RED SUN: We’re talking to John Trudell here, co-Chairman of AIM. We’re gonna ask him a few questions about the incident at Rosebud with Carter and Clyde Bellecourt.
JOHN TRUDELL: Well, our official stand on the whole incident is, its a governmental conspiracy. And we’re talking about being a conspiracy from looking at past government actions and treatment toward Indian peoples. We’re talking about it being conspiracy in the sense that American Indian Movement has been talking about Indian peoples treaty rights, and more basic than that, we’ve been talking about Indian People’s human rights. Our human right to dignity, self respect, our right to respect from other people. Talking about our rights to raise our children, our own way.
Our rights to stop the drug addiction that the government is putting down on our people through the form of alcohol. The addiction that is being thrown upon our people through the Church’s religious addiction. We’re talking about our right to live our own way. About our right to have Indian control of Indian people’s lives. And the wounded knees and the occupation of the BIA in DC, the Custer incident, the Alcatraz incident, all these are ways for us to speak. Speak out about our right. To make known to the world how we feel. And in every instance whenever any incident has happened, the government has always worked to undermine the issue. The government does not want to deal with human rights. They don’t want to deal with treaty rights. Rather than do that they will talk about us being militants. They will stereotype us as being drunks criminals, sellouts, communists, subversive. Rather than talk about the issues, they relate to these terms. And this is the conspiracy that we are talking about. We’re not talking about a conspiracy where Carter was paid money by the federal government to destroy the movement from within, because that did not happen and there is no one that really believes that it did happen like that. We’re talking about a conspiracy of the government to avoid the issues of what we’re talking about. We’re talking about the government conspiracy to force these drugs like alcohol or religion upon us. We’re talking about a conspiracy of the government to make promises to our people and then break the promises. We’re talking about a conspiracy for the government to tell us to work through the systems and channels. And when we try that, and it doesn’t work, we resort to the gun. We’re talking about a conspiracy where the government is setting us up to destroy us. This is the conspiracy that we’re talking about that we know as being real. You know, we can’t deny the fact that a shooting did happen. It happened. It was a mistake. But we recognize it as that. There’s never been any charges filed against Carter for the shooting. I mean not from the AIM peoples’ standpoint. Before the federal government even knew the whole story behind the shooting, before the government knew if it was accidental, intentional or anything, the government filed charges against Carter. They used this as a means, to play the sensationalism up. They wanted to make it look to the outside world like there were desperate internal problems within the American Indian Movement. Internal problems that were going to destroy the movement. And this isn’t the case. The government wanted to play up the sensationalism because, see this is another way of getting away from the issues of Indian People’s rights. Rather than the government have to justify why it’s been denying us our rights. They have tried to create an incident or an episode where we have to justify ourselves to the government and to the public and to our own Indian people. And we’re not going to be caught up in that trap. You know there are certain problems that we have, but you know that’s basic to everyone. Everyone’s got problems. All we’re doing is, we’re working to make our movement strong. We’re not going to be caught up and led around by the fifteenth-century mentality of the United States government. You know, anything that happened in Rosebud. It happened there.
