FRANK SONTAG: I have John in studio across from me and John, I want to welcome you to Impact this morning.
JOHN TRUDELL: Glad to be here man.
So you’re a late-nighter, and you said you like the night.
I’m a slave to the night. I like the night world.
We are slaves. A lot of us are slaves to other things as well.
Everybody’s a slave.
What do you mean?
Society is enslaved by an economic system, and illusions of values and things like that. The technologic society, basically it operates on the enslavement of the energies of the human beings, or the people.
Do most people stop to think about those things? I mean, we were told, I know me growing up, you know, this American dream. Work hard and someday you’ll have that house and that car. Do most people you think perceive themselves as being slaves to the system?
No, because most people are distracted by their insecurities and this rapidly increasing fear of survival, and how they’re going to survive economically, health wise, all these types of things. So, no they don’t relate to themselves as being enslaved because there’s so many problems there that have to be dealt with. They don’t really have time to think about it.
Off the air I had mentioned to you that I’m struggling and you said, in a sense we are all struggling. What is the struggle about for you?
Well I can generalize, it’s like, to do more good than bad while I’m here. Right? Or at least keep it even. But not to damage the world by my presence. And to me, that’s how I relate to it.
To those that don’t know who you are or any of your work. You educated me a couple of weeks ago at a talk because I automatically, even though I don’t want to admit it, I still label people. I see indigenous cultures sometimes, I call them Native Americans. You said, I’m not a Native American. Not to me directly, but in your talk. Who is John Trudell?
Depends on what day it is.
[Laughter] How about Sunday night at midnight, man? How about right now?
Oh yeah, how about right now? Yeah, well I don’t know if I can tell you that. But let’s go after this Native American thing.
And, is this Columbus Day or some nonsense.
Well, it’s sometime soon, I’m sure. It seems to me. We’re in the middle of October. But it’s this whole idea of Native American. When the Europeans came to the Western Hemisphere there were people here. And these people who lived here, basically, there were many cultures and many languages. But they were the people of this land base. And almost universally within this concept, they always referred to themselves in their own languages or cultures as the People. The human beings.
But that was always a part of the of the self identification, the identification of self. The People. And Europeans came and they refused to recognize us as the People. They called us Indians. And to me that was a very essential part of the genocide. It was, just as much as the diseased blanket, you know, the disease bibles, the guns. I mean, just this whole insane idea about the conquest. So they never recognized us as the People. We became this abstraction of Indians. Whereas the People have a continuity that goes way back into the ancient times. The Indians only have an identity going back to the arrival of the European. And it’s an identity of genocide. And so it’s like a severing of a memory, or an essence that flows beyond times. Part of our ancestry, what our DNA is really about.
So anyway we have 200 or 400 years of that, that happened to us. And then within my lifetime, when we were struggling to survive, let’s say, and we were known as the militants or the activists or whatever. The new terminology became Native American.
See they didn’t change the genocidal attitudes, consciousnesses, or unconsciousness behaviors against us. They changed our name. And it’s like, but we’re not native to America, because we are older than America. See, in America we cannot be Native American because we are older than it. It is just a temporary name. It is a name that was created in these languages and these thoughts and concepts of cultures that are alien to this land.
It does not spring from this land, you know, and our DNA is connected to our land bases. So we’re not Native Americans, we’re the People. And my feeling is, it’s an essential part of genocide to erase the memory. The memories of the People. I mean, it is a part of genocide. It’s a sophisticated part of genocide. Because if you’re busy erasing their minds, the society at large will accept any form of physical hardship you put them through, whether they’re suffering or not. But physically they’re still there. But it’s that other genocide that is more deadly. The effect of assimilation as genocide to just erase our whole conscious connection to who we are. And it’s an ongoing thing. And I don’t think that it’s healthy, for us. You know, it just shows me that while we still are in a situation where the Americans refuse to recognize who we are. They still don’t see us.
Do you think the Americans, as it were, know who they are? Understand where they come from? Understand their purpose here?
No, they don’t have a clue. Not to misunderstand, but the American people, the Americans, they are the descendants of tribes also. They have a tribal ancestry. It’s in the genetic memories. It’s way back. And it goes through time. But we are all the descendants of tribes.
I think that, when I look around America, that memory isn’t there. It’s just not there. So that’s why I say they don’t really know who they are. It’s not that they can’t find out. It’s not that consciousness can’t be brought back. But at this point, just the way that things are? No.
