John Trudell is the national chairman of the American Indian Movement, the highest elected official in AIM. In this interview he talks about the Wounded Knee Uprising of 1971, its aftermath, and media coverage of that event and others. In addition, Trudell tells how he thinks institutions in America, like the Catholic Church, the educational system, and the FBI are used as repressive tools. Before the interview I asked Trudell how long he’d been with AIM. His response was, “all my life. We just weren’t organized yet.”
TIM MCGOVERN: Why was AIM set up? How did it come about? What were the things that paved the way for the formation of AIM?
JOHN TRUDELL: I’d say, the number one thing that paved the way for the formation is approximately 400 years of oppression and lies and deceit and stealing. And now we can get down to specifics. Police brutality, you know. Poor housing. But these are also symptoms of the larger problem. And the larger problem is that there’s a total lack of respect between the government and the people in America. And it’s not just a lack of respect between the government and Indian people, but it’s a lack of respect between the government and all the people. But we have been labeled and isolated as being Indian by the larger society. So we can only form to end this type of oppression and work against this oppression. Work for liberation, let’s say. We can only do it within our communities effectively, as far as organizational purposes go. But AIM basically is to alleviate the conditions that the people have got to exist in now.
And what kind of cooperation or coordination do you have with other groups from other, you know, other people?
Well, it depends what other people’s self-interest is, in what we’re doing. So you take as an example Wounded Knee Liberation. This served the self-interest of a lot of groups in America because, you know, Chicano, white groups, certain black groups and certain Indian organizations. It served the interest of these organizations and we all recognize the need for liberation. But now let’s say if AIM is involved in a program against the churches. We just draw the support of the people that have got a bone to pick with the churches. So this is the coalition. This is how we have existed. And this is our coalition concept anyway. Here’s a common issue that affects all of us. Now, let’s see how we can work to fight this common issue. So we’ve drawn in a lot of non-Indian support through the Wounded Knee Legal Defense Committee, because that pertains to trials. The legal system. So let’s say National Lawyers Guild, they’ve got an interest in the legal system. So they will offer support. Okay, now we’re into dealing with the churches. So we will draw other segments of people in and see what can be done collectively. And at this point, I think, the only success we’ve really had collectively has been to open up the lines of communication. That has been our number one net result. A gain, up to this point, with any of the groups that we’ve ever worked with.
What are some of the things that AIM is doing now since the Wounded Knee Uprising?
Trying like hell to defend ourselves in the courtroom. You know, I mean, let’s get down to the basic thing on that. Where public opinion would not allow the government to shoot us down like they did the SLA; they couldn’t deal with us that way. So, they set up certain conditions to get us involved and dragged into the courtroom so they could, stop the movement, tie up the organization. Instead of taking the offensive, all of a sudden in the courtroom we had to defend ourselves. And it changed the whole structure and strategy that we were going at. Now, this has got good sides and has got bad sides. One of the bad sides is that, all of our organizational priorities are going into defending ourselves in the courtroom. Now, one of the good sides is that, it’s showing people that there is a double standard of justice. But then one of the bad things of that is, hell, that’s existed for, you know, forever. And it seems like we have to re-sensitize each generation of people. And I think at this point, the biggest gain we’re getting out of it is it’s showing within the Indian community that there’s got to be another alternative. It’s been proven to us in the past that the executive branch and legislative branches of government do not care. Of the three separations of power, these are two of them. And the other one is the judicial system. So we’re getting it across to the Indian people who are concerned at this point to be politically aware. So we’re getting it across to them, the judicial system is also has to be lumped in the other category as being nonproductive to the people and that we’re going to have to create a new sense of social justice. We have to create a new vehicle to fight the system. And the first part of that creation is to learn to accept and use the word no. No, I’m not going to accept your lies and your bureaucracy and your illusions. No. I refuse to deal with that. You’re going to deal with us as people. You’re going to accept us as people. And you’re going to give us what we want. Now, if it takes five years, or if it takes a thousand years, you know, you got to have a purpose to life anyway. So if the purpose is to overthrow oppression, then that’s what the purpose is. I mean, ideally in a utopian thing, the purpose to life would be to just totally serve the people and there’s no bad guys around that you have to deal with. All right. So our goal is to see within the Indian communities that the philosophy becomes for the good of the people. That’s what it was at one time. And we want to reinstate that.
