Resistance Consciousness

[ccarota]

RESISTANCE CONSCIOUSNESS with John Trudell, Lakota traditionalist indian, PART 2
by in solidarity with autonomous resistance Friday, Apr. 08, 2005 at 8:12 AM

<blockquote>John was a mainline leader/activist in the American Indian Movement in the 1970s. In 1979,his family, including 3 young daughters, were murdered. He was given access to the world of famous musicians and allowed to go *in and out of craziness* while he greived and began to write. His deep inner-seeking brings out gems by the dozen. The State works overtime to suppress his insights so that you never even hear of him, much less his depths. He's a traditional-oriented American Indian who is part of a broader resistance against the colonization of both peoples (not only indians) and *their minds*. Everyone should realize the value of hearing him out and passing the word on!</blockquote> audio: wav file (1.3 megabytes)


NOTE:
The following quotes are published here, along with the audio, to aid in promoting John Trudell's message. I am doing so as a form of *resistance consciousness*, autonomously and anonymously, since I see no value in telling people who i am. My desire is to educate and inspire people who would not normally get a chance to read or hear his insights, not only because they are hard to find, but because even buying his CDs are not as easy as they ought to be to get (and of course, there is probably a major effort to block him this way as well).

Link to earlier audio excerpts and text portions:
http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/04/1731687.php

RESISTANCE CONSCIOUSNESS with John Trudell, Lakota traditionalist indian, spoken word dude, actor in consciousness-raising films


INTRO:
John Trudell is a former chairman of the American Indian Movement (AIM) who learned that he has 17 thousand pages in his f.b.i. file when he was able to get 60 of them from the Freedom of Information Act. He was a main spokesperson in the American Indian take-over at Alcatraz Island, and is said to have led at least one march protesting f.b.i. tactics against Indian people in the 1970s (during the height of the f.b.i.'s illegal "Counter Intelligence Program" aka "COINTELPRO" which attacked a huge variety of legal dissent).

In 1979, during one of these angry protests challenging the u.s. government to live up to its own rule of law (re: Treaty Laws), Trudell apparently burned an American flag on the steps of the f.b.i. Headquarters. Less than 12 hours later a very suspicious fire killed his wife, his three young children and his wife's mother on the Shoshone-Paiute Reservation in Nevada in which they lived. The f.b.i., which has jurisdiction on federal Indian reservations, declined to investigate. John knows it was murder.


QUOTES FROM INDY Georgia MEDIA INTERVIEW:

"George Bush...is the 'Peter Jennings' for the real problem. And this has been going on for awhile." "We pretend that he's the problem. But he's not the problem.

"What Americans don't really quite get yet, is that the American ruling class, they needed the white people to kill the Indians and enslave the blacks to work the land. So they gave them certain privileges. [(NOTE: Howard Zinn also backs this statement in _A People's History of the United States-ed]]

"They [gave non-elite white people?] a little more say because it's all internal competition, made progress go. But the technology has advanced, they have globalized the planet now through trade and the military. When they realized this, maybe 20, 30 years ago, that the American people, the citizens, are too fuckin' expensive.

"They want to make a living wage, they want health care, they want childcare, they want days off to have babies, fuck -they want everything. That's just too expensive. Because [the ruling class is] into maximizing profit. So the world has opened up globally. So they have markets globally and they don't need the American consumer the same way they needed them before. Because there's two billion of them in the planet right now, and out of that 2 billion, one-and-a-half billion of then can pick up the slack that the Americans have to let go. And this is really what's *going on*.


QUOTES FROM "STICKMAN" a book by Paola Igliori (from interviews she did with John):

(...) "'Democracy'-- think about this. How many women in this room are still trying to get equal pay, how many women in this room are still trying to get their rights recognized? Democracy did that. Allright. How many black people are still trying to get what is called their equality--get their rights recognized? Democracy did that. And the Indian people? Democracy just basically tried to kill all of us off, so that we became such a small physical minority that it doesn't matter......Democracy did this. And if you would take the time to go read the founding papers, the papers of your so-called founding fathers, you understand the reality versus the illusion.

