I wasn't interested in having to live with a camera - I have a hard enough time getting along with myself. I don't need cameras around and all that action.
From John Trudell
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.
All that I am is me. So I'm not really a poet or a writer or an actor or an activist; I'm me, and these are things that I do.
For decades, my identity was political, but I've come to understand that there's no political solution when you're dealing with someone else's rules.
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.
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.
I have a real interest in working with younger Native artists. I think it's a very important way for Native people to communicate the realities of our culture and remember our ancestors.
I was going mad. One day, I just started writing, and it was like therapy because I was in a position where I couldn't rage. I never expected to be a writer; it's a different world than I ever expected to be in.
I'm not a musician making words to go with my music.
Because we are all of an oral tradition in our beginning histories, the voice of the poet in this particular society will be heard.
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