We want to educate the people to that. So a lot of times people get hung up in wanting to know about AIM and want to know about, let’s say, what kind of programs you involved in? The number one program that AIM is involved in is the educational concept. Let’s bring things to them so that people are conscious of certain conditions that exist. I mean, you know, like you can walk around all your life and know that oppression exists, but if it’s not on the top of your consciousness, you do nothing about it. So we want to bring it out, see, because, once you become aware of a certain problem, totally aware of a problem, then you have to deal with it. But if you can escape that problem by getting drunk or buying a new television set or buying new clothes, then you can’t deal with the problem
In the court. You don’t get very much coverage from the media, so that doesn’t tell an awful lot of people about the existing oppression. What are the other ways that you go about that?
I think the only effective way to go about it is, number one, we’re faced with a system that the media is pretty much controlled by, right? We’re faced with a system that deals upon things like sensationalism. I mean, this is what it deals with. Now, my personal feelings are that, for the media to truly be effective, that is when a Wounded Knee happens, then the media should be political analyzers. That’s what a journalist should be. They should be digging, finding facts. So now the whole issue around Wounded Knee dealt into a lot of name calling. The media that was sympathetic to us, they helped us with the name calling. The media that was not sympathetic to us. They condemned us and they spread their propaganda against us. But nowhere did I really see anyone get in and investigate what we were talking about. Everything was contained at the emotional level. Well they’re pigs for attacking us. They’re a goon squad, you know. One form of the media saying the goons come in and they attack the Indians, the other form of the media saying, the police came in and defended themselves against the militants, but no one is saying, look, here’s the money that was appropriated for Wounded Knee and this is how it was taken. This is the income the rancher gets versus the income the Indian gets. You know this is the tribal process. This is tribal government. The way it’s set up on paper to be and the way that it’s practiced in reality. And these are the people doing it. You know, we didn’t ferret out that information that the people need. And so this is the only educational process. We got to keep attacking and keep pushing till we can get these things brought out. It’s not a matter of the courtroom. Hell, there is no justice in the courtroom, they treat us no different in the courtroom than they do a lot of poor people. You know really, when you get down to it. Because whoever can walk in the courtroom with the most bucks or with the most acceptance by the system, then they’re the ones that’s going to walk out. These are the ones that walk out with a tap on the hand. Well, you broke the law but we sure appreciate you coming in and begging forgiveness. So they can walk out clean whereas we’re saying, hey man, it’s a moral issue. It’s an issue of humanity. And then they lock us up in a cage for 30 years or 15 years or ten years. So what has happened, let’s say with Wounded Knee trials; and this is where I think that the media has really got to get in and dig, because there were a lot of precedents set at the Wounded Knee trial. FBI can come in and lie. FBI can come in with altered evidence. The FBI can tell the judge what he can and cannot do. Dealing with the emotionalism, we call it pig tactics. Deal with reality and logic. That’s a precedent. It’s been used against me in a courtroom. It can be used now against you at a future date. Or it can be used against good old middle class, average Joe Blow that’s living out there as a slave, you know, to IBM or whoever he has to work for. If he ever decides he’s going to rebel, they drag him in the courtroom, pull the same tactics on him, and it’ll be approved because the precedents been set for that. So this is the exposing that’s got to be brought out. You know I mean it’s hard. It’s not an easy job to do, for anyone. This is how it was used against the movement. It’s not that the FBI brought in the altered evidence or that the FBI lied. That’s not what scares me or even bothers me, because I know that they do that. What gets me is that in the public eye, let’s say in the St Paul area where the main trial was held, in the public eye they did it and were not called on the carpet for it, you know what I mean? They did it and got away with it. The judge didn’t nail them. The Justice Department didn’t nail them. Nobody went after them. See, it was accepted.