"The reality is that if you were a rich, white male land owner, you got to decide what democracy was and if you were a white man and didn't have any property, then bye-bye Charlie--and if you were a woman you had no say--and if you were a Black you had no say--and if you were one of the Indian People you were the enemy. Now that is the framework of democracy.

"That's the reality. It was the dark ages just given new terminology and another disguise so the peasants and the serfs would continue to accept it.

"I get frustrated sometimes and we got to deal with whatever is here because it is here. But I get concerned sometimes that maybe people are afraid to even think about challenging the concept of democracy and that's where all the good little nazis come from, the ones that are afraid to challenge the concepts when they see the contradictions in the concepts. That's where you get the good little nazis. And the distortion and the feeding process off of us to keep us distorted and insecure, that's to help us become good little nazis. It's all got to do with planting that seed and that idea and concept of fear.

"...Now before civilization encroaches upon and turns human beings into citizens--the human beings always take that responsibility very seriously--but once civilization turns human beings into citizens then they no longer consider those responsibilities. My feeling is it's because they have been severed spiritually from their consciousness, their spiritual consciousness, their spiritual consciousness and had it replaced with a religious consciousness which is very limited. And for us, when we make the decision that we are going to use our minds more clearly, when we make the decision that we are no longer going to accept the great lie--the great lie is no longer acceptable.

"I might not be able to act upon it in any major way and any way I can act upon it may seem insignificant to me, but it's not insignificant. Because it's got to do with our belief..our minds...and if we believe the lie if we believe there are presidential elections going on, that we really have a choice in, then we're denying ourselves reality. So at least people if we can't do anything about it at this point other than to recognize the truth for what it is, let'd do that. It's like we're all snowflakes and as soon as we sort our minds out and we make a more clear definition of reality in relationship to our responsibilities, then we will be a blizzard.

====================================


From WE ARE POWER speech. See more excerpts: http://www.anti-politics.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=282
Background info: http://www.dickshovel.com/JTT.html
More info: http://www.johntrudell.com

"...This is a survival gathering. And one of the things I hope that you all learn while you are here is that you learn to appreciate the Energy and the Power that the Elements are--that of the Sun, the Rain, and the Wind. That you go away from here understanding that this is Power --and this is the only true, real Power...

"...We must not become confused and deceived by their illusions. There is no such thing as military power; there is only military terrorism...That is all that it is. They try to program our minds and fool us with these illusions so that we will believe that they hold the power in their hands...All they know how to do is act in a repressive, brutal way...They want us to believe in them and depend on them, and we have to assume these consumer identities, and these political identities, these religious identities and these racial identities [not to mention sexual ones]. They want to separate us from our Power...from who we are...

"...We must consider the Spiritual genocide that they commit against us. The spiritual genocide that the white people have been victimized by for thousands of years...

"We must move to the time when we truly understand our connection to real power because these people who deal with illusions and imitations...they want to keep us confused with [the confining concepts of?] sexism and ageism, racism, class. They want to keep us in a confusion so that [we] will continue to believe in one lie after another as they programmed them into our minds and into our society...The ruling class...are going to lie to us and they are going to create the illusions of change...

"We have to understand our role as a Natural Power. We have to understand that when our oppressor treats us this way and does these things to us, that we allow him to do it as long as we accept his lies...We have been allowing it for too long...

"We must be willing in our lifetime to deal with reality. It's not revolution; it's liberation. We want to be free of a value system that's being imposed on us... Liberation --we want to be free. But in order for us to be free we have to assume...our responsibility. We are going to have to struggle for it. We are going to have to work [and be] committed to it. We must never underestimate our enemy. Our enemy is committed against us 24 hours a day. They use 100% of their efforts to maintain their ...status quo. 100% of their effort goes into deceiving us and manipulating us against each other...

"...We are going to have to start working more realistically with a resistance consciousness, a resistance, something we can pass on as strength to the coming generations--a resistance where organizational ...[and] individual egos don't get in the way, a resistance where the infiltrators and the provacateurs and the liars and the betrayers...do not get in the way. We will not get our liberation if we do not seriously analyze the experiences of our own lifetimes.

