“It was a character I could identify with.” – On Thunderheart.
“I happened to be in Oklahoma when the firefight with the FBI started. I drove up to South Dakota the next morning. I was very concerned about the people living in that camp and very skeptical of the government’s side of the story.”
“There were no FBI agents that became nice guys. In reality, it wasn’t even close to that.” – On Val Kilmer’s character in Thunderheart.
“It speaks to the paranoia of those in power, because I know how I lived my life. I didn’t do anything that would justify 17,000 pages. At my most extreme, I did nothing to warrant that kind of coverage.” – On FBI file.
“I know that people connected with the U.S. government started this fire, and other individuals connected with the government did the cover-up. It was an assassination. The fire was initiated by someone who was considered a loose cannon. There are individuals whose names and roles in this I know. I have not forgotten them. I will not say their names, because if something happens to them, I don’t want people beating on my door about it.”
“After I had been writing poems for about a year my compulsion became to go out and impose them on whatever audience happened to be in front of me. The deal is, they were wellreceived. That’s when I started thinking about working with musicians.”
“When you get down to reality the indigenous people of this country were never Indians. Indians live in India. We were given that name 500 years ago by people who were confused, who thought they were someplace else on this planet. And to them, an Indian was someone you rob, who’s there for your convenience and you just take from them. Our history as ‘Indians’ has been nothing but terror and genocide since then. Now I look around at people in this country who are losing their jobs. I look at the poor, at the farmers, at the elderly who don’t know how they’ll survive when they retire. Tell me. Who are the Indians now?” ~
SOURCE: Boston Herald