And the general apathy of the people in this country, it was accepted. See, the people are their own biggest enemy right now, and they really are. You know, we know what the corporations are like. We know what the government’s like. We know what big business is like. But everybody’s sitting back cynical and accepting it. Well, that’s the way politicians are. Well, one of these days when they go to walk around, every time they want to go from one town to another, they got to break out the little freedom card or a little Liberty card saying that they can walk around from this village to this other village. It’ll be too late. Because that’s what’s happening, I mean, that’s what a police state’s all about. The technology is making it possible. So at some point, they can either sit back now and say, well, that’s the way all politicians are or they can start becoming aware of what’s going on. This is AIM’s role. Like it was a [Black] Panthers role. Like it was a lot of people’s role. We’re going to confront the system.
We are educators. We educate ourselves. I’m not saying we’re trying to teach somebody something. We’re educating. But the general population hasn’t been able to pick it up yet. They really haven’t.
How come?
I would say that is because they’ve been programed not to. We’re dealing with the people that have been misled into believing that they hold a political power through the power of the ballot. They can’t wake up and recognize it. It is a physical psychological impossibility for middle class America to recognize that they’ve been used, because that removes their whole justification for life. So they can’t. So right now what we’re faced with is a race. The race is, can the system move in and totally put its police state in there before all these people die off, or are all of these people going to die off first before the system can become totally entrenched.
A lot of people think, in terms of military takeover in this country, they say that’s impossible to happen. But shit is happening right now all the way around them, because military takeover is your SWAT squad. Military takeover is this LEAA program that’s bolstering up all the police communities. The military takeover is taking over. It’s coming through the form of the police departments. That’s where it’s coming. So everyone still thinks, well, the dictatorships going to happen. There’s no way they can mobilize the Army. The people won’t accept it. So, they know that. So they won’t mobilize the Army at this point, but they’ll put SWAT out on the street. They’ll get into, like this whole thing with the CIA and it’s domestic surveillance of people. FBI and it’s tactics against people. And the people are sitting back and still accept the game. Like the CIA domestic surveillance by the CIA. Well, let’s get Rockefeller and his boys up there and they’ll investigate it. See, and the people are sitting back accepting it. And now the only way they got Congress involved in the investigation of the CIA, Congress wasn’t going to move on it at all until they found out they were investigating them. See and then all of the sudden, here’s a new Watergate type grand jury being set up to investigate the CIA. But see, you look at the Watergate thing, with what had happened there. Nothing was proven. Nothing was changed. Well, we’ll sacrifice a little Tricky Dicky here, and we’ll put Gerald Ford in, because Ford’s part of the coverup. Ford is a bigger criminal conspirator in a cover up than Nixon was. Because Nixon did it behind the scenes. Ford came out and deliberately misled the public. And he’s stalling for time and killing for time in his own way, too, with his programs here. Because they talk about win buttons, you know. Well a win button’s not gonna put food in your stomach. And it’s not going to make the police treat you any better when they pick you up. It has nothing to do with the way the system treats you. And so all of America is sitting back under the under the rationalization, well, I got to accept these things, you know, what can I do? Well, I’ll tell you what they could do. If everybody that’s concerned and don’t like the way the system is working, the only peaceful way that people could take power back is if they would start community organization. I won’t pay my income taxes, Jack. You’re not getting a damn penny out of me. Because that’s the largest income the federal government’s got to draw on is people’s income taxes. So every clean cut college Joe Blow and the militant Indian and the radical black and the militant white see they should all be out finding a way to organize around this income tax. See, because then you can get the masses of people. A strike won’t work. We’ve got to be realistic. The strikes get co-opted too much. You know, if people go on strike, they go on strike for themselves for higher wages to stop inflation. That’s not going to stop nothing.
So what I’m saying is, from what I was told in history, the American non-Revolutionary War, was that one of their complaints was taxation without representation. That’s what’s happening to the people in this country today. They are paying the taxes, but they’re not getting the representation. They’re getting lies and deceit. Same thing Indians been getting for a long, long time. So what I would say is that the people should start organizing to say, I’m not going to meet that April 15th deadline. I’m not going to meet any deadline. Make the people pay the taxes that are being represented. Make IT&T pay the taxes. Make Standard Oil pay the taxes. Make the Pentagon pay the taxes. Make Rockefeller pay the taxes. And the people have got the power to do that. But what they have got to be educated into the fact that they have that power.