See, so they are charging us with a lot of bullshit charges. But when they do this and they use this militant rhetoric, the stereotyping that they use, they do it to cut off our financial support. They do it to cut off public sympathy. They do it to just totally alienate us from the communities. And I have very strong feelings on this. I think it’s time for us to talk to the churches. But I mean, when we go up to the churches. And we ask the churches to help fund us. We’re not going as equals. We are placing the church above us and we’re going and asking them for a hand out to help us. And it’s time to recognize what the church and the federal government has done to us. You know, and if we want bale money. If we want program money for the communities, it is time for us to go into the church and tell them, look, you’re making a buck on us. You’re making a lot of money off of us. The church is big business. And it is time now to go in and tell the churches if they are going to exist in our communities, then they’ve got to pay the taxes to our communities. We don’t want the promise of heaven after we die. We don’t want blankets. We don’t want used clothes, and we don’t want a turkey dinner on Thanksgiving. We want the churches to kick loose the money that it’s going to take to help us start our own schools. We want the churches to kick loose the money it’s going to take to help us fight a racist judicial system. And if these churches are not willing to help us on our terms, then it is time to drive the churches out of our communities. There is no use in a church sitting in an Indian community feeding off the people. The church has done more things to destroy Indian people then almost any other institution in this country. And it is time to deal with them. It is time to tell the church, either you come up with what we need, if you’re collecting all this money in our name, Like are an example is the American Indian mission. In a period of ten years they’ve collected close to a hundred million dollars in the name of Indian people. And they turn round and give out blankets and turkey dinners. Or they turn around and they’ll say well, look, we’re giving you twenty five thousand dollars to fund a program, we’ve used up all our expenses, all our expenditures for Indian programs. If they’re getting a hundred million dollars, then it is time for that church to kick loose ninety million dollars of it back to us, use ten million for administrative purposes or whatever they need it for and give the other ninety million to the communities so that the communities can do what they need. I mean, lets just face another fact here with the racism of America. You go into the big cities and the churches are all concrete and brick. You go to the Indian community and they’re just some shabby little wooden building. And I’ll tell you, one match will sensitize the whole church. If they won’t help us, then they shouldn’t be in our communities. These are the kind of tactics. These are the kind of things we’ve got to start thinking about. Maybe we’re not totally ready to do this yet, but what we’ve got to start thinking about now is, we’re involved in a generational struggle. We’re involved in wanting rights back that probably people our age will never see. If we will accept the fact that it is a generational struggle, what should make it easy for us to accept is the fact that war has been waged against us for four hundred years. That should make it very plain to us what we’re involved in. We get into accepting that concept, then we’ll be ready to fight them. We’ll be ready to stand up in terms of self-defense.
How is the leadership structured in AIM now that all these incidents are happening?
Well, this is a turning point. The leadership is really going back to the people. It going back the people in the sense that when we start talking about local control and trying to find solutions to solve the problems at the local level then we’re talking about the people being the leadership. My own personal opinion on leadership is I don’t think that we really have any leaders other than the People. I think we have certain individuals that are in a position where they are the spokesman for the People, but they should take their direction from the People. So in this concept the People are the leaders. We have quite a few personalities within the American Indian Movement and all the personalities are thinking along these lines. Everyone is thinking along the lines of community control. And when people start thinking in these terms then we’re talking about the People being the leaders. There are several individuals in AIM that have got national recognition, that have become personalities. And they had many leadership abilities. But we are all in agreement that we’ve got to go back to the People for our direction. And I think you’re going to see more and more of this happening out of AIM. More and more of responding to the People’s needs. I don’t mean that national people are going to come in. Like, let’s say we have a local problem in one of the local communities and they call for national people to come in and solve the problems. National people can’t come in and solve any problems. It’s got to be the people that live in the communities. National people can come in and spend time and learn from the local people what’s going on. And this is the concept that we are working on now.
You know, what we’ve all got to recognize, each and every one of us. see I don’t think that within the AIM organization, no one individual is more important than any other one individual. We talk about the spiritualness of our lives. Of the Indian way of all living in harmony. So to a certain degree, we’ve got to re-find humility. We’ve got to learn to be humble.
You know, if people are concerned about shootings. How come they’re not pressing the government to find out why Indian people only live to be forty five years, you know? If they want to know about violence. How come people aren’t pressing the government to make the government answer to this. You know, how come we have a life expectancy of forty five years? How come we have an alcoholism rate that runs close to fifty or sixty per cent? How come we have unemployment that runs as high as eighty per cent? How come we have a suicide rate that’s five times higher than the national average? If people want to know about violence in the American Indian Movement, then they should be questioning this violence. This violence that made it necessary for the American Indian Movement to be formed. See, this is the violence that we’re speaking out against. As far as anything happening amongst ourselves, we’ll take care of it. We’ll handle it ourselves. We’re not going to send anybody to a white court to be tried by a white judicial system. The same judicial system that has never taken the time to correct the injustices we’re talking about. And the conspiracy we’re talking about is one of the government to destroy and totally break down, not just the American Indian Movement, but all Indian People in this country. And this is the conspiracy that we’re concerned about. You know if they’re really concerned about about violence then we’d advise the American public and the United States government to find out what happened to Richard Oakes. Find out what happened to Raymond Yellowthunder. Find out these things. Find out what happened to Willard Brown, Pawnee, Oklahoma. Find out about all of our AIM people being killed. Find out about all of our Indian people being killed. We don’t want to get caught up in this thing here of having to justify ourselves to the United States government. It’s light like the so called drunken Indian stereotype. It’s a crime to drink alcohol, but it’s not a crime to sell it. You know it’s a contradiction. Indians, we’ve got to go around and justify why a lot of our people are drunks, and we’ve been taking the defensive too long on this. Instead of us justifying why our people drink its time to make to make the federal forces and the federal government in this system justify why it has to sell alcohol to people. Why it has to oppress people. And the last thing I’ll say about shooting is, we know that Carter didn’t do this because someone paid him to do it. We know he didn’t do it to take over the organization. We recognize the shooting is being accidental in nature. It was just an accident in the way that it happened. And there’s nothing more to it than that.