"The other side ...has studied. They understand what we were up to in the 1960's. They understand what we wanted in the early 1970's...They create certain events, and they manipulate the economics, and they manipulate circumstances because they want us to react the same way that we did in the 1960's so that they can come in and they can smash our movements. We must become of a resistance consciousness. We must say that we will not allow you to smash us. Even if it means that we have to deal with the part of you that you have planted in me..."


AUDIO:

meeting the evolutionary reality :58; 1.28MB
by in solidarity with autonomous resistance Friday, Apr. 08, 2005 at 8:12 AM
audio: wav file (1.2 mebibytes)


perceptional reality series (2 of 5): (2nd section) 1:16; 1.60MB
by in solidarity with autonomous resistance Friday, Apr. 08, 2005 at 8:12 AM
audio: wav file (1.6 mebibytes)


(3rd section of series) approx 1 min;.99MB
by in solidarity with autonomous resistance Friday, Apr. 08, 2005 at 8:12 AM
audio: wav file (1018.1 kibibytes)


(4th section of series) 3:12; 4.4MB
by in solidarity with autonomous resistance Friday, Apr. 08, 2005 at 8:12 AM
audio: wav file (4.1 mebibytes)


(5th section of series) 3:23; 4.28MB
by in solidarity with autonomous resistance Friday, Apr. 08, 2005 at 8:12 AM
audio: wav file (4.3 mebibytes)

[ccarota]

RESISTANCE CONSCIOUSNESS with John Trudell, Lakota traditionalist indian, PART 1
by to all my relations! Wednesday Apr 6th, 2005 2:30 PM <blockquote>This audio has been compiled in the spirit of *resistance consciousness* to significantly challenge the *war of everyday life*, and my intent is to bring this message, autonomously, to as widespread an audience as possible, in order to a support and strengthen people's resolve to *evolving* the situations we are systematically manipulated into.</blockquote> http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2005/04/06/...ell-trudell.wav

Following are a few quotes from John Trudell which I wish to use as companions to his speaking, and perhaps interest those who have slow connections to take the time to listen. Note that John's way is for listeners/readers to *get whatever they can* out of his words.

"Theoretically, if everyone that disagrees with the lie that has been imposed upon us--tomorrow...if everyone got up and said...'I'm not going to enable the lie anymore'--you would have nonviolent change--and you would have quick change--because the system goes upon our self-rationalizations and self-justifications and insecurity. ...That's how it works and it has turned all of us against each other through distortion...The one thing [these people] fear...is that we would use our minds [to] attempt to see clearly...[and our] apathy makes us the enemy of our descendents. ...They want us to be in a position where all we think about is ourselves...We need to use our minds *to think things through*...[E]verybody is trying to find a way out from the mess they're in and they're using these dark age intellectualizations and remaining confined in these concepts of Freud and all the rest of these people.

"We can't out-fight them, but we can out-think them. Every provocation throughout history has been to get us to out-fight them. And if you look at some of the little things about it, right, we're *surrounded [with] a reality where you have to have permission to think. That's called 'Chain of Command'. See, so if you really really think about it...in their legions they don't have *permission* to think. See, this starts to equalize out the numbers!"

"When I look at western civilization, it's so messed up. They want to overcomplicate everything, and I think they do it through intellectualizations or apathies, or whatever, but they want to overcomplicate everything and sometimes I think they've been conditioned to want to overcomplicate everything so that, therefore, they don't have to act....And perception...what does it take? It takes for us to tell ourselves the truth. It takes for us to tell ourselves the truth. That's what it takes. Not to lie to ourselves."

The Paradox (1:15, 1.5MB) by to all my relations! Wednesday Apr 6th, 2005 2:30 PM
audio: http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2005/04/06/...ox-trudell2.wav

Our Way Through Everything (1:28; 1.86MB) by to all my relations! Wednesday Apr 6th, 2005 2:30 PM <div align='left'>audio: http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2005/04/06/...ng-trudell5.wav </div>
Perceptional Reality--First Section (6:59, 1.24MB) by to all my relations! Wednesday Apr 6th, 2005 2:30 PM
audio: http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2005/04/06/...ya-trudell6.wav

[mothandrust]

Quote:RESISTANCE CONSCIOUSNESS with John Trudell, Lakota traditionalist indian, PART 1
by to all my relations! Wednesday Apr 6th, 2005 2:30 PM