Let’s look at the past. We live in a society that does not follow the teachings of its past. Its commandments, or whatever you want to call it. Right? It’s religious moral values. I don’t necessarily agree that that’s really what it’s all about. I think it’s about responsibility. But we live in a technologic society that follows a dominator male god and they say that they speak, that they follow, a religious moral value.
But we live in a society that does not follow that religious moral value about coveting and stealing and killing and all the stuff. The worship of false idols and things like that. Society listens to none of those teachings, so to me it’s like they don’t feel any sense of spiritual relationship. Continuity to their own ancestry. Their ancestral past.
And in the state of mental confusion that exists, that’s called normalcy, they are tolerating a situation in life where they continually and perpetually feel powerless. And because they tolerate and perpetuate that situation, they are spiritually disconnecting themselves from their descendants. From their future. Because the environment is continuing to be attacked. The life support systems of the planet. Those in the systems of authority that call themselves government and business, they are entrenching this wage slave system. I mean, it’s inflation and recession and trillion dollar national debts and things. But see what it is in the end, it’s a form of economic enslavement of our children and their children and their children. So it’s like we live in a contemporary society that doesn’t know who it is. They just don’t know who they are. And this situation has become created.
And would you also say that this modern day society not only does it not know who it is, but has virtually no understanding of power and its connection to power and what power is?
Very nicely put. I think we live in a time where the society relates to authority as power and basically has no real understanding of power. We’re getting on fine lines now, the reality and the illusion. Like there’s the human and the being. We live in a time where through technological progress and the whole concept of technological, our conscious memories get erased of what is true and real about our ancestral past. And new memories get inbred through the generations, through the programing, to meet the definition of technologic submission. Because in the end, that’s what it is. And so everything gets defined for us. See. So we’re well into the technologic reich. We’re well into it right now. And so by this stage of our human evolution here we are surrounded by it. This technologic reich has defined for us that power is authority. Because whether it’s money, whether you accumulate all the money, that’s authority. That’s really about authority. If you accumulate the military, that’s really about authority. It’s not about power, it’s about authority. All right? It’s to have dominated religions. It’s not about power. It’s about authority.
Now, where power comes into play is we all have human consciousness and energy, essence, spirit. So these systems of authority mine our human energies, consciousness, essence, spirit as a power and turn it into a power to render authority systems. Which we always remain subservient to. Because if money is what makes power and I don’t have any money, well then guess what that makes me? Or if whoever has the biggest gun is the most powerful and I don’t have it, then guess what that makes me? So we all get put in a situation where we’re looking at, we have no power whatsoever. But we have been lied to. They have authority. And that’s what is. Power is something else. They have authority and they maintain authority through violence and deceit because of their own lack of power.
Well what is power then? If we’re all in a sense led to believe we want it. It’s all about having power. And what really is power?
We can chase abstractions here, right? I think that power has to do with human being. Human physical being spirit. Physical spirit. And I think that power is in there. In relationship to the human beings. Power is in the clarity that is in that physical spirit, the coherency that is in that, that is in that physical spirit.
Is that also where self-respect lies?
It’s about recognition of self, is really what it is. It’s about recognition of self. But we’ve been mined by these technologic authority systems. Dissected by race, culture, class, and all the other little things, and then dissected inside of our own heads with all the insecurities and the self-doubts and the guilts and the blames and all of this and that, so that we have no coherency. No clarity as physical spirits. And this has to be for us human beings where power really is because the authoritarians have went to great extremes. Tremendous extremes to keep us incoherent as physical spirits. So it has to be.
I learned that from the political days being spied upon. Some that come to tell on what is said in meetings or in public gatherings. And it made me understand they have all the power so to speak, authority. So what do they care what anybody says? So power is not something that we’re really looking at.
But if they had it, why would they worry about what you were doing? Is that what you’re saying?
Yeah, that’s what I would think. Authority is always on shaky ground.
Authority tends to build itself on keeping people separated and powerless. It’s almost as if we’re at war with each other.
Well, it’s down to the point of, we’re at war with one another and at war with ourselves inside of our own heads.
Now about about the illusion and the reality. See to me this is all part of the illusion. The reality is, it’s about responsibility. See, we are responsible. Physical spirit. Human being. We are responsible as physical spirits, as human beings, we are responsible to life. That’s what it is. But we live in these authority systems of power that tell us and condition us to blame. They condition us with guilt, sin and blame, you see. And with that conditioning you’re always the blamer. It’s never one’s responsibility. What always threw me off is that we’re guilty for being here.
The moment we’re born.
