Trudell

John Trudell is an American Indian rights activist and poet/musician. Since the 70’s, Trudell has diligently worked to secure sovereignty and land rights, to tap the surface, for American Indians. Trudell is important to American Indian Studies because he’s been seen as the “Socrates of Native Americans” and the “Champion of indigenous people’s struggles.” He actively participated during the Native American occupation of Alcatraz Island, speaking out for the native people’s rights to the land under the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. He was later a member of AIM, the American Indian Movement. He worked to revive the Laramie Treaty for the Lakota people at Wounded Knee and lived in Duck Creek, a Native American reservation that was taking tribal sovereignty for itself, without the permission of the US government. Trudell is the first Native American to be able to mobilize and inspire so many people from different walks of life and age groups. Today, Trudell has put poetry to traditional Native American music. His poetry is meant to help him keep in touch with his reality. He’s helping people to recapture their identity and fight for what is rightfully theirs as Native American people.
What struck me most about the documentary on Trudell’s life was his intense dedication to the Native American cause and his vision of what the fight is really about. Despite the tragedy that struck his family, Trudell has continued to further the rights of Native Americans. Just six months after his wife’s and children’s deaths, he was in Canada, once again trying to secure his vision of Native American people restored to their homelands and in control of their own destinies and ways of life. The death of his family seemed to redouble his efforts, making him fully realize the degradation of our society and the need to refocus our lives to something meaningful. His music and poetry speaks across the ages, reaching people on a new level. It seems that he finds a sense of peace and a connection with his lost family through his music, words, and message.
Trudell’s dedication to the land and the earth is stirring. He finds his identity and his purpose in the beauty and power of “mother earth” and “father sky.” He sees the world as a living entity that we should respect and care for. The land supports us and our survival is undeniably tied to it, thus creating a stewardship between ourselves and the earth.
Trudell found his purpose in a vision he experienced, much like a vision quest certain Native American tribes took as part of a coming-of-age tradition. Trudell detailed in the documentary how he believed himself to have been placed on this earth 100 years too late, that in his vision he saw an Indian camp in which he belonged. It was after the vision that he discovered that the homelands of the Native American tribes was the issue, his purpose. Trudell then dedicated his life to securing land and sovereignty to Native American tribes.