John Trudell quotes

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.

When I left politics in the early Eighties and started writing and recording, my idea was that I could have an influence further down into other generations. That Natives could come into the culture through arts and music.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.