AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT GRAND GOVERNING COUNCIL
MINISTRY FOR INFORMATION
'My ride showed up."
"Celebrate Love, Celebrate Life."
John Trudell
Official Anouncement from John Trudell family...
Our beloved Brother, Father, Uncle, Grandfather and Friend made the journey to the ancestors at 2:20 am this morning December 8, 2015. He was in the arms of Johnny Elk, Havoni Coupe, and Kevin Marsh. We are deeply grateful for all your prayers, love and support. May our beloved's words, work on behalf of our people, mother Earth and all relations, and his journey bring you peace in your life, as he loves all of you so very much. Peace and love relatives.
Rick Powers speaks:
"For Brother John Trudell,
As a member of the American Indian Movement and a friend and brother of yours for the past 45 years, I want to share these thoughts with you. There are many of us who love and owe you much for what and how you have taught us as you guided and led us through these past few decades. In 1970 at 15 years old when I first enlisted into the American Indian Movement you were already among those who were thrust into and carried leadership roles within AIM. Because of the way I grew up as a child, AIM has always been and will always be my true family and that is because of so many brothers and sisters like you whose path’s I was fortunate to walk with.
You led us through those wild and days of glory that for those of us who lived them, we will never forget any one of those days. Many in our family of AIM fell from this earth in our fight for Justice and Freedom in those epoch times. This fight at times was so intense and full of violence in the effort our enemy took to smash us that some of us cannot and even do not want to forget or escape those days. You were the backbone and the one who remained steady and strong through all these years in your leadership of the Movement for not only Indian Liberation and Freedom but for Human Liberation and Freedom from enslavement by the capitalist system still trying to colonize us.
Your thoughts and words are the voice of reason and they come like fire that burns Truth into people’s minds. One of the main things you taught us is that as long as we continue to resist being colonized by modern civilization our spirits will never die. You are the evidence of this belief. In our times and in those glory days you were and are the essence of the Spirit of Crazy Horse. You came back to the people when we needed your spirit present once again, in this war against us which yet persist.
The price you had to pay for being with us and leading us was unfathomable to comprehend. When the American government murdered your family as a lesson to us all it shined the light on their level of inhumanity. It also exposed the viciousness of the government and that the level of danger this enemy presents has not declined through the years since the Indian Wars were supposedly over. How you conducted yourself during those dark days has always been an inspiration to me in dealing with my own personal tragedy and for that I want to thank you for shedding light on my path.
We, the people offer gratitude to you for your presence and leadership at Alcatraz, the Trail of Broken Treaties, the Liberation of Wounded Knee, during the Reign of Terror and in the aftermath of the attack on the people at Oglala in 1975. Many of us also deeply value your continued seeking of Justice for Anna Mae Aquash and for Leonard Peltier. Gratitude is also due to you in providing leadership and an Indian voice within the anti nuke movement. Indigenous people from across the world will always be grateful to you for your music, lyrics and poetry which articulate our Indigenous world, our culture, politics, spirituality and way of life to the world so they might see us as fellow humans.
The movies you were in Thunderheart, On Dangerous Ground, Smoke Signals, and Incident at Oglala as well as your film Trudell will always be classics that will be watched as long as there is technology to watch them. I want to offer my own gratitude to you for memorializing me by putting me in your documentary “Trudell.” I am proud to have known you my Brother and to have shared the same love for our people, to have lost and to have struggled by your side through all these years.
As the end of your path on this side is coming into sight and your pain you carried all these years from when they murdered your family and our many other friends and comrades now ancestors I know, you know that pain will dissipate as you joyously rejoin them all. Like that one song goes, go rest high on that mountain, Brother your work on mother earth is done and your mission here is successfully completed. Because of the leadership and sacrifices of many people such as yourself, the next generation has been taught well and they have prepared themselves to continue our struggle. This being prepared was something our generation was not so lucky to have within our arsenal when they meant to and did their best to eliminate us all. We had to play our cards when and as they dealt them to us and if we did not win, at least some of us survived to fight another day.
Across the world but especially in Indian Country this day many, many of us carry heavy hearts and already many tears are falling, knowing you are leaving us. At the same time many of us know that for our spirit there is no death and that whatever this thing death is many of us gladly wait for the day we join our ancestors in the stars known as Wanaghi Tachanku. We will never forget you as you will be the beauty in the mountains, the brightness of every morning sun, the power of the raging ocean and in the very air we breathe, you will be a part of all of the beauty of this world everywhere we turn, just as all of our ancestors are.
Our Brother, John Trudell, within the ranks of the American Indian Movement we salute you and will see you again brother if not in this life then the next.
Doksha Ake, Mitakuye Oyasin"
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