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.

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

I have experienced within my own lifetime the attack of my winter camp and the killing of the women and children. It left me even angrier than I was - and I was never too calm to begin with.

Every song I've ever written always starts with the words because I want the music to be the musical extension of the feelings of the words, and not the words being the emotional extension of the feeling of the music.

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.

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

I don't write as much now as I used to, but I write. The lines still come, maybe periodically, and I'll go through these little bursts of time where I write a lot of things then a long period of time where maybe I don't write anything.

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.

From activist stage, I just spoke and said whatever I had to say. When the writing started, I would just read it. Then I had the interest into going into musical aspects. When that happened in '86, I liked the result of work we did in the studio.

Whatever their reasons, Hollywood, or the entertainment industry, is saying something about Indians. I don't see the rest of the media knocking down any doors to do that.

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.

In a personal context, I'm not in the ground, and I'm not in an institution. So I guess I'm doing pretty good.