"Theoretically, if everyone that disagrees with the lie that has been imposed upon us--tomorrow...if everyone got up and said...'I'm not going to enable the lie anymore'--you would have nonviolent change--and you would have quick change--because the system goes upon our self-rationalizations and self-justifications and insecurity. ...That's how it works and it has turned all of us against each other through distortion...The one thing [these people] fear...is that we would use our minds [to] attempt to see clearly...[and our] apathy makes us the enemy of our descendents. ...They want us to be in a position where all we think about is ourselves...We need to use our minds *to think things through*...[E]verybody is trying to find a way out from the mess they're in and they're using these dark age intellectualizations and remaining confined in these concepts of Freud and all the rest of these people.

"We can't out-fight them, but we can out-think them. Every provocation throughout history has been to get us to out-fight them. And if you look at some of the little things about it, right, we're *surrounded [with] a reality where you have to have permission to think. That's called 'Chain of Command'. See, so if you really really think about it...in their legions they don't have *permission* to think. See, this starts to equalize out the numbers!"

"When I look at western civilization, it's so messed up. They want to overcomplicate everything, and I think they do it through intellectualizations or apathies, or whatever, but they want to overcomplicate everything and sometimes I think they've been conditioned to want to overcomplicate everything so that, therefore, they don't have to act....And perception...what does it take? It takes for us to tell ourselves the truth. It takes for us to tell ourselves the truth. That's what it takes. Not to lie to ourselves."

i agree with a lot of what this guy says, particularly with regard to over-complication, but i don't like the way he writes (or speaks?). take for example the last paragraph - it's horribly repetitive, almost like a bludgeon, it makes me want to shout, "i heard you the first time!" he could have said what he needed to in half the words.

but i wholeheartedly agree - <span style="color:#66FF99">"We can't out-fight them, but we can out-think them" - something that seems lost by too many troofers.

where i struggle with his reasoning is the idea that <span style="color:#66FF99">"if everyone got up and said...'I'm not going to enable the lie anymore'--you would have nonviolent change". as i think it is both unrealistic and unworkable. if, if, if, if fairies existed they could magic away all of our problems - yeah, right.

but also, and perhaps more importantly, almost everyone is employed in a useless profession. that is something beyond production and maintenance. their jobs are in finance and marketing - services, invisibles - added value. jobs that do nothing but perpetuate the lie - that's (partly) why we have 1,000% markup on almost all products and consumables. remove them from the lie and the lie collapses. well, so i reckon.

[resonate]

Quote:"if everyone got up and said...'I'm not going to enable the lie anymore'--you would have nonviolent change".

I think he is encouraging people and saying that there could come instant and progressive change on an individual basis.

I believe where people lack, and what holds people back is that they don't know how many others think like them. No-one can remove the lies for people until they have confidence that they can live without them.

It's a gradual process.


I'll listen to these audio files when I get time. thx

[ccarota]

RESISTENCE CONSCIOUSNESS with John Trudell, Lakota Traditionalist Indian, PART 3
by ccarota Thursday, Oct. 04, 2007 at 2:31 PM - The Houston Independent Media Center

Part three of a series of articles promoting the words and ideas of activist, poet, musician John Trudell, based on his October 1994 interview with Frank Sontag, of KLOS, courtesy of the She Who Remembers Archives....

<blockquote>John Trudell is and was my first mentor in conspiracy research. In fact, this single speech helped introduced me to the whole concept of the authority and how it's used to enslave us as Human Beings. When I encountered his talk, I had yet to integrated any coherent view of the system I lived in and was dependent on... John helped me see how the system of authority was designed to convert our power to energy used to run these systems of authority, and keep us hopelessly dependent.

When I listened to this talk, all my confusion vanished. John's ideas helped me see of the System in a new way. He gave me a keystone to understanding all of my research, and everything I already knew and believed about power. I used this interpretation to create my own "energy system", an Induction engine which runs on the alternating current of Power and Authority. I saw that johns form of technology, when expressed through media, can be used to induce gnosis and self recognition from within the system.

