John Trudell Quotes

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John Trudell

Profession : Author

Birth : February 15, 1946

When one lives in a society where people can no longer rely on the institutions to tell them the truth, the truth must come from culture and art.

John Trudell

There have been some positive things that have happened for the tribes, but it's a constant, vigilant fight about protecting what resources we have in terms of land and rights.

John Trudell

We cannot change the political system, we cannot change the economic system, we cannot change the social system, until the people control the land, and then we take it out of the hands of that sick minority that chooses to pervert the meaning and the intention of humanity.

John Trudell

I am just a human being trying to make it in a world that is rapidly losing its understanding of being human.

John Trudell

I don't want to tell people how to remember me. I want people to remember me as they remember me.

John Trudell

I consider the electric guitar to be like a drum with strings. It became the drum of the Baby Boom generation. And the drum has always been the center of the tribe, a new electronic tribe.

John Trudell

One Earth, one mother - one does not sell the Earth.

John Trudell

The whole point is to take from our native culture and from contemporary culture without using one art form to mimic the other, so that our native identity remains the native identity, the contemporary identity remains the contemporary identity, and the mixing of these two musical identities creates a third musical identity.

John Trudell

All politics to me - Indian or white - is an illusion preventing us from being authentic because we're communicating through something that isn't real to us.

John Trudell

Because we are all of an oral tradition in our beginning histories, the voice of the poet in this particular society will be heard.

John Trudell

What I view life like is about energy. Everything is about energy - everything. We physically are little units of electrical energy, and we vibrate and project electromagnetic thought.

John Trudell

The average human being in America is going through some sort of hard times - physical, emotional, psychological. Everybody's carrying a bit of bone days in them.

John Trudell

Life is all about the spirit.

John Trudell

It's always good to go home. It's strengthening to see your past and know you have someplace to go where you're part of a people.

John Trudell

White people don't seem to have many Elders. They do have a lot of oldsters.

John Trudell

For us, it's a matter of just staying alive and getting the best deal we can now. Eventually, this will all straighten out. It may be two generations away or 10 generations away, but time is irrelevant in that sense. As long as we, as a people, stay alive, we will survive.

John Trudell

Everybody interprets things differently with their own perception, and I want poetry to pull out of them their own feelings.

John Trudell

You go back and you read your Constitution. You read your Declaration of Independence. And you will see that the only people who could decide these freedoms were white males who owned property, and all the rest of us were excluded.

John Trudell

I'm a member of the American Indian Movement, and I'm from the indigenous nations of the Western Hemisphere.

John Trudell

I wasn't interested in having to live with a camera - I have a hard enough time getting along with myself. I don't need cameras around and all that action.

John Trudell