Yeah, that’s insane. But again, their definition, but once we go by that technologic definition then already our recognition of self is being attacked. And it conditions us to not take responsibility. It conditions us to blame, very minimally, ourselves. Or someone else. But it does not teach us about responsibility. Even about guilt, see, we have to blame ourselves. And it’s not about that, it’s about responsibility and learning from the things that we go through. It’s about responsibility.
So this might be the next logical question and probably a lot harder to answer, but where does one go, or how does one take up the search to find what is real or is reality?
You find your own reality, man. You got a mind. We are all creative. It’s just that we use too much of our creative process, our creative ability, irresponsibly. We use it on a daily basis to create what our insecurities and our fears are. And I think that if we make conscious effort to spend part of that time using our creative ability differently, the same way we would learn to do anything, we have to tell our mind to do this. Let’s start to use that creative part of us in a different way.
And we should never lie to ourselves. Never. About who we are. What we’re capable of. We should never lie to ourselves. We should always tell ourselves the truth, even if we don’t like those truths. But we should always tell ourselves the truth. Because if we don’t do that, how can we define our own basis of reality?
One of the things that seems to be so predominant right now is this other concept I just want to ask you to talk about for a minute. And then there’s some other things I want to maybe talk about here in in a little while, open the phone lines. I’m sure some of our listeners maybe would like to have some questions or comments for you. I do interviews every week with different types of guests, anywhere from psychologists to healers to business people to environmentalists to experts on the criminal justice system. And fear always comes up in the interview, that right now the world we buy into or the world that exists is so fear filled.
That’s because the people in that world don’t know who they are. Their spirit is being eaten upon. Their collective individual spirit is being fed upon. It is the energy that runs the authoritarian system. Some of them are more obedient than others and more well-behaved than others and have their respectabilities in the different strata of the society.
But generally speaking, the society at large is not happy with itself. The fear, I mean, the system is run on fear. Think about the guilt, sin and blame. Fear. It’s run on. And then, you know, you got to fear your God. You got to fear your Lucifer. So what’s the difference, right? And it’s fear. Fear is a natural human feeling, and it’s not a frivolous feeling. But there’s a time it also becomes a point when it’s no longer fear and it’s just mass paranoia. Fear is when your heart jumps right in your throat. Fear is when it just spins and turns inside of you and your blood is running into itself. Fear is something that’s very, very real. That’s fear. There is fear but there is just collective paranoia. And that’s what I think it is more than it is fear.
Let’s go back to the tribes. The people of America. They are the children of the tribes of Europe. And when they were still the tribes of Europe they worshiped the earth as the mother and had an entirely different perception of reality. And that perception was to keep the harmony and the balance as much as possible. And somewhere historically in time, there appeared the dominator theory of God. And this dominator theory of God is that God was a male and everything was subservient. And this theory used it’s technology and it’s culture to make weapons of destruction. To improve the weapons of killing. The tribes then had this imposed upon them, through fear. As the tribes were broken down through the various faces of the technologic civilizations, whether it was through the Romans or whoever it was that was all evolved, the tribes were attacked and made to give up the ways of the Earth and submit to the new God. Now this happened to the Europeans before it happened to us. But what happened to us happened to the European children of the tribes also. But it happened maybe 800 years before it happened to us. In its own form and at a particular time within civilization.
When the Europeans came to the Western Hemisphere, Europe was going through the Inquisition, and the Inquisition was basically the church establishing authority over the people. Over the earth. Establishing authority. And they had like 500 years of inquisition. And in the Inquisition women were special targets. Because they were trying to erase that tribal memory of the Earth as the mother. But the deal was that if you were accused of speaking against the church, you were automatically guilty. They had to torture you, and you had to tell them all the names you could give them. And you would, because of the ways that they tortured. And they seized all your property. 500 years of this. Prior to that the people were coexisting in some manner or fashion with the religious authorities, but they were still praying closer to their tribal ancestry.
So by the time Columbus got here, it was like a virus now within the human being, the physical spirit. In the DNA. Into the memory. So the citizens have been afraid for a long time. They’ve had nothing but fear for so long. Longer than us, as the People here. Because our encounter with this whole perception of reality is 500 years, you know, rather than 3000.
One of the things that recently in modern times, if you will, has changed our reality, and I don’t think this can be debated, is a square box with a visual image. Television. What are your thoughts on television?
I don’t think that it has changed our reality. I think that the overall advances in technology have changed our reality, and television is only one of those things. Because it seems to be that when you go back to Europe in the Middle Ages and they had the fiefdoms and the serfdoms and kept everybody basically ignorant as to what was really going on, see it hasn’t changed. You know television didn’t come along and all of a sudden turn everyone ignorant to what was actually going on. They didn’t know. So I mean, television is not used in the healthiest, best ways. It’s not used in responsible ways. But it’s just one of the [issues]. To me it all becomes relative. To me it’s the collective advancement of this technologic mindset without any sense of responsibility.