What would happen if they did exercise that power? Do you think they’d throw them all in jail?
Now let’s be realistic here too. If 10 million people, let’s say if one-tenth of the population, the taxpaying population refused to do it. They don’t have enough jails. They’re going to come into a community and arrest an entire community? They’re going to attack an entire community’s property? No. No way. Because then they’ve got open armed rebellion. Then they have to make concessions. Then they have to sit down and listen. So there’s no way you can lock everybody up. It just don’t happen. Maybe in another 25 years they’ll have enough prisons to do it. But at this point, they don’t have them. And this is the time to move.
The generation that’s told that they’re in power. By the time they all die out there might be all those institutions to lock the people up that get these wild ideas. Or by that point they may have totally taken control of the airwaves, and you can’t talk about these things. So the time is now to make the move. It’s not next year or the year after that. It’s now. So a lot of people want to know how can I help you Indians. Don’t pay no more taxes. Go ahead and organize your community. Say, we’re not going to pay the taxes until the government will negotiate with us as the people. And it can be done. It really can.
Something else. One of the Nixon carry over things. During Wounded Knee the government created the illusion that AIM manipulated the media. Then they pushed this illusion into every American home by putting it into the largest circulated, most widely read publication that the system has got. And that’s the TV guide. So then they push that train of thought into there. But they never once talked about the days when Nixon was just really scrambling and trying to hang on long enough to get the public aware of Ford. See, Nixon knew he was going all along, see, but he had to hang on so that the American public could become familiarized with Ford, so they could shove Ford in there. So when Nixon’s hanging on like this, well that was a manipulation of the media, the way they programed and propagandized Ford. Now, if Ford would have been ready; if the people would have been ready to accept Ford in January of last year, then that’s when Ford would have became president instead of way down into August. That’s why Nixon held out, so that they could use the media to sell their image. Nixon would not go and appear anywhere unless he had total support. And this is how the media was exploited, see, and everything was pushed into the general public’s ideas and into their minds that we were the ones doing the exploiting. But you cannot exploit what you do not control. You cannot do it. It’s a physical, mental impossibility. I do not control you. I cannot exploit you. And that’s a fact of life. I can only exploit what I control, if exploitation is my objective.
So how can Indians, or any so-called militant or radical; how can people exploit what they do not control. They can’t. It’s impossible. Nixon or the government, they can exploit the media because they control it, because it’s a part of them. It’s one of their tools. So they can exploit it. And they’ve got a lot of ways of doing it. The FCC, you know, that’s number one right there. And then number two, it comes through your newspapers. Because you can write any racist unintelligent thing you want in a newspaper. And you don’t have to give equal time. You don’t have to be objective. You can be a pig in a total pure sense of the word, you could be a pig through the newspapers.
Television has got some some licensing. And radio has got a little bit of requirements they have to meet, through the FCC. They’re controlled through that. And so you go into the press, even the liberal press that has been on our side, let’s say. And what I mean by liberal is like, say a New York Times. A New York Times gets lost and they’re really un-useful to us in the sense that they pretend to be objective. But there’s only one objective thing in the world, and that’s the truth. And you distort the truth, then you’re not being objective. See, so with the Times, once a month on the average, here’s a story about some poor oppressed Indian or Indian group. But they’re not being objective and saying, this is how these people are oppressed and this is why and this is who is doing it. Because, they’re too busy being objective so they won’t tell the truth. They say now we got to give the government their benefit of the doubt.