What is a future plan of AIM?
We’re in the process now of evaluating our effectiveness. Because we’ve been caught up in too many things. At times we’ve let ourselves be used by press manipulation. Government manipulation. Our strongest desire now is to put more emphasis on local control. On community control. On finding solutions to solving the community’s problems, whether it be police brutality or racist school boards, or state jurisdiction over Indian lands, or hunting or fishing rights, whatever problems are important to the local communities. Our emphasis now is in trying to organize in the local communities to find a way to learn how to deal with these problems from the local level. And as we find ways to deal with these problems, to take this information and share it with other communities.
Do you think if AIM starts getting into the running of reservations, I think Russell Means is gonna run for chairman back there in Pine Ridge Reservation. Do you think this will have any effect on a lot of the people?
I think that part of our local organizing. Part of community control. Our people want to change what’s going on. They want to fight and stop this oppression. They want to fight against it. We hope to see more of it take place in the local communities where our people do get involved in the community life. So what we need now is, we need people from the communities to get involved in their communities. To get involved in the social life. To get involved in the economic structure. To get involved in the political life. You know, we need our people, people that accept the philosophy of Indian self determination of Indian control of Indian lives. We need these people to start running for the tribal councils. We need these people to start having the chance and the opportunity to be heard. See we need to find ways for these people to get involved in the political structure of their tribe. Because by doing this, then we can start putting together a network of one basic philosophy. And that basic philosophy is Indian control of Indian lives. And if we help these things to start happening in all different locations, if we make these things start to happen, then we’re putting together a weapon to deal with the United States Government. Were putting together a weapon to stop the oppression. To stop the government from ramrodding its way on to our people. So, we’re putting together this oneness that we’ve been looking for. Because we’re looking now in terms of unity, not being that we all sit down at the same table and totally agree word for word with every idea that we have. But we’re looking for unity now in being, let’s support the issues, let’s support the ideas from all of our different perspectives. And this is what we’re going to work on now. Now, we’re not concerned without what the government thinks about us. We’re not really totally concerned any more about what the government’s going to say about us. We’re concerned about what our people experience in their everyday life. We’re concerned about how hard it is to survive. And these are the areas we’re going to start getting involved in. Finding ways of survival. Finding ways to change what’s going on. You know, it’s like, if we want to take our lives away from the Bureau Indian Affairs, then we’ve got to have an answer on how we’re going to live our lives. I mean we don’t have to have this answer to tell the Bureau. We don’t have to have this answer to tell the white America. We’ve got to have this answer to tell ourselves, so that we’ll know what to do as we’re doing it.
Who are the supporters of AIM? Are they all young people, or in between, or what?