And so the television. We know they will never use it responsibly. But you look within our generation, it helped to spread a global consciousness. In spite of whatever the negatives of it are, on any form of the mass media system, it helped us spread a global consciousness amongst human beings that had not really had that consciousness before. Did not really have that understanding. It helped to elevate the global consciousness in the technologic world of sexism and environment. And if there had not been this television and these things within our generation, we would not have raised that consciousness. Within our generation the consciousness of sexism and environment was raised, and it won’t go away voluntarily. And the women will not just turn around and walk away. And the environmental awakening, these people aren’t going to turn around and walk away from it either. And the authoritarians with their economic systems and all the things that they’re creating now, at some point these things must meet. And so whatever happened, that’s an accomplishment within our generation. I find it very interesting that the main accomplishment within our generation, to me, was raising that consciousness of environment and earth, because it’s almost like tapping into that unconscious genetic memory. The putting it back together. So we have accomplished that within our lifetime, and it’s how we keep going.
In my experience with America as a tribal person, the television hasn’t done anything the rest of their institutions haven’t done in regard to me, whether it was their dime novels or whether it was their Wild West shows or whether it was their Hollywood movies or television, to me it’s just the same old business as usual. So anyway, to me it’s just there. When I want to erase my brain, I watch TV. [laughs]
You’ve had a number of albums that have come out over the years. Have you always had this ability to, how can I put it into words here? I hear you being able to formulate thoughts and feelings and emotions in the words that speak of such truth, and that’s poetry to me, amongst other things. Have you always had that?
Well, I don’t know. I’ll put it this way. I’ve always had my moments of coherency. But the older I get, what I learned is that there are moments of incoherency that I got deal with, right. [laughs] So you may look good and sound good, but sometimes it’s rough man.
I got you. How did this happen? How did this start? How did you start putting it to music? When did all this occur?
Well, I started writing in ’79. I met Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt. I kind of entered into Jackson’s world, meaning that I was around recording studios, and I had no purpose. I was just there. I had accessibility, and it was just as good place to be as any at the time. So I was just around the environment and I had started writing, but see I’m not a musician. By 1980, I think it was the spring of 82, I wanted to try and take what I was writing into spoken word lines, because I’m not a musician and I don’t sing. I’m not a singer. So I was going to have to. It was just, in a way, like a compulsion. This is something I had to do. I was to take the spoken word and put it with music. So the first effort at that was a tape called Tribal Voice and we recorded that at Jackson’s Studio. He had a studio in downtown L.A., and we recorded that over a weekend, over a couple of days. Jackson helped produce it. When we made Tribal Voice, what I wanted to do was, it’s got to do with energy, right? I mean, for terminology, I’m going to say energy. I wanted to take and see what we could do with the voices through the chants and the harmonies. Through the spoken word. The use of the drum. And to what the spoken word was saying. The thoughts. So I was looking in terms of these four natural elements. And what can we make with these four natural forms of energy or spirit? And can we make something with that, that would have a life when you feed it into the recording, the technological system, it would have its own life when it went in. We weren’t using the technological system to create the spirit. So that was what it was all about. And I wanted to try that. And I also wanted to try it with electric music. But at that time we made the Tribal Voice tape with the traditional music.
It took two years before I met Jesse Ed Davis. And then when I met Jesse Ed I had the opportunity to make a tape we called Aka Graffiti Man, where I then took the spoken word and put it to electric music. And I wanted to do that but now we were using the technology in a little different way because we were using all these electric instruments and the language of music, right. I mean, Western music, to see if we can mix these and see a kind of energy, a life. And so we ended up, Jesse, Rick Eckstein and myself, we made a tape called Aka Graffiti Man. And it made more tapes, right, the record business wouldn’t deal with me, and so we put them out ourselves on our own label, the Peace Company. I was never real good at distribution but we got some of them out there. So this was 1985 we recorded this Graffiti Man tape with Jesse and then in 86, he put a band together.
And that was my first time ever working with a band on stage. I mean, I was walking into this one cold. I had done things from the stage as a speaker, but that’s just me. So all of a sudden I’m here with these people and I got to fit into their synchronicity because they’re speaking this language of music. I mean, I can feel that but I’m not a technician. But it felt right and I liked it, you know. And so I’m still doing it the best that I can.
The newest album is Johnny Damas and Me. Talk about that a little bit. What’s that album about?
