-Mexican
author, poet, actor, musician, and former political activist. He was the spokesperson for the United Indians of All Tribes
' takeover of Alcatraz
beginning in 1969, broadcasting as Radio Free Alcatraz. During most of the 1970s, he served as the chairman of the American Indian Movement
, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota
.
After his pregnant wife, three children and mother-in-law were killed in 1979 in a fire at the home of his parents-in-law on the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes Duck Valley Indian Reservation
in Nevada
, Trudell turned to writing, music and film as a second career.
Sometimes when it rains, it's not that simple, when the sky has reasons to cry.
The past is more than a memory.
Every human being is a raindrop. And when enough of the raindrops become clear and coherent they then become the power of the storm.
[George Bush] is the Peter Jennings --the anchorman for the real problem. And this has been going on for awhile.
"When I go around in America and I see the bulk of the white people, they do not feel oppressed; they feel powerless... We see the physical genocide that they are attempting to inflict upon our lives, and we understand the psychological genocide that they have already inflicted upon their own people...
We can't out-fight them, but we can out-think them. Every provocation throughout history has been to get us to out-fight them. And if you look at some of the little things about it, right, we're surrounded [with] a reality where you have to have permission to think. That's called 'Chain of Command'. See, so if you really really think about it...in their legions they don't have permission to think. See, this starts to equalize out the numbers!
The strength of the poetry as we enter into whatever it is we are entering into, will be determined by the clarity of the thinking we put into it.