With active supporters it’s young and it’s old. The young and the old people relate very much to the issues we’re raising. Because the young see no future. And the old know that all the promises have been nothing but bullshit. They’ve lived through more promises than the rest of us have. So our old people and our young people know what we’re talking about. For sympathetic supporters, I would say that ninety percent of the Indian people in this country are sympathetic supporters. So that means ninety percent of the Indian people in this country are potential active people for AIM. For the AIM philosophy, if not for the AIM organization itself. Because every Indian knows in his heart, you know, I don’t care where he’s at. He knows that the Bureau of Indian Affairs has done nothing but oppress us. Knows that we’re on a road to cultural genocide. We’re on a road towards physical genocide. Government can call it assimilation, but it’s genocide. Because when you take a race of people and destroy them, it is genocide. I don’t care if you create a new race. I don’t care what you create. When you destroy people you are committing genocide. Every Indian knows this. I think that our strongest way of weaving this support together has got to be of not trying to identify with one group. We can’t be a political party. We’ve got to be a people’s party. A people’s organization. And the difference is a political party goes after power blocks. If eighteen year olds look like a power block then the political party goes after the eighteen year olds and uses the rest of the people, just gives them appeasement rhetoric while they try to buy or co-opt the eighteen year vote. Whereas, a people’s organization recognizes the eighteen year olds, and the unemployed, and the elders, and the small children and the employed. A people’s organization recognizes them as all having the same validity.
This is where we’re going now. This is the direction that’s got to be taken. Because if we’re talking about the good of the people, then we’ve got to be able to relate to the people as a whole. Because see, one trick that the government has done to try and destroy AIM’s effectiveness is by labeling us as militant. They removed us from being human beings. They did it four hundred years ago by calling us Indians. By calling us Indians they made us not be people any more and into white America they justified killing us. Because, what was in Indian? Because they stereotyped us as being savage. Uncivilized. Everything that they built into stereotyping us as Indians. And so now that we all relate to being Indians, and we’re all finding pride in being Indians, to divide us amongst ourselves, now they are calling us communists or militants. We’re criminals. And when they do this, they do this to justify destroying us. Like with AIM’s support, you know, the white press keeps wanting to play up that AIM is losing support or that we don’t have don’t support. But the problem is, we do have support. We do have a lot of people that are, if not actively supporting us, are sympathetic towards our cause. You know, non-AIM people would be surprised at the people that we do meet with. They work for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. They work for other federal agencies. They don’t have jobs. They drink. They don’t go to school. They go to school. Were dealing with people from all levels. But the biggest problem that we’ve run into is, by stereotyping us as militants or communists the government has tried to intimidate the communities. They use terrorism to do this. If they justify us as being militant to the white public, that means when a Wounded Knee happens, then the government can come in and use terrorist tactics against the Indian people in the community of Pine Ridge to make them afraid of us. Indians aren’t really afraid of the American Indian Movement. What they’re afraid of is when AIM comes in the government’s going to come in and kick hell out of them while they’re trying to get at us. This is a terrorist tactic. You know terrorism is beating up a drunk. Terrorism is taking an AIM sympathizer and turning him away from the public health hospital. Terrorism is turning BIA goon squads loose on people that are speaking up against the BIA. Terrorism is bringing federal marshals into a community and having them take martial law and totally dominate the community. These are the terrorist tactics that the government is using now to try and destroy our validity with the communities.
Another question. Will there be any more Wounded Knees? If an incident happened on the reservation and the people came over asking AIM to come in. Would AIM come in then?
Well to be very blunt about it. If were up to me. It’s not. But if it were up to me. I’d just send a hit squad in and deal with the situation and keep right on travelling.
Another question. There have been a lot of arrests in Custer. People have been arrested. A lot of the leaders have been arrested. Are there any travel restrictions and how are they making?
Well that almost goes hand in hand now with making bail, you know, is a travel restriction. This is what Carter’s in jail for now. Carter’s in jail solely for the charge of bond violation. Violating his travel restrictions. That’s what the federal government’s holding him in jail for right now. And for a lot of the people that are recognized as being the national leadership of AIM, it’s impossible for them to travel anywhere without permission of the courts. As far as making bail, we’ve got to hustle for every dollar we can get. You know, we’ve got people in jail and we don’t even know how we are going to get them out. In the broad broad picture of getting financial assistance, it’s very hard to do because the government has worked so hard to alienate the American Indian Movement from the issues that we’re talking about. A lot of these liberal programs. They don’t want to fund us now. They don’t want to help us when we really need the help. And we really need the help to fight a racist judicial system. Because the law is being used as a weapon against us. It’s not being used to get justice. Its being used as a weapon to teach Indian people not to stand up for their rights. Its being used as a weapon to show Indian people that there is no way you can fight the system. Because there’s a lot of people being charged with what I’m gonna say are bullshit charges. What’s conspiracy? A lot of people charged with conspiracy. You know it’s strange, when Indians get together to plan a way to stand up to the government oppression. When they sit down and they plan this it’s conspiracy. But when the police chiefs have a convention on how to deal with what they call crime. It’s not conspiracy. See, but both sides are doing planning on how to confront a particular problem. But when we do it, its conspiracy. When the occupation forces do it, it’s not conspiracy.