How can I begin to tell you this? What I would suggest is. It’s. I don’t know.
Do you like the way it turned out?
I’m very happy with it. Yes I am. I’m very happy with it. And it’s about, I mean, Johnny Damas and Me is the title, right? I mean, it’s a song as well. I think the whole album is about what Johnny Damas and me is about. And that particular song is about how we deal with situations.
Do you have one cut in particular that stands out as something that, I don’t know, something come to mind that you like? I mean, I’ve got the CD in my hand. What I was thinking was, maybe I’ll play something off it. We’ll take care of a little bit commercial business and then we’ll go from there.
Shadow Over Sisterland.
Okay. That’s the fourth one. Let me throw that out on the machine. Tell us a little bit about this and what the title is about and what the song represents.
Well, what I will tell you about it is that from the time I knew that I was gonna make this album called Johnny Damas and Me I knew I was gonna do a song on there called Shadow Over Sisterland. It was the hardest song for me to get. It was the very last song I got, and I wrote two other songs trying to get Shadow, and that’s what I’ll tell you about it. You know, I always knew it was going to be there, but it was a hard one for me to get.
And here it is and we’ll be back.
[Shadow Over Sisterland plays]
A moving the ego out of the way on my end. I’m humbled by the fact that I can rest assured, John, that you’ve never been played on this station before other than on my show. And maybe we’ll go up the hall and talk to the boss and say, hey, boss, you know, we need something to spark the station because, frankly, our ratings suck these days. What do you think?
They ought to use more spoken word music in music formats. Start looking around for some of this.
Have you heard Robbie Robertson’s new one?
Yes.
What do you think of it? Like it?
[laughs] You have to ask me this.
You don’t have to answer it.
I do like it. But like we were discussing a little earlier in the program. See, I have a problem with the idea of perpetuating this native american imagery. And my feeling is that, well, if there’s anything missing in this album, it’s because it’s been approached from the Native American experience and not the experience of the People. So that will affect the energies that become a part of the overall thing, if that makes any sense. So that’s what I perceive off of it. But but I like it. It’s a good album, right. But I think that there could have been more.
Let me give out the numbers here, because we do have a few folks that have already called in. It is a little after 1:00. This is KLOS Los Angeles. We’ve got a lot of callers here already that want to talk to you John. Before we do that, I have mentioned recently that you have a book out. There’s a book out called Stickman that I got a couple of weeks ago at the Midnight Special in Santa Monica. I get on the air Sunday morning and Sunday night, I’m talking all about your book, and then I’m getting inundated with phone calls saying, hey, man, where can I get this book?
Here’s what I know about the book. It’s called Stickman. Inanout Press is the publisher. I did a book signing for it 2 or 3 or 4 weeks ago at the Midnight Special. But I’m not sure if what I did there at Midnight Special really meant the book was released. Because it seems like somewhere in the back of my mind, there’s this notion that it’s going to be released in October. So all I really know is it’s out there somewhere.
Do you like the book. Do you like the way it turned out?
Yeah. There’s some typos in it that kind of drive me up the wall. But you know, reality is reality. So other than that, you know, I think it’s alright.
It’s called Stickman. Poems, lyrics, talks, a conversation. Is it Paola Igliori?
Yes.
She’s the woman that helped put this book together?
Essentially she did put it together.
How did you meet Paula? Who’s this woman?
Oh, man, I don’t remember. Through my manager. It seems like this was maybe 2 or 3 years ago, maybe a couple of years ago. I think that she had talked with my manager and he had said something to me about her being interested in doing some kind of a book project. And maybe about a year later I got back in touch with her and we just kind of agreed to do this. So I think there’s like 4000, 5000 of these things run off first time around.
I appreciate the book and your work, man.
Well, any parts that are coherent to anyone else, you know, I appreciate that too.
Okay, man. You want to take some calls?
Sure.
Okay Mark. Good morning. You’re on the air on KLOS.
CALLER: John, in this situation that we’re in today where words are used to describe people and there’s this wall that’s preventing certain voices and certain issues from coming out. How can we break through that wall and let some of this be heard?
Well, I mean, the only way that I know is to do the best that I can, you know, with the best that I got and just stay after it. Because I just think that more and more we have to start speaking our truths. You know, we need to start expressing our feelings. Because I think the more of us that will recognize our truths and express them will recognize our feelings and express them. I think we then start to create the way to get around that wall. But as far as any specific strategy. That’s up to an individual, I guess. Just individually we have to figure out what we would do ourselves.
I think we’ve got Michael back. Let’s try it again. Michael, are you with us?