Years later, I found the Resistance Consciousness articles, and now I've transcribe this interview in an attempt to complete this"Trudell Trilogy". This third and final section should serve as a summery and reference for John Trudell's radically coherent world view.
</blockquote>

NOTE:
"This audio has been compiled in the spirit of *resistance consciousness* to significantly challenge the *war of everyday life*, and the system of economic enslavement perpetuated through system of authority through our history and around the technologic world. My intent is to bring this message, autonomously, to as widespread an audience as possible, in order to a support and strengthen the People's resolve to *evolving* the situations we are systematically manipulated into, to use their power as Human Beings responsibly"

Link to earlier audio excerpts and text portions:

Part 1:
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2005/04...316871.php

Part 2:
http://houston.indymedia.org/news/2005/04/38649.php

Quote:RESISTANCE CONSCIOUSNESS with John Trudell, Part 3

Power and Authority


INTRO:
"John Trudell is a former chairman of the American Indian Movement (AIM) who learned that he has 17 thousand pages in his f.b.i. file when he was able to get 60 of them from the Freedom of Information Act. He was a main spokesperson in the American Indian take-over at Alcatraz Island, and is said to have led at least one march protesting f.b.i. tactics against Indian people in the 1970s (during the height of the f.b.i.'s illegal "Counter Intelligence Program" aka "COINTELPRO" which attacked a huge variety of legal dissent).

In 1979, during one of these angry protests challenging the u.s. government to live up to its own rule of law (re: Treaty Laws), Trudell apparently burned an American flag on the steps of the f.b.i. Headquarters. Less than 12 hours later a very suspicious fire killed his wife, his three young children and his wife's mother on the Shoshone-Paiute Reservation in Nevada in which they lived. The f.b.i., which has jurisdiction on federal Indian reservations, declined to investigate. John knows it was murder."


FROM "Impact" with Frank Sontag, KLOS, 10/10/94


Being Slaves

"We are all slaves... This society is enslaved by an economic system, and illusions of values and things like that. So I just think that, in the technologic society, it operates on the enslavement of the energies of the Human Beings, or the People. Most people are distracted by their insecurities, and this rapidly increasing fear of survival and how they are going to survive, economically, health wise, all these types of things. So no, they don't relate to themselves being enslaved because there are so many problems that have to be dealt with, they don't really have to think about it."


Being People

"This whole idea of native american... when the europeans came to the western hemisphere, there were people here. These were the people that lived here, basically, there were many cultures and many languages, but they were the people of this land base. And almost universally within this concept, they always referred to themselves in their own language or cultures as the People. The Human Beings. But that was always a part of the self-identification, the identification of self. And the europeans came and they refused to recognizes us as The People, they called us indians. To me, that was a very essential part of the genocide, just as much as the diseased blankets, ah, the diseased bibles, guns, i mean just the whole insane idea about the conquest.

So they never recognizes us as The People, we just became this abstraction of indians, where as The
People have a continuity that goes way back into the ancient times. You see, the "indians" only have
an identity going back to the arrival of the european, and its an identity of genocide. So it's like a severing of a memory, or a essence that flows beyond time. 200 or 400 or a million years of that happen to us. And then, within my lifetime, when we were struggling to survive let's say, and we were known as the militants or the activists, or whatever, the new terminology became native american. You see, they didn't change the genocidal attitudes or consciousness, or unconscious, attitudes against us, they changed our name. We are not native to america because we are older than america. We cannot be native america, because we are older than it... it is just a temporary name that was created in these
languages, and these concepts and these thoughts of cultures that were alien to this land.


Being Tribal

"It is an essential part of genocide to erase the memory of the People. I mean it is a part of the genocide. It's a sophisticated part of genocide because if you're busy erasing their minds, the society at large will accept any form of physical hardship you put them through. As long as they can physically know that they are there, whether they are suffering or not, but physically they are still there. But its that other side of genocide, the deadly effect of assimilation as genocide, is that where they start to erase our whole conscious connection to who we are... and its an on-going thing. It's just not healthy for us. It just shows that we are still in a situation where the americans refuse to accept us for who we are. They still don't see us, but we are all the descendants of tribes. I think that when I look around america, that memory isn't there. It's just not there. So that's why I say, they don't really know who they are. It's not that they can't find out, it's not that consciousness can't be brought back, but at this point, just the way that things are... it's about the past. "


Being Civilized

"We live in a society which does not follow the teachings of its past.... it's commandments or whatever you want to call it. But its religious moral values.. i don't necessarily think that what its all about about. Its about responsibility. We live in a technologic society that follows a dominator male god, and they say, they speak, that they follow a religious moral value. We live in a society that does not follow that religious moral value about coveting and stealing and killing... You know, all the stuff... the worship of false idols and stuff like that. This society listens to none of those teachings. So, to me it's like they don't feel any kind of spiritual relationship, continuity to their own ancestry, the ancestral past."

