JOHN TRUDELL: We are all descended from tribes…

2001-11-05

Richard Moore

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To: •••@••.•••, •••@••.•••,
        •••@••.•••
Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2001 07:25:43 -0500
Subject: JOHN TRUDELL SPEAKS AT JUDI BARI MEMORIAL
X-Juno-Line-Breaks: 3,6,8,10-11,15-225
From: "T. K. Wilson" <•••@••.•••>

I have spoken on Fix Gov and other places, many times, in
terms of the current Euro American culture as a virus; a
virus of the spirit and the mind. As far as I'm concerned
this virus did not originate with my ancestors.

Other people have characterized this concept by describing
these fallacious emotional social power constructs as memes
and say that memes can be infectious.

I know that my perception is grounded in truth but it feels
good to see here that a person of John Trudells stature and
experience verifies what I know with his own thoughts and
words.

What I find most hopeful about this message is something
that I have always known and that is that this mass
"misconception" (nearly conceived but stillborn or born as a
monstrosity) is only loaned reality by collective thought
and can be undone the same way.

Please read Johns words. They are food for the soul.   -TK




JOHN TRUDELL SPEAKS AT JUDI BARI MEMORIAL
- posted to serendipity-L by Dan Scanlan

Friends,

A thousand or so activists met at Martin Luther King Jr.
School in Berkeley CA on Saturday April 26 to commemorate
Judi Bari's life and to rejuvenate ourselves. [S.I.S.I.S.
note: Judi Bari was a long-time

Earth First!er, union activist, feminist, and fiddler. She
and Darryl Cherney filed a lawsuit against the F.B.I. for
its involvement in a 1990 bombing of Judi's car that
shattered Judi's pelvis. Judi recently died of cancer. The
lawsuit against the F.B.I. continues.] There were many
wonderful moments, and it was, as Utah Phillips described
it, "Nourishing, just nourishing."

It is my hope you will treat yourself to a quiet reading of
the following transcription of John Trudell's speech and
that it brings clear fuel to your own struggle. Dan Scanlan
_______________________________________________________

INTRO

Our next speaker burned an American flag on the steps of FBI
Headquarters.

And 12 hours later a fire killed his wife, his three
children and his wife's mother. The FBI declined to
investigate. This man had 17 thousand pages in his FBI file.
He's former national chairman of the American Indian
Movement: John Trudell.

JOHN TRUDELL

I'm pleased to be here and I'm glad that you're here and
I'll attempt to be as clear as I can while I'm up here.

It's about our D and A. Descendants and ancestors. We are
the descendants and we are the ancestors. D and A, our DNA,
our blood, our flesh and our bone, is made up of the metals
and the minerals and the liquids of the earth. We are the
earth. We truly, literally and figuratively are the earth.
Any relationship we will ever have in this world to real
power -- the real power, not energy systems and other
artificial means of authority -- but any relationship we
will ever have to real power is our relationship to the
earth.

So whatever Judi was doing and what Earth First! does, they
were establishing connection with the basic reality, that we
must take care of the earth. Our power comes from the earth.

And because we are made up of the earth -- our common
ground, so to speak -- we are all the descendants of tribes.
Each and every one of us is a descendant of a tribe. We have
genetic memories. Inside of our genetic memories, that power
connection exists to our ancestral past. We are all
descendants of tribes. But the t ribes of the planet earth
have encountered a technological religious mind set that
removes all spiritual value and real value about life from
the earth and puts it into theoretical heavens or hells. And
it does it under a male image of a male dominator god.

In our tribal ancestry each and every one of our ancestors
resisted that notion, that imposition. Tribes of Europe,
tribes of Africa, tribes of here. Every tribe resisted it.
It started in different time frames in different parts of
the planet. It's almost like a disease. A virus, a virus, a
disease that lives in the human. A disease of the spirit.
It's almost like a diseased spirit affects the perception of
reality of the carrier of the disease, the human being.