What a lot of people in this country will not accept, and they call me a racist if I say it, is that the problems and the conditions that exist in America today were brought here and created by the white people. Until people are willing and ready to deal with that and accept it. Racism will always exist. There will be no objectivity, because nobody wants to deal with the truth yet. So like, let’s say I go out and I do a speaking engagement somewhere and I say, well a white man did this. And then after I get done they’ll have a question answer and say, well, when you use a term like white man doing this and that, aren’t you being a racist? And my feeling is no. No, I’m not. If I’m saying what happened, if I get up here and I lie about what happened, or I distort it to fit my own needs, then maybe I’m practicing racism. But when I am saying it because it happened, because historically it can be proven that it happened then no, then I’m just telling the truth. But America is not ready to deal with the truth yet. The broad general public isn’t ready to deal with it. Because like I said a little earlier on, who wants to wake up some morning and find out he’s been hustled for the last 40 years? You know who wants to find out that, take a word like nigger. Nigger in the past has always applied to black or red or brown. See, but you take what the meaning of a nigger really is you know, a slave. Then the biggest nigger in America has been the white man. But the illusion, because his skin was white, he couldn’t see through it. So if I go out into the general public and I talk about this kind of a thing, immediately they’re going to shy away and cop out and say, well this man’s racist, or he’s using words that are not pleasant. But you see, I have to deal with a lot of unpleasantness. You know, to me, going hungry is very unpleasant. A double standard of justice is very unpleasant. It’s terrorism. See, I got to deal with terrorism every damn day of my life. So go out and try to talk to people to get them to understand and the general cop out is that they won’t listen, you know, because they’ve already got their preconceived ideas about whatever’s right or wrong. So they cop out.
Another thing I wanted to ask you is about, I guess it was about a month ago. We talked to your Culver City office and they told us about the FBI going through their trash cans about 2 or 3 in the morning and looking through all this correspondence. I’m just assuming that you run into this in just about all of your offices. Is that true? Do you have a lot of hassles from the government?
To me it doesn’t make a lot of sense to even ask the question, because look where we’re coming from, you know? And look where the FBI is coming from. Look at their involvement in the Watergate thing. Look at documentation that’s been released about Hoover’s program on dealing with the subversive. Strange thing about this too. It was Hoover’s program, you know? Like it’s not going on now.
To me the most important thing about the FBI going through the trash cans is, it shows me a particular side of the insanity of America. Here is a man that’s getting good pay, digging through a garbage can. And yet you can go down here and you see old people digging through a garbage can to get something to eat. You know, it’s the madness. Of course the FBI is that way. When you live in a police state, what are the functions of the police? The functions of the police, they deal in garbage. They have a garbage mentality because of the way they treat human beings. They’ve got a garbage mentality. So I don’t think anyone should ever be shocked or surprised to find them out there digging in the cans. And any of that type of thing. Wiretapping. Listening in on people’s sex life, you know, this kind of a thing. It’s a garbage mentality. So I think they’re just they’re coming out in the open now so that people can really see it. Because that’s how they work. How do you get information if someone’s not going to tell it to you? You got to be a sneak. You got to go around and you got to use inhumane practices or immoral tactics, because that’s the way that they operate. I think, ideally speaking, it would be wonderful if they’d quit. But they’re not going to. Digging in the garbage in the middle of the night, it’s a terrible thing. But having the FBI bust into your office, and local police agencies bust into your office and take all your files so that they can get the names of all the people that support your cause, that’s pretty much garbage too, isn’t it? See so that’s the way that they work. That’s the function of their organization. You know, and that’s just the way that they are.
Do you think there’ll be a large movement, perhaps bigger than the anti-war movement, because of the economy or what?
We’re dealing with a very high level of ignorance here. I mean political ignorance. Social ignorance. So I can see them standing up to fight for their own basic survival at some point. But I don’t know. At this point I really don’t know how they’re going to react. Because what we’re coming down to, the only thing that goes on our side, is that the government is creating more have nots and less haves. You know, the people that got and the people that don’t have. Right?