Just go back to the tribes. The People of america, they are the children of the tribes of europe. And when they were still the tribes, they worshiped the earth as the mother, and had an entirely different perception of reality. And that perception was to keep the harmony and the balance as much as possible, and somewhere historically in time, there appeared the dominator theory of god. This dominator theory of god was that god was a male, and everything was subservient. This theory was used as technology, and its culture, to make weapons of destruction, to improve the weapons of killing. The tribes then had this imposed upon them through fear. As the tribes were broken down through the various faces, the technological civilizations, whether it was through the romans, or whoever it was, it was all evolving. The Tribes were attacked and made to give up the ways of the earth, and submit to the new god.

This happened to the europeans before it happen to us. But what happen to us, happen to the european children of the tribes also. But it happened maybe 800 years before it happen to us. Actually, in its own form, at that particular time within civilization, when the europeans came to the western hemisphere, europe was going through the inquisition. The inquisition was basically the church establishing authority over the people of the earth... to maintain authority. They had 500 years of inquisition. And In the inquisition women were special targets, because they were trying to erase that tribal memory of the earth as the mother. But the deal was, if you were accused of speaking against the church, you were automatically guilty, and they had to torture you, and you had to tell them all the names that you could give them, and they sized all your property.

Prior to this, the People were coexisting with the religious authority, they were still closer to their tribal ancestor. So by the time columbus got here, it was like a virus now within the Human Being, the Physical Spirit. And its now entering into the dna, almost into the genetic memory. So the citizens have been afraid for a long time. They had nothing but fear for so long, longer then us as the People here, because our encounter with this whole perception of reality is 500 years rather than 3000.

Being Normal

"The state of mental confusion that exists that is called, "normalcy", they are tolerating a situation in life where they continually and perpetually feel powerless. And because they tolerate and perpetuate that situation, they are spiritually disconnecting themselves from their descendants, from their future, because the environment is continuing to be attacked, the life support systems of the planet. The systems of authority which call themselves government and business, they are entrenching this wage slave system, i mean its inflation and recession and trillion dollar national debts and things.. But you see, what it is in the end, it's a form of economic enslavement, for their children, and their children, and their children... So it's like, We live in a contemporary society that doesn't know who it is. You know, they just don't know who they are. And this situation has become created."

Being Powerful

"I think we live in a time where the society relates to authority as power, and basically has no real understanding of power, alright. Fine lines now, all these fine lines... there is the reality and the illusion, right? Like there's the Human and the Being, and there's all... But we live in a time where through technological progress and the whole concept of technologic... our memories get erased of what is true and real about our past, and new memories, inbred through the generations to meet the definition of technologic submission. Because thats what, in the end.

So everything gets defined for us. See we are well into the technological reich, so were well into it, so by this stage of our Human evolution, here we are surrounded by this technological reich and its definition. And it has defined for us that power is authority. You see, whether you accumulate all the money, thats authority, that's really about authority, if you accumulate the military, thats really about authority its not about power, its about authority. To have dominator religions, its not about power its about authority. But with these systems of authority. where power comes into play, is we all have Human energy, essence, spirit. So these systems of authority mine our Human energies, essence, spirit as power.

They turn it into a power to run their authority systems, which we always remain subservient to. Because, if we think money is what makes power, and I don't have enough money, well then guess what that makes me. Or whoever has the biggest gun is the most powerful, and I don't have any, then guess what that makes me. So we are all looking at the situation like we have no power, but we have been lied to. They have authority, see thats what it is, power is something else. They have authority, and they maintain authority, through violence and deceit, in some ways because their own lack of power."