Power. It's very important that we understand who we are in
relationship to power, because we have been tricked and lied
to, almost in a way one would say, "brainwashed", into
looking at authority as power. It is very important that we
make this distinction because we need to have something to
pass to the next generations.

Authority is not power. Authority is authority. All
authority is usually based upon aggression or implied
aggression or active aggression. Authority is authority.
Power is something else. Power is what we come from. It is a
part of the natural order of the universe -- power.
Authority is something that man creates. It's limitation is
that it was created by man. Power has no limitations.

Our relationship to the earth, DNA. We are different shapes
and forms of the earth. We are different trees. We are no
more or no less than the tree. We are different stones. We
are just different shapes of the life of the earth.

As human beings we understand in this technologic religious
mind set that the authoritarian system, the industrial
fascism, the industrial Reich that we live under, we
understand that they can mine the other natural resources of
the earth, and through refinement processes take old
dinosaurs out of the ground and turn them into energy to run
the machine world that we're very addicted to and partly
enslaved to.

We have to make the connection that we are just a different
shape but our value is no more or no less than the rest of
the natural resources of the earth, the rest of the DNA of
the earth. So it's very possible that we are being mined in
the same way that the dinosaurs are, out of the ground.
Human being, human physical, being spirit. Human physical,
being spirit. Human physical, being spirit.

And we live under an authoritarian system, an industrial
technologic mind set that has discovered and developed a way
to mine, to take the being part of human, the spirit part of
human and convert it into energy and then use that energy to
power their system, to run their system. They are literally
eating our spirits. Literally eating our spirits.

Our spirit is eaten when we do not understand the
distinction, the difference between authority and power. If
they tell us money resembles power, then whoever has the
most money has the most power.

But that is a lie.

Whoever has the most money has the ability to get authority.
But that is not power. But if we believe that, if we believe
that money is power, or that it can take us to power, then
we will always understand that power is something removed
from us and is not a natural part of us. It is just so
subtle, and so blatant.

If we believe that political systems are power, they're
manipulative. That's all they are: a political system is a
way of mining the spirit, in just the same way as the
definition of authority: mining our spirit.

This is where someone like Judi [Bari] becomes a threat,
because she understands she has power, and she understands
the reality of responsibility that goes with power. She
understands that. We can't communicate with her now the way
that we used to, but we can communicate with her. That's
life. That's spirit.

In the ways of the tribes and in our common ancestry, we
understood the play with our ancestors. We understood the
ones before us, the ones that we were the descendants of.
This was our power connection toknowledge. This was our
power connection to the past and our power connection to the
future. So as we enter into this, whatever has to come down
in the future -- I don't really have time to go into too
far! --

But the antibiotic to dealing with these people, these
vampires -- and it is, it is vampires, cannibalization --
the antibiotic to this disease is our intelligence. We were
given intelligence by the creator. We have intelligence.
That is the antibiotic. That is thecure. There is no
existing cure to the problem other than the one we will
create by using our intelligence as intelligently and as
clearly as we possibly can. To use our intelligence as
intelligently as we possibly can.

To have clarity. Because this beast that feeds and eats our
spirit does it by the confusions that are in our minds.

But we understand the pollution of the air, of the water, we
understand the pollution of the environment has come from
this plundering and mining of the planet in an irresponsible
manner. But you think about every fear, every doubt, every
insecurity, every way that we ever beat ourselves up inside
of our own heads -- that is the pollution left over from the
mining of our spirit.

Another word I hear used a lot -- I don't "believe"
anything. I tried to believe but there was a "lie" in the
middle:  LIE. Again, use our intelligence very
intelligently. There are certain words that we should use
very, very, very carefully and I think that's one of those
words, because either we know or we don't know. We should
think -- anything in between us knowing and not knowing --
we should think.

Thank you. - John Trudell at Judi Bari memorial and fund
raiser at Martin Luther King Jr. School in Berkeley CA,
April 26, 1997

If you think you are too small to make a difference; try
sleeping in a closed room with a mosquito.... African
Proverb


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Richard K Moore
Wexford, Ireland
Citizens for a Democratic Renaissance 
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