Your average American was brought up with the cowboy mentality. Now, I don’t think that hunger is going to make them change their mentality. It may change who they strike out at. They may stand up and fight back against the government but the government’s got a lot of illusions of power, such as guns and symbols of power. Guns and police and all the courtrooms, you know, symbols of power. Until the average American citizen can recognize that power comes from the collectiveness of the people, then no, I don’t see anything being done for the right reason. I can see them creating more enemies. I can see them striking out feeding off the back of others so that they can survive. That’s what I can see happening. Through an evolutionary process, maybe their children will recognize. Maybe all the children that are growing up in America today will learn something from what is happening. But their parents? No. I don’t really believe their parents will. Because their parents are going to get mad and will be reactionaries, but they will not be revolutionaries. No, I don’t believe that they will. Now how all this is going to fit together, I couldn’t tell you. But I do not believe they will be revolutionaries. They will be reactionaries because that’s what they have been programed to be. And the programing in America has been very effective. It has worked very well. You know, this is why little Johnny went to school and learned about Dick and Jane. And he progressed from Dick and Jane to Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great to George Washington, you know, Abraham Lincoln. But everything he learned about all this was a lie, because it taught white superiority in conscious and in unconscious ways. So as all these little kids grew up they became the truck drivers. They became the doctors and lawyers or whatever. Now a lot of them have sympathy for us, but sympathy, you know, sympathy won’t put no food in your belly. It will not. So everyone that cops out to being sympathetic to causes, their reactionaries. And in the end they might be more harm than they are good.
So I would be better able to answer your question let’s say if five years from now when the food is even harder to get, if the truck driver is sharing his food with me and we fight together, then he’s a revolutionary. But if he is pimping on me so that he could get his food, because that’s what’s going on right now anyway, even if it means I’m going to have less, then no the guy is just as much of my enemy as Rockefeller or Gerald Ford. Just because he’s poor don’t mean that he’s any less the enemy. But at the same time, I see the real potential coming out of the young. But then again, it’s a race. It’s a race in time, to how the young can be sensitized or whether they can’t.
People got to start seizing control, however. They’ve got to start taking steps toward seizing control of the educational institutions of this country. But the only place I really effectively see it going on at this point is within the minority communities. And what I mean by minority communities, that could be a white community, you know, but it would be a minority community in the sense that they’re just a few people really actively involved or believe in it. An example of this to me is like your anti-abortionists. Anti-abortion people have the slogan the right to life. And to me these people are all totally confused and mixed up. In my opinion, abortion is an individual decision. Because you got to live with your own conscience. But you got people making a whole crusade about the right to life. Do not kill the unborn baby, you know? But then you look at it the other way. For every thousand babies that are brought up like this, when they talk about the right to life, only maybe one out of the thousand is going to make it. And then he makes it on by feeding off the backs of the other 999. But they’re talking about the right to life. So they’re really mixed up. There’s a general sense of insanity that is prevailing in America today and it seems to be accelerating. It really does. See, in the past they were racist against us. Well, to me, racism is a form of insanity. But the insanity is accelerating. It’s just pushing and it’s moving up. Too many machines jacking people’s minds around. What I do see in the overall American state is it’s got its own self-destruct devices within it. Now, this is where the trucker fits in, or your average middle class thing. Because of the competitiveness of the American state, and this is where part of the programing backfires, at some point everyone will be in it totally and only for himself. These are all reactionary things at this point. But maybe by this reactionary process, that might in turn sensitize the younger people in the larger picture. But as far as a peaceful America that everyone wants to see, or the utopian form of life that people want to see, that’s a while off yet. Equality and justice and humanitarian ways are still off in the future, as far as the general society goes. It’s off, man. I mean, you know, that’s still some time. People are gonna have to work like hell to get it.
Again. Where do you see America going?
Down the tubes. It’s going to hell, man. It really is. Ah, better straighten that out. America isn’t going anywhere. America’s a land base it’s going to stay here. Now, the people. And this is the turning point, alright? The people that are alive today, I don’t know where they’re going. But you look throughout history to understand the principles of life. At some point America will be a liberated land again. But this could be ten generations removed. But in the immediate future, it’s going down the tubes because there’s too much hate and violence here. And that’s flat where it’s at. Because the whole American state was built upon hate and violence. Red niggers, dirty savage, you know, the black nigger down here, that was brought over here from Africa. And the Irish nigger before he got acceptability or whatever. You know, it was all built on that. And that’s what produced the insanity I guess. So today the people don’t know how to deal and relate with each other. So I’d say in the immediate future, America is going down the tubes in the sense of everybody’s old belief about mom, god, apple pie and the flag. That’s going down the tubes. In the long run, in the evolutionary process of life, it’s being rebuilt. I mean humanitarian things. Oppression starts small and it creates more oppression. But oppression has to peak. It has to reach a peak, the highest density of oppression. And then it can go no further. So then the only thing that can come out of that is people starting to rebuild. People starting to accept other values. But within our lifetimes, let’s say within our lifetime, I feel it’s going to be a hard struggle all of our lives, no matter if we live to be 70 or 80 years old. It’s going to be a hard struggle. But that’s no reason we shouldn’t start the struggle, you know what I mean? Because the sooner we start, then the sooner we will reach our goal. But if we keep putting it off, putting it off, we’ll never get there.