Being Physical Spirit

"Well, I mean, we could chase abstraction here, right... I don't know, I think power has to do... Human Being.. Physical Being Spirit, Human Being. Human Being, Physical Spirit. I think that power is in there, in relationship to the Human Beings. Power is in the clarity that is that physical spirit. The coherence that is in that physical spirit. It is about self respect, it's about recognition of self, is really what it is. But see, we've been mined by the technologic authority systems, in ways being like dissected by race, culture, class, and all the other little things. And then dissected inside of our own heads with all the little insecurities, and the self doubts and the blame and all of this and that. See, so we have no coherence, no clarity, as Physical Spirits.

And this has to be for us, as Human Beings, where power really is. Because the authoritarians have went to great extremes, tremendous extremes, to keep us incoherent as Physical Spirits. It's like from the political days, about being spied upon. Someone come to tell on you, or what is said in meetings or in public gatherings. And it made me understand, they have all the "power", so to speak, authority... So what do they care what anybody says? You see, that means power something that we're not really really looking at."


Being Responsible

"John: We'll to me its been brought down to the point of, we are at war with each one another, at war with ourselves inside our own heads. And now about the illusion and the reality, you see to me, this is all part of the illusion. The reality is that ts all about responsibility. We are responsible. Physical Spirit, Human Being. So we are responsible as Physical Spirits, as Human Beings. Responsible to life. See thats what it is, but we live in these authority systems, that tell us and condition us to blame. They condition us with guilt, sin and blame. And with that conditioning, you are always the blamer, it's never one's responsibility. Carry the guilt, carry it all, but in the end, even that whole concept is to feel guilty, to live lives dominated... You see, what always through me off was that we're guilty for being here.... Thats insane.

We could end that definition, but once we go by that technological definition, then already, our definition of self is being attacked. It conditions us to not take responsibility. It conditions us to blame. Very minimally blame ourselves, or someone else, but it does not teach us about responsibility. Even if you feel guilt, we have to blame ourselves, And its not about guilt, its about responsibility. It's about learning from the things we go through, and its about responsibility.


Being Creative

"You go find your own reality. You got a mind, you have creative... we all are creative. It's just that we use too much of our creative process or creative ability irresponsibly. We use it on a daily basis to create again what our fears and our insecurities are. I think that if we make conscious effort, to use that creative ability differently. The same way we learn to do anything, so we have to tell our mind to do this, right. We'll start to use that creative part of us, in a different way. And we should never lie to ourselves. Never... about who we are, what we are capable of. We should never lie to ourselves. We should always tell ourselves the truth, even if we don't like those truths. But we should always tell ourselves the truth, if we don't do that, how can we define our own basis of reality?"


Being Fear

That's because the People in that world don't know who they are. They're spirit is being eaten upon, their individual collective spirit. Is being fed upon. It is the energy that runs the authoritarian system. Some of them are more obedient that others, more well behaved then others, And have their respectabilities in the different stratas of the society. Generally speaking, this society at large is not happy with itself, its the fear. Think about the guilt, sin... fear, its run on. You got to fear your god, you got to fear your Lucifer. So what's the difference. It's fear. Fear is a natural Human feeling, and its not a frivolous feeling, but there's a point where it's no longer fear, and it's just mass paranoia. And thats not really fear... fear is where your heart jumps right in your throat because it just does. Fear is where it just spins inside of you when you blood is running into itself. Fear is something that is very very real. That's fear. I mean there is fear, but then there's this collective paranoia, and that's what I think it is more than it is fear. And it has a nice convenient little term, but there is this collective paranoia.


Being Consciousness

I think that the overall advances in what they call technology have changed our reality, and television is only one of those things. It seems to me that when you go back to europe in the middle ages and they had the fiefdoms and the serfdom, and they kept everybody basically ignorant as to what was really going on. You see it hasn't changed. Television didn't come along and turn everyone ignorant to what was really going on, they were already. Generally speaking, television is not used in the healthiest best ways... lets put it this way; it's not used in responsible ways... to me it all becomes relative, whether it's the TV or the fax, it's the collective advancement of this technologic mindset, without any sense of responsibility.