Wearing rubber sole shoes on cement and nylon carpeting and cars with rubber wheels, are we not ungrounding ourselves and literally separating our spirit from it has not always been separate from?
Well, maybe in some kind of ways, but actually when we look at it, see all of these things that we walk upon in some way, in the end, they’re made from elements of the earth. It’s just that their forms have been changed, but they are basically elements. But the real concern about disconnecting our spirit is about the lies that we tell ourselves and the illusions that we continue to perpetuate about the way of life. I think that that’s what’s more disconnecting. But when you look at the behavior of the society over the last 500 years, a thousand years, something got disconnected before everyone started wearing rubber soles. Something got disconnected before all this concrete.
John, I’m wondering if your your style of music has another forum.
Your stuff hasn’t really gotten major airplay at radio stations.
Yeah, the radio stations, they don’t want to play me. But actually, I think it’s a boardroom decision and I don’t think that it’s necessarily the on the air people’s decisions. I don’t know how much the on the air people have, how much say they have and what gets played. But it’s like when Jesse was alive and we had made this first album, Graffiti Man, we took it around, because Jesse was known in the music industry, and we took it many places. And at the street level, or on the one on one level, many A&R people liked this album. But when it would get to the boardroom, to the business room, see then somewhere, for whatever reasons, they don’t see it or don’t want to see it or whatever it is. And I think, you know, to some degree this still happens in commercial radio, or radio. But this is where radio, television, in many ways they are all the same. It’s because you get programmed with what the bosses want you to see. And to understand the reality that we’re up against anyway, the political rebellion that came out of the 60s in this baby boom generation. One of the things, while there were many things about it, but one of the things is that it became apparent to the controllers at that time how the people are influenced by the music that they listen to. Because at that time, the Eve of Destruction was the number one song or The Buffalo Springfield, For What it’s Worth, the Universal Soldier.
So there was a public reaction and response from the young people who listen to this kind of music. So great lengths have been gone to, to seize control of the kind of music that people are going to hear. But because this is a democracy, and a theoretically free society, you have to hide in disguise and lie about your censorships. So your political censorships now become hidden under business decisions, format creations, you know, and the people have decided for them what they will hear and what is popular, rather than being given a real opportunity to make those decisions themselves. Personally, I think that there are more people that are willing to listen to spoken word and music and to listen to other music forms. I just I think that those people are there. But the way that it stands right now, no one has come through with a big breakthrough and made it an end type of a thing, where they have to deal with it. So you’re not going to hear a lot of me on most commercial stations at this point, you know, because it hasn’t happened yet. But that’s just the way it is with these people. It’s how they behave.
I do this show a couple days a week and I basically can say whatever I want. I’ve had a lot of freedom. I’ve had a lot of good fortune. And it’s kind of sad what’s happened to radio. I mean, 20, 30 years ago, the people in positions of talking on the air and playing the music, yeah, they could do basically what they want, bring the records from home. Now it’s like, this is it. Corporate decision. You play this, you go down the line. Totally taken. Mining, the word you use, mining the creative process from people that maybe do this because they love it, not necessarily what the money is about. Just to play different types of music.
It seems that the fears of authority and of technological change and of the loss of one’s own cultural identity are all central to the theme here. And it seems that they perpetuate the idea that someone or something else is in control. You seem to be advocating taking on the personal responsibility to educate yourself and to know what’s going on in your own world and to make the best effort to do the right thing. Any comments?
That’s basically what I’m saying.
It just seems like the the repeating notion of fears, you know, of authority and technological change. First I got the feeling like you were scared of technology. And the next moment you embraced it, in a way, as long as it’s used responsibly.
No, I’m not afraid of technology.
I think what maybe Walter heard was your clarification that in a sense, technology can be used for good.
Technology is a thing. Like the cup I drink my coffee out of, it’s a thing. Like an automobile is a thing. And both things are an extension of that thing. It’s a thing. That’s all it it is. It’s what we as human beings, physical spirit, do with these things. And either we do responsible things with these things or we do irresponsible things with these things. In the end, that’s what it comes down to. And about fear. No, I have my fears, you know. But if we’re just going to look at the evolution of life, I don’t fear that the technology is going to prevail over life. I don’t fear that the dominator male God ruling class exploiting vampire cannibalistic systems are going to prevail in the evolution. I don’t fear that. I just know that we got to be as coherent as we can and continue the evolution of life and some sense of responsibility. You know, it’s not about us being perfect, you know, we just do the best we can.
