IINTERVIEWER UNKNOWN: What I want to talk to you about is your own personal life, where you found your inspiration, and what you see is the true nature of the problem that is before us today with regards to nuclear weapons and everything else that is associated with nuclear weapons, which is environmental degradation, exploitation of native peoples throughout the world.
JOHN TRUDELL: Well. Where I lived my life or how I came to any conclusions in my life is, I’ve just lived as what is called an Indian. In America. And my experiences in America have been both in the U. S. America and Canada America. And anything that I am, it came from that experience. And you know I never put too much thought into this word, inspiring. I’ve never really looked at it like that. It just that there are certain realities that we just have to deal with. Because when we ‘re looking at what the problem against us is. It’s greed. And it’s the machine age. The entire industrialized world is totally out of balance. We live in a natural world and everything’s in balance in the natural world. It’s how all the different pieces fit together that makes the balance of the natural world. But we look at the societies that we live in. There is no balance. Everyone’s off balance. Everyone’s confused and everyone feels powerless, or something.
To me, dealing with a word like inspiring, it tells me that we live in a society where we need that inspiration to come. Because I don’t look at myself as an inspiring person, you know, because I know what all my faults are, and I know what my good points are. And there’s nothing inspiring about a lot of that to me at all. So I’m just another person like anyone else. And we all have the same Earth connection. We are all energy and we are all spirit. It’s just that we’ve been attacked in such a way, by degrees. We’ve been programmed and conditioned so that we will never have any respect for ourselves or we’ll never understand our own power. Or understand who we really are. And this is what helps to keep oppressors and things of that nature in existence. This is what they grow out of.
Sometimes to use a word like oppressor and greed. We live in a society that’s supposed to be based upon humanitarian needs. I mean that’s what all the materialistic society say of humanity. God. Heaven. Do unto others, and they say all these things, but they don’t practice them. And that’s a sign that they’re out of balance and that they’ll never be happy. They’ll be pursuing happiness for all their lives, but they’ll never find it because of this whole hypocrisy that they’re involved in living in. And when I look at myself in relationship to this. When did I first become aware of it? I became aware of it as soon as I became conscious, that I could understand what’s going on around me. We all did. Every one of us. It’s just how we handled it. We all handled it differently maybe, but we all became aware that this was not really a good place. As children. Anyone that has ever been mistreated psychologically or physically as a child became aware. You know, society made us all aware at the same time. But we’ve all had different life experiences in that kind of environment and we come to different points of view sometimes.
I think it must be that by far the majority of people in the world are oppressed in one way or another, whether or not they are truly aware that they are oppressed. I’m not sure.
Anyone that feels powerless within their political economic society. Anyone that feels powerless to deal with it. Anyone that says well, I’m just doing my job. Any one that takes that kind of a philosophy, they are aware that they are oppressed. They just choose not to deal with it. But they are aware.
So we get to the find now the first thing that you become aware of is that you are powerless. And then to get from that point to realizing that it’s not necessarily so, that we’re powerless, there is something we can do. That’s the the leap of faith that most people need to make.
And unfortunately a great many people aren’t going to make it. But people will make it. Enough people will. But everybody won’t, because everybody never ever does anything together. That’s part of the competitive edge.
Historically speaking, I mean this is a situation which has gone on for thousands of years. Personally, I think that the present situation is unique historically, and so much as now, those with all the power, have the power to blow us all off the planet.
Well, going back to a little bit about what you were saying about us as individuals. Let’s understand what power is. Power is in the natural world. There’s the natural world and we’re a part of that natural world, and the natural world is bound by natural law. The inevitable laws, the infinity laws, Natural law. As long as there is a natural world, natural law will prevail. Now man has come along and created societies. And in the societies they have created man made laws. And leaping up to where we are at now. In the man-made laws, man redefines power. Man said my gun is power. And man said my money is power. And man said my maleness is power. And man said my class is power, and then started attacking all the other human beings in order to get them to believe that it truly was power. And they’ve done this to all of us. They attack us with religion. They used their religion to say that we’re born with the original sin and all that. That we’re not worth anything.
They attack us by taking babies and bottle feeding them versus breast feeding, severing that spiritual communication and that natural thing that’s supposed to be there, that whole natural bond. They start to attack at those stages of our lives and in those kinds of a ways. And we become conditioned this way. Or with what they throw at us in the classrooms or throw at us in the courts. In all our life experiences in the society what they throw at us, everything is telling us that we don’t have any validity. They’re separating us from our natural power. And they have redefined power, but it’s not really power that they’re exercising. It’s exploitation. It’s almost like a sickness that they’re spreading. But it’s got nothing to do with power. It’s violence. It’s brutality is what it is, in actuality. But because of the way that it’s all happening, we look at that as being power. Life is power. Not sickness and death. That’s not power. And what they have created is sickness and death. It’s sickness and death of the spirit. If the physical body is to survive, then generally the way they got it programmed is that the spirit must go.
