John Trudell: As long as it doesn’t get hot out there. See it’s, like the way it is right now with us with the water situation is we don’t have enough water to flush our toilets we have to haul seawater to do this, we don’t have enough water to keep the island as clean as we want to because we’ve got to ration it. Because we are hauling it and we have to ration the water because, because anything could happen and it’s like what if they come in and try to take us off and we want to barricade ourselves in a building we’ve got to have water to hold out with. But we’re not going to, and besides that, everybody should have water. I mean God gave it to the land and we have a right to it. He didn’t give it to the United States government.
Reporter: By not keeping it as clean as you want do you think there’s a health hazard out there.
Oh there could be. If it gets hot there would be. Last week we had a few hot days and if that warm spell would have stretched out into any period of time we would have had a health hazard.
…Ward who is the assistant to Spiro Agnew on the Indian Opportunity Council said you’d proved your point with Alcatraz, the problems were on the mainland at the time was to come back and face the problems on the mainland. Do you agree with that?
We’re glad that Mr. Robertson from the vice president’s office thinks that we have proved our point. It’s up to us when we know we proved our point. The things that are going on with Indian people socially and economically being below par compared to the rest of the population, we’ve got a bigger point. We’re talking about law. We’re talking about respect as a people. Respecting a people as a people. We’re talking about more than poverty. We’re talking about honor. We’re saying you’ve never dealt with us honorably United States. Ever. And it’s time that you start doing so because we’re not going to allow it to continue. We can’t.
Mr. Robertson, his point was that all the problems for the Indian people, such as you just mentioned, are in the cities on the mainland, therefore you were not helping these problems by staying out on the island. Do you agree with that?
No. Problems for the Indian People are within the United States government. Problems that we’re having is the Nisqually fishing battle at Frank’s Landing in Washington where the treaty is being broken. The federal government is allowing the state government to break a treaty that was signed between the Indian people and the federal government. That treaty is a law. We’re talking about things like this. We’re talking about, if we’re free we want the right to make our own decisions. We don’t want the great white father image anymore looking down on us making the decision for us. And this Mr. Robertson or President Nixon came out with his proposal that he gave to Congress, the nine step plan, and he talks about ending paternalism. He created that. He didn’t end any paternalism with that bill.
Mr. Trudell, President Nixon says that he feels particularly close to Indians because his football coach, who was also his first campaign manager, is an Indian. Do you think he is particularly close to the Indians?
I think Mr. Nixon is probably particularly close to Mr. Nixon.
Your water, how long can you go hauling it over..an entire week?
Yeah, we could take a week. We could probably take two or three weeks, but we’d be hauling water every day. And why should we have to haul the water?
Is there enough water out there now for bathing and things like that?
We come over to the mainland to take showers. We don’t bath there. People come over and take showers and clean up over here. Then go back to the island.
Has Mr. Hannon answered your request at all for more water?
Mr. Hannon has said, no concessions. That the government isn’t going to cooperate with us. The attitude that Mr. Hannon presents to us is that he wants to get us out of there and he doesn’t care what has to go down to do it. He’s just trying to convey the message that he’s the boss. And we’re not talking about things like boss. Who is the boss and who isn’t.
Robert Robertson.
His football coach was Indian. There are a lot of Indians in this country and just because you have Indian blood, if you live white, then that doesn’t really make you an Indian. We’re concerned about people, the reservation people. People on the reservations that are being forced to assimilate or die out. We’re worried about things like our language and our culture. And we want this on our own terms. We don’t want to be able to hang on to it because the federal government says we can keep this much and we can keep that much. It’s part of us. And we want it all. ~
SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Goh0CFSHCs