One question and I don’t want to, you know, have you chasing this one for ten minutes because I want to be sensitive to your time. We’ve got some other callers here, but I have to ask this. It seems to me we are at a time right now in our evolution, if you will, where if we keep doing what we’re doing, we as a human species to our earth mother, that a whole new element of the ball game comes into play. That 20 years from now, 50 years from now, there’s all this talk of possibly eco-collapse. I mean, we’re really, really doing a lot of damage.
What’s going to happen is. Depending upon how coherent and clear thinking we become now, this has every influence on the future. Our coherency and our clarity, now. But we have to get rid of this arrogant notion that man, even through his technology, is going to destroy this planet. It’s not going to happen. That’s some of that male God dominator fantasy crap. And that’s exactly what that is. Man is going to maybe destroy technologic civilization’s ability to live on this earth. Evolution. It’s like, let’s look at the mutation of people. The tribes of Europe, all right? They’re mutant descendants are ingrained with fear. Ingrained. That’s a part of the mutation of the tribes of Europe. These fears and insecurities, this lack of balance and purpose and sense of who they are. That’s the mutation. So you can’t avoid the mutation because that’s evolution. So whatever happens to the future, if this systems if the systems of technological environment do collapse, it’s because of our irresponsible behavior. But life will continue and the human beings will continue on. But it may be, you know, there may be ten of them left. I mean, just pulling a number out of nowhere, right. Because the earth has changed forms before. And I look at the earth as life, as a living life entity. So if the earth needs to develop an antibiotic to eliminate technologic man because of its toxic behavior, then this antibiotic will be created through the natural elements of Earth because this man ate up the environment, the ozone, or poisoned its own water supply or whatever. But this is just that evolution and the earth taking care. And to me what is central about it, it’s the clarity and the coherency that we use now will have an influence in any ultimate evolutionary outcome.
May I ask you one more question? It ties into something you said earlier and also something you just said. a lot of times over the years, I hear this, these two words put together human nature. Okay? It’s human nature. I hear we have discussions on the air about war and brutalization of the spirit. And, are we innately violent and we hear a lot of, well, human nature now is human nature or whatever comes up in your estimation of what that is? Is it naturally opportunistic, or is it part of that virus that you talked about?
It’s part of that virus. So, let’s say there is a human nature which addresses the physical realities and perceptions, but there’s being-nature too. So there’s two natures. And it’s the balancing of these things.
See we behave the way that we do and we have our perceptions of reality by those who define reality for us as we enter into their society structures. When we were still the tribes and of the tribal, we understood human nature and being nature, we understood that we have strengths and weaknesses. We understood this about us as human beings. So we created our ways of living to keep as much harmony as we possibly could with our understanding of reality. We created our societies to influence the strength and weakness so that they balanced out in a way that these were not exploitive societies. This whole technologic concept of human nature is about guilt, sin and blame. It’s about a whole different perception we have indoctrinated into us. That we’re bad. But we’re conditioned by their definitions. And we will only respond to this reality on the basis of the information that we are given. And if the basis of information that we are given is defined by someone who is not looking out for our best interest, then we will not live our lives in our best interest.
Child’s Voice. Maybe talk a little bit about that tape.
Child’s voice. Children of Earth. It’s a tape that Mark Shark, who is one of my co-songwriters with the electric music and Quiltman who’s my Tribal Voice man. They make the music for this, and I wrote these lyrics, these poems, these lines. And my three daughters, they do the performance. Call it singing, but they speak the lines like I do. I think there’s 9 or 11 songs on this album. And some of the songs are just the vocals with maybe just a guitar in the background. And some of the songs are the vocals with the tribal drum. And some of the songs are the vocals with the guitar and the drum with Mark and Quilt. We recorded this maybe two years ago when the girls were about 10 and 8 and 9, or something like that. It’s a couple of years ago that this was recorded and we recorded it on an eight track and just put it out the best that we can. We don’t really have a distribution system for it, but generally when I’m out with the band or music and we’re doing shows, we generally have it at our merchandizing table. Right now that’s about the only way that it’s out.
“See the Woman” is one of my favorite songs on there.
I wrote that a long time ago actually. 1980.
It really gets the heart. Well, I’m so glad to hear you on here. And I hope that we can speak soon. Yes. And thank you, Frank, for having him on.
Oh, my pleasure, Jeannie. Thank you.
Unless I got the information wrong, what you’re all about is not so much promoting a Native American culture as perhaps enlightening the world to the Native American spirit. How can one who is not necessarily acquainted with that spiritual way of life get in tune with the Native American spirit? And if I was very interested, would you try to direct me towards the way you were brought up or perhaps are there Indian type cultures where the spirit may be easier to interpret, especially from people that are not of that culture?
