. Page 16 RAIN December 1980 THECOREOFTHESTRUGGLE AN INTERVIEW WITH JOHN TRUDELL This summer we had the opportunity to meet and become friends with John Trudell. We've heard him speaking at anti-nuclear and Survival Gatherings over the last year or so, and have been impressed with his ability to draw insights from dozens of directions and use them to get to the core of difficult issues and concepts: how we communicate, how our history has served and limited us, our broader goals. . . The following conversation sheds some light. -RAIN Rain: Please tell us about your background-:-how you got involved in AIM (the American Indian Movement) . . Trudell: Wdl, I grew up in the Midwest. I was raised.in Nebraska and left there when I was seventeen and went into the service. That was in 1963. I-spent almosdour years in the Navy and got out in June of 1967. Then I went to college in San Bernardino for almost two years. The Alcatraz occupation started in San Frandsco and I went to Alcatraz and stayed there. It was then that I really started to move back into my own community. The years in the service and in college I was just kind of drifting around for lack of a better place to go or better things to do. "If Indian~ really hated, there wouldn't be any Indians." Rain: You weren't political then? Trudell: No, not really. I was just surviving. Rain: What year did AIM begin? Trudell: AIM started in July of 1968. Rain: Were you in on its founding? Trudell: No. In 1968 I was in San B'ernardino and went from there to Indians of All Tribes, which was the name of the people who were occupying Alcatraz, and I stayed with them from December of 1969 until July of 1971 when the occupation ended. Then I went to Oklahoma and started working with some young people for an Indian organization there. It was at that time that I started working with AIM directly. 1 Rain: What was your first involvement? Trudell: I can't single out any particular thing that was my first involvement other than we started-working together. I worked with the AIM leaders during the time I was at Alcatraz. This ~as the time when I met Russell Means, Dennis Banks, and Clyde Bellecourt. We all became friends and we were just working together. We started out at Alcatraz talking about honoring the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, and we were talking about our people needing education and housing and health services. We were talking about oppression, and while we were doing this on the West Coast, AIM was simultaneously doing another form of it in the Midwest. All of a sudden it seemed like it was a coordinated effort, but in actuality, I think it w~s just a natural event ,that was happening. The voice just started to come out and kept on coming. When I think about my involvement in AIM or any of the other things that I've in- .volved.myself in in this struggle, I just look at all of them as people's efforts and I work with the organizations as best I can, because that's part of organizing: working with organizations and being part of these things. So, I consider myself to be a part of any organization that I feel is effectively and practically speaking to the people's needs. Rain: How would you define an effective organization? Trudell: I don't consider most bureaucracies very effective. I guess it would have to do with philosophy more than organization, because I believe the only true alliance the indigenous people are going to make amongst themselves and with other people is one based on earth consciousness-a respect for the earth. So I look for . groups of people who are talking about protectiµg the earth. To me, that consciousness is a part of a cooperative, sharing consciousness, but yet it places our value on the earth. We're not just doing it for us, but for the earth and for all the things that are a part of the life of the earth. To me, these are what are really important issues. I don't want to get caught up in chasing revolutions that aren't real. I have to live by my practical experiences in America and my involvement in America, because that's where all the controls that have ever been imposed upon me have been imposed. One of the things that I will never forget is that Americans had their version of a revolution two hundred years ago, and I'm not into revolution. I don't see the answer as being there. I think we're talking more in
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