Ultimately I have trouble when you use the word they. What I think is that the political analysis will tell us who the enemy is, and that the enemy is the monetary industrial complex, the multi-nationals, the trilateral commission, big government. But I think that a spiritual analysis tends to tell us that the enemy is us. So I think that an essential element in overcoming those forces, is for everyone in the society, or for a large number of people in this society, to find that spiritual strength again to take back their own authority. Do you have any ideas on how to effect the growth in consciousness?
I think a growth of consciousness happens everywhere. Some people got to start living it. That’s the only thing that works. We live in a society based upon lying. And we live in a society based on glossed over things. So people have to live it. It’s got to be an example. By setting the example in living it and not becoming overwhelmed or allowing the enemy to make us become so reactionary that we can’t live it. It’s never too late to start living it. If we were going to get down to the realities here about carrying some guilt around or some sin, I got a lot of it myself, personally you know, but I’m not going to let that interfere with my ability to live what I see needs to be lived. It’s just all something to learn from. A lot of times people put a rationalization somewhere in their mind as to why they can’t do this. I already screwed up so much already that it’s too late for me to start, see, that’s all wanting to avoid dealing with reality. It’s any one of us. Because we’re all the center of the universe, each and every one of us from where we stand, we’re the center of the universe. We all have our own view of things. We all have the ability, when we choose to exercise that ability to do things in the right way, and every one of us knows what is right and what is wrong. We know it. That’s a consciousness we carry through all of our life, and when we lose it then we’ve crossed that line that we no longer understand what’s right and what’s wrong. You see this kind of mentality exists in prison guards and people that keep people in cages. You see a lot of brutality in the prisons. These people lose it. They no longer know what’s right and what’s wrong. You see that in people that want to sit over here and make atom bombs. They no longer know what’s right and what’s wrong. But us, the victims, we all know. The victims that are victims and have not reached a compromise in our life where we would willingly become one of these two keepers, the keeper of the atom bomb, or the keeper of the man in the cages. These guys, somewhere they made their compromise. They crossed over the line. They cannot cross back between right and wrong, because of the way they have set their life.
You think then that a struggle for your own personal integrity, to see the truth and to speak the truth all the time, is as a definite step towards nuclear disarmament?
It’s a definite step towards understanding our purpose on the earth. Within Indian people’s society, there’s a lot of chaos there. I mean in dealing with reality there’s a lot of chaos in our societies. But the one thing I know is that before the whites came, our societies were in balance. You know I used to run through my mind, well what put us out? Was it the acceptance of the materialism that put us out of balance? But what it really was was the acceptance of the lie, because we didn’t have any room for the lie in our way of life. And we accepted the lie and we were paid off with materialism. And then everything started going against us. Up to that point everything lived in balance because the lie was not given room. It was not necessary to lie.
Our ancestors rationalized accepting the lie. And that’s what I think really happened to us. And I’m going to make a wild guess somewhere it happened to the whites too. That’s where it first started happening, when the liars first started dealing with them. The liar has a great deal to do with nuclear proliferation because he’s telling lies for why he needs it. The liar has a great deal to do with racial oppression because he’s lying about that. The liar’s got a great deal to do with everything that is wrong with us, that is happening to us. The liar’s got a great deal to do with the entire attack against the earth.
Even when you look into the whole Christian concept, and I don’t mean to offend anyone, but when you look into the Christian concept, the Christian concept is that God exists in heaven, but not in Earth. I think it’s the second commandment that says, I’m a very jealous God. There are no other Gods. There are no gods above me, no gods below me, so go ahead and mine uranium, strip mine, it don’t matter. Kill Indians. Kill animals. Wear furry coats, even though it’s just for status and style. Take black people, make them dig out diamonds out of the mines, so everybody can have a good time and make money and all that, because I’m the only god, way up here. Your spirit? Well, you don’t have spirit, but you got a soul and you can pray to the holy spirit.
I think there’s a lot of difference between what [Jesus] said and what Christianity is.
Well you look at Jesus Christ, nobody deals with reality about Christ. The people that killed him, then interpreted his teachings. The people that killed us in America. They then write history. You know, why did they kill him? They killed him because he was a threat to what they were trying to do. And in some time they saw certain control mechanisms that could really be implemented. Someone at that time sat down and made these conscientious decisions for sure. And then a few hundred years pass, then they started programming the lie. They took his teachings. When they took his teachings, they took the meaning away from his teachings. Because maybe Christ was running around saying I’m the son of God alright, but you all are. And I have this power and you all have it. And I’m innocent and you’re all innocent. Maybe he was running around saying that. And they said, well maybe we’d better hang him up on a cross here alright and we’ll make a decoration out of him for the future, and we’ll change this story around real quick. And they did. Because the Christians are the biggest materialists there are.
I think Christianity was an underground movement for about three hundred years, and then it became a state religion in the Roman Empire. Anything that is a state religion, as far as I’m concerned, involves a lie because it has to rationalize that some people have all the power.
