried to cry “militants” and tried to scare people, and tried to stereotype, but the people had a stronger sense of what was right than the Government had of what was wrong.
The State Moves In
[NOTE: On December 10, the U.S. Attorney directed BIA police at Duck Valley to permit state police officers to enter the reservation to arrest Trudell. Officers did arrest Trudell on a state charge of attempted robbery, and took him to the Elko County Jail. Local district attorney Robert Manley has been pushed into the situation by the U.S. – setting the state up as a patsy to do the federal dirty work. Trudell has been released on bond, and there will be hearings to determine if the state has jurisdiction. Information from a reliable source is that the BIA is now moving automatic weapons and gas bombs into Duck Valley, apparently feeling that there is enough tension at this isolated reservation to cause another Wounded Knee situation. Of even more serious concern is the information that a special police agent has been posted at Duck Valley to monitor Trudell. This man has bragged of killing another person at Pine Ridge, and is reported to have said that it wouldn’t take much for him to get Trudell. When the recent state arrests were made, it was this agent who identified Trudell for the arresting officers.] ~
SOURCE: Akwesasne Notes. Vol.7 No.5, Early Winter, 1975. Compiled from an interview conducted with John Trudell by Runa Simi.