And this isn’t just the national figures. This is each and everybody that belongs to the organization. We’ve got to recognize that we are only one person and that we all play a specific role. But nobody is more important than the other. When we start getting back to this humbleness, of recognizing that in the picture of the total movement, each and every one of us, each and every one of our individual acts is very insignificant. The significant things are the combination of each of the individual acts. And this is what we’re looking at as our direction to take. You know, we’ve made a lot of mistakes. But there isn’t anyone that hasn’t. We’re not ashamed to admit that we’ve made mistakes. Because if you don’t make mistakes you can’t learn. We have no precedent to follow. I mean, there is no book been written out, written up, and drawn out for steps for us to follow on how to overthrow oppression. There is no such book that exists in the world. So everything we do is like taking one step at a time to learn how to deal with these situations as they come up. So our people are starting to realize this. And all we want to get back to now is we want to get back to the good of the people. We’re looking for a way to find a sense of a moral philosophy. We need a moral philosophy very much. And I think we’re starting to develop one. You know, we need a moral philosophy in the sense that, exactly what codes are we bound by? Being Indian isn’t enough. We’ve got to have our own codes. You know freedom without responsibility is anarchy. Its chaos. So when we’re talking about freedom for our people, we recognize that we have certain laws and rules that we must live by, as of people. Otherwise we won’t have any freedom. We’ll just have this jungle of survival that we have now. When our people talk about freedom, you know, and we want to go back to the old ways, you know, we can’t go back to the old ways in the sense that the buffalo are going to return. That we’re going to go back to horseback riding and hunting with bows and arrows, and living and surviving. But we can go back to the old ways in the sense of a moral philosophy. A philosophy that would encompass all Indian tribes. And that philosophy has got to be for the good of the people. And it’s up to us now to find a way to make that philosophy real. Because when we make this moral philosophy real and make it a viable working part of our lives, so that it’s a part of us twenty four hours a day. When we make that real, then we automatically have discipline. Because discipline is part of the moral obligation. And the only way we can develop this, is by the people being the leadership. We all recognize this from the mistakes that we’ve made in the past. The government tries to twist things around and say that, well AIM has made all these mistakes or AIM has done this right or done this wrong, so therefore AIM isn’t any good. But we haven’t done anything wrong. We’ve acted at certain times out of a lack of knowledge on how to do certain things. But that doesn’t mean that we’re wrong. It just means that we’re learning. That we’re inexperienced at certain things. But every time we make a mistake we become experienced. We’re learning and we will continue to learn. And we will continue to grow, because the idea of Indian people’s sovereignty, the right to the control of their own lives, is something that the government cannot kill, unless they kill all Indian people.
One last question. You’re here in California to attend a memorial for a man that was killed last year. Can you say a few words on him?
Richard Oakes set very high standards in the sense that no matter what happened to Richard, whatever troubles he had or whatever things were going good for him, he always placed his people above himself. So of the many people that we’ve lost, we lost Richard in the highest tradition of honor that we can lose someone. We lost Richard’s physical presence because of his love for his people. So in that sense, his spiritual presence will always be with us. Richard did great things. And what made these things great to Richard was he did it out of love. That’s the only kind of a great thing anyone can do, is out of love. And I think Richard set a very good example. Just speaking of everything that Richard was involved in. We can’t place importance on each individual act that Richard participated in. We got to place all the importance on Richard’s life. And the fact that he lived his life and he lived it the way he did. He lived a life of love for his people. And this is what makes it possible for Richard to continue to live amongst his people. Is because it was one of total love. ~
SOURCE: https://www.pacificaradioarchives.org/recording/bc1720