And because of this whole thing being ingrained into us, this is when we start losing our sense of power. Our sense of who we are. Because see we’re a part of the real world. And if we’re forced into living our life to being a lie, then we’re contradicting. We’re severing ourselves from our power connection. And you know, and like, how do people start to bring their consciousness back? When do people start to think about this? You know the only thing I can think about it is, the Earth has the ability to heal. So maybe people should just go out and everybody should take every opportunity when society gets to be too much, go somewhere where it’s just Earth and them and spend a little bit of time.
Another source of inspiration.
The only source of inspiration.
One thing I’d like you to comment on. My impression of the peace movement, or the people in the peace movement is that maybe we’re too liberal, and by liberal, I mean that we want things to be nice, and we don’t want to stir the ship. And so we avoid being too critical.
My own feeling about that is, some of these people are telling the biggest lie of all. Because I know where I stand with the oppressor, and I know why he doesn’t. He doesn’t because he wants to live comfortably and materialistically and he wants to be lazy and he wants to have all these things that he really don’t need. And it’s that liberal that concerns me the most see because they say they are opposed to it, but they are willing to live off of the fat of it. They’re willing to live off the materialistic profit, the economic profit, of it. They’re willing to live off of it. That’s why they’re not willing to really take any action against it. Because it means that they’ll have to be real. I hear people saying I’m against violence, I’m totally against violence. But yet these same people as a society will allow all kinds of violence to be perpetuated on every living thing that there is. And I’ve always had a question in my mind, well how can you be against violence if you’re living off of it? If you’re living off of it and you’re not actively trying to change what you know to be wrong, then how much are you really against it?
So the personal struggle in that respect then, is we all like comfort, material comfort. But the more material comfort we get, the more it costs us by way of our truth, our vitality.
It’s like this see, people somewhere along the line, people became owned by their machines, and now the machines are using the people. The next time you go down there and pay nine hundred dollars a gallon for gas, whatever the current price is, you know as well as blaming on the Arabs, which that should really be looked at also, but as well as blaming on the Arabs, people should really think about well, who owns who here. Who’s using who. All the moral positions I can’t take, it’s to put gas in this machine. Or as to pay for this is to pay for that machine or that machine or that machine, or it’s to pay for alcohol to feed me as a machine.
Right now I read a lot of articles to the effect that the system is breaking down.
Oppressers come and go. We’re after them. The forces of life are after the forces of oppression, alright, they really are. It’s a real thing that’s happening. They just kind of confused us because of their connotations and definitions of time. But if we dealt in real time, Earth time, in real time. And if we understood in our spiritual sense who we are, and dealt in senses of real time, in that sense they’re running out of space. At some point, spiritually, they are going to all be dead, and then they’ve run out of space. They’ll have committed suicide. Really.
Just that we are here to make sure they don’t take us with them.
You got it. We’re here and life is here. And life is to be lived. And life is to be something. But too many people don’t live life anymore. They just exist. And because they exist in their lives, they are afraid of everything. Afraid of everything. Afraid to act. You know, sometimes I’ve been around areas here where I see more political theory being exercised amongst the liberal or the left or movement, I see more political theorizing going on than I see actual action. What’s the thing that’s separating the theory from the action? I really don’t know what it is.
Lack of unity?
No because if we as an individual are united with our spirit, we our unity. We can act. So it’s not a lack of unity. I really don’t know what it is. They’ve got all the political theories down. They’ve got all the whole understanding of their society, but they don’t understand how their understanding of society fits into the real world.
So in other words, to be able to act we have to get in touch with our spirit.
That’s right. All it takes to be able to act is well, that is wrong and I know that it’s wrong and I’m going to do something about it. And if I’m a group, then I’m gonna out and do something about it. And I’m not trying to downplay. I know there’s been a lot of work to raising conscience against nukes and for the environment, and I know all these things exist. See, but there are things we have to do besides that. We’ve got to concentrate our energy, because like I hear all this talk here about people that are against nukes. Well, I mean, I’m against nukes. But when I hear all this talking about people against nukes and they start talking about alternative energy then I start thinking well, we are alternative energy. And it’s how we’re misusing ourselves right now that’s screwing up the program more than anything at this particular moment. Because we understand what the enemy’s like. We understand what the pro-nukers are like. We understand that whole thing alright, but we’re misusing ourselves. We are energy. You know what this gets down to here now, if I’m against nuclear power then I really got to think about using air conditioners and certain things I’m consuming. Have to really think about it.
So I think we’re running out of time is there anything else you really feel you ought to add?
Yes. We ask everyone to help us liberate the western hemisphere. We got some temporary governments being imposed upon us that just do not care for us at all, in any way, shape, or form, you know. We ask people to be aware of that.
Ok. Thank you John Trudell.
Thank you. ~
SOURCE: City of Vancouver Archives (Canada)