Well, I really don’t know how to answer this. Obviously there’s no place I could send you to to do this because it’s kind of a little bit out of my grasp. But to me it’s like recognizing that we are spirit ourselves and we have it. You know, we don’t need any ceremony. We need nothing. We have consciousness. But it’s difficult for me to tell people to go to this different tribal group of people or this different tribal group of people because they will show them about spirituality. I don’t want anyone to misunderstand. I have my perceptions of reality. I know I have a spirit. But I can’t offer anyone any spiritual guidance, you know, whether it’s as a spiritual counselor or sending them spiritual guidance or sending them to spiritual counselors. All I know about it is I have one and I know that I do. And I know a lot of other people that do. But rather than be sent anywhere my feeling is find your way there, you know? Find your way there.
John, let me ask you this. When I heard you just trying to convey your thoughts and feelings to Bill, the word elder hit me the way, I mean, you look at the West and the way we treat our older people in my experience. No respect, no understanding, no connection.
It’s not how you treat them. It’s how they’re mistreated. It’s just a detachment. You’ve been disconnected. But to me, if we’re talking about spirit it’s about recognition of ourselves, acceptance of ourselves, you know, how clear and coherent we can be within ourselves. I think this has all got to do with these spiritual realities. And one of the words, respect. You know, respect, show some respect. If we would devote as much time as we can to showing respect, I’m not talking about being goofy or extreme or excessive, I’m just talking about basic respect. Sometimes people can get carried away. But just respect, simply.
One the other areas I just want to touch on and then I’m going to bid you adieu, the word pride. Proud. That’s something that we’ve got pretty much ingrained in us. I don’t know. In one of your talks, if I’m not mistaken, you drew the analogy between pride and being grateful.
Pride. Human being. Let’s go back to the human being, the nature, human nature and the nature of being, right. To me there’s a difference between a spiritual way of life and religious way of life. I think that religion is what is used to oppress the spirit. They have two different complete meanings. Religion is about domination. Spirituality is about responsibility.
So now let’s look at pride. Pride, it’s very religious. People are religious about their pride. Very, very much smacks of religion indoctrinated with these religion submission domination trips. So when I look at pride, it’s more of the human. There’s also humility, which is more of the being. So I can’t quite figure out pride, but I don’t think the pride is something one should use in relationship to the self, other than maybe being proud of seeing someone do good. But proud and I am, I don’t think so. I don’t think so because it’s not about humility. I mean we can say I’m grateful, I’m thankful. Expression of the being. Expression of being. But proud, I am proud. Expression of human. The humility is gone and the respect is going because the pride eats everybody up. They crave it, but it eats them all up. I mean, if we deal with reality, how many times within our own individual lives have we seen pride wreak havoc. History is littered with the havoc.
It’s like every war that was ever fought they were proud of their king or their god. And their god or their king was proud of them. Look in this country, look at the hypocrisy that this country represents. And people are proud. I think if they would stop being so proud and understand about other things then maybe they could have a better life, you know, instead of having to put up with the insecurities. I mean, people have to face a certain reality, especially within our generation. We got no health services. Majority of us got nobody to take care of us when we get old. Majority of us are going to watch our children have to work to pay off debts that were accumulated by those who feed off us. There are a significant number amongst our generation don’t even have a clue if they’re going to have a job a year from now or two years from now, or three years from now, let alone they’re going to have a place to live, you know? And everybody’s so busy being proud of their democracy and their so-called principles. That’s all they’ve got. They don’t have a quality of life that really speaks to or addresses any kind of tranquility. And there are different segments of the society that can put on these different masks of pride so that no one really sees what’s going on. But if you look at the collective behavior of the society at large, it’s very obvious what’s going on. These are a proud people, but they got no self-respect. And I don’t mean to be trashing, it’s not my intention to offend anyone, but the reality, you know, a lot of lying going on about what represents good and bad in this society. The proud people better watch out, it will eat them up. ~
Thanks you for being here. Any last words?
Thank you. I’m glad that I came here. I don’t know what to tell anybody. You know, think clearly, seek coherency. Make peace with the Earth. It’s not about peace on Earth. Make peace with the earth. We don’t have to become disconnected from the earth if we use our minds to not do that. And if we just remember that. Our real responsibility is to protect this planet and life. And there may be a time when we really understand that, and our power will start to come back to us. But be careful of the illusion. And don’t trust Bill.
Thank you John.
Yes. Thank you. ~
SOURCE: Frank Sontag, Impact on KLOS-FM, Los Angeles, CA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbEGYIxx2_I