So one of the reasons why AIM came about?
Sure, in the philosophical sense, yes. In the immediate specific sense AIM came about because the pigs were beating on drunk Indian’s heads in St Paul. AIM came into existence like the Menominee Warrior Society. The Catholic Church sitting there on that land and and telling the Menominee people, well you want your land back you got to give us $750,000. And that’s a load of crap. But the deal is the Menominee people are starting to stand up. You know, who’s the Catholic Church? And this is when I’ll believe in the trucker or any of these other people, is when the way the Catholic Church treats the Menominee people, when a truck driver and a college student and all average Joe Blow that sympathizes with us, when they will go down there and they will start burning down Catholic churches, or they will start boycotting Catholic churches, or they will start making the Catholic Church deal with humanitarian issues and say, hey, man, that’s wrong. You took the land in the first place. You know, I mean, you took it, you exploited it. Now give it back to the people. See, because something here, people got to attack Christianity anyway. Christianity is one of the biggest weapons against us. To me, anybody that believes in the Christian concept, the way it is set up today is a fool. And they are a fool. Because if they can’t see through the illusions; Christianity says love and respect and blah, blah, blah rhetoric, alright? That’s what Christianity says. But Christianity practices and condones, and the Christian people condone and accept, well the church can be richer than the people. Well, then anyone that calls themselves a Christian is a fool because they’re not a Christian if they allow un-Christian ethics to be practiced by their so-called Christian institutions. Now, what does the church want $750,000 for? What do they need $750,000 for? So they can build another church? No, the temples and the shrines of religion, man, that’s what’s natural around you. It’s not digging up some rocks and making concrete out of them, you know, putting stained glass window in and going and saying the rosary 15 times. That’s got nothing to do with religion. Again, it goes back to programing.
I would like to mention another thing on the Menominee Warrior Society. I think that anyone that’s interested, whether they know the full details about what’s happening there or not, they do know what is right and wrong. I think everybody should have feelings about what’s morally right and morally wrong. What the Menominee Warriors Society is saying is the church has some of their land. They have some buildings on the land that they’re not using. And so the Menominee Warrior Society is saying, all right, we want our land back, number one, and we want the buildings too. We want the improvements. Now, you’re not using it. And so the church is taking the attitude and the line of law and order. The lawless demand law, you know? But they’re taking the law and order line and saying you got to do it the legal way. We’ll sell it back to you. Well, they didn’t pay for it in the first place. So I would say that anybody that even hears what we’re talking about that they put pressure on the Alexian Brotherhood. They put pressure on the Catholic Church.
So the people that support and sympathize, do something. Everybody always needs money, but see we need something besides money too. We need commitment. So write a letter to your nearest Catholic church. Go to these Catholic churches and tell the preacher, let’s talk about Catholic treatment of Indians. Go to any of the churches. They don’t have to be Catholics. Go to any of the churches and tell them to put pressure on the Catholic Church. Use every resource they got. Because if we had the kind of commitment behind us that the anti-war movement; and see this was one of my disillusionments with the anti-war movement. As soon as young white America got its collective self out of Vietnam, then they didn’t care so much about how the war went. Right. But they had a dedication getting their collective selves out of Vietnam. Now, if they could take that dedication and recommit it to other things or even back into the war, you know, it might serve a purpose. So that’s about all I got to say on it.
SOURCE: https://www.pacificaradioarchives.org/recording/bc2894