So the television did it, the movies, the radio... an it's like, the one thing about TV, because now we know that they will never use it responsibly, if you look within our generation, it helped to spread a global consciousness, in spite of whatever the negatives about it are, it helped to spread a global consciousness among Human Beings that had not really had that consciousness before, did not really have that understanding before that.TV helped to elevate the global consciousness in the technologic world of sexism and environment. See, if there had not been this television and these things within our generation we could not have raised that consciousness."


Being Evolution

When we look at the evolutionary continuation, alright, the authoritarians, and their way, and the way of the earth and the need to live, these two ways. I think the very fact that within our generation, the consciousness of sexism and the environment, was raised to the level that it's been raised that it won't go away voluntarily. The women will not just turn around an walk away from it, and the environmental awakening, these people aren't going to turn around and walk away form it either. But the authoritarians with their economic system and all the things they are creating now, at some point these things must meet. I find it very interesting that the main accomplishment within our generation, to me, was using that consciousness of environment and earth. Because it's almost like taping into that unconscious genetic memory, linkage, and putting that back together.


Being Technology

When we made Tribal Voice, what we wanted to do, was I wanted to take... in a way it's got to do with energy. Alright, for terminology I'm going to say energy. I wanted to take and see what we could do with the voices, through the chants and the harmonies, through the spoken word, through the use of the drum, and through what the spoken words was saying, the thoughts. So I was looking in terms with these four natural elements and what can we make with them.

These four natural forms of energy or spirit, can we make something that would have a life, when you feed it into the recording, the technological system, that it would have a life, it's own life when it went in it would have a life. We weren't using the technological system to create the Spirit. So that as what it was all about. I wanted to try that, and I wanted to try that with electronic music. At that time we made the Tribal Voice tape with the traditional music. Then I then took the spoken word and put it with electric music. I wanted to do that. I went from Tribal Voice to Graffiti Man because I wanted to. And again, in my mind, it was still using the same formula, about the Spirit and this energy. And now we were using the technology in a little bit of a different way because we were using all these electric instruments, the language of music... to see if we could mix these, and to see what kind of energy, create a life..."


Being Expression

"More and more we need to start expressing our truths, we need to start expressing our feelings. I think that the more of us will recognize our truths and express them, will recognize feeling and express them. The more of us that will do that, I think we then start t create the Way to get around that wall. But as far as any specific strategy, individually, we have to figure out what we would do ourselves."


Audio: John Trudell - Power, Authority and Tribal Genocide (KLOS 10/10/94)

[faust]

Quote:but i wholeheartedly agree - <span style="color:#66FF99">"We can't out-fight them, but we can out-think them" - something that seems lost by too many troofers.

Seems too defeatist to me. Who says you can't out-fight them with your mind? Isn't this what strategy is about? out-think and out-fight are the same (to me)

Quote:where i struggle with his reasoning is the idea that <span style="color:#66FF99">"if everyone got up and said...'I'm not going to enable the lie anymore'--you would have nonviolent change". as i think it is both unrealistic and unworkable. if, if, if, if fairies existed they could magic away all of our problems - yeah, right.

Agreed, like non-violence will accomplish anything in this day in age... the fact of reality is that force is an essential tool for the elites. All laws/plans etc are backed up with force. In today's set-up, how can you non-violently say you're not going to pay taxes to a government you dont believe in? Even if 30 million rebelled and took the government to court, and the court deemed in favour of the non-tax payers, the judgement is enforced by law, which would be enforced by the police. Non-violence is futile and unrealistic ideal in todays world, we must fight to achieve this ideal in the long term for our descendants

[ccarota]

<blockquote>Beauties of Babylon

Hidden in the beauties of Babylon
The civilized behavioral notoriety
The more evil the empire
The more paranoid the society
Building to the new world order
We're expected to carry the stone

Emperors and the feeding Class
Human beings being used up fast
The miners keep on mining
Intelligence is the mother-load
Imagination as an energy source
In this predators way of dining

Defining how and what we think
As we're led to the way to believe
Conditioned reaction
We call thought
Our reality rides
In how we perceive

In the ways of being lost and alone
Who runs from their doubt and fear
In the mask of everything's normal
Who's not feeling or seeing too clear

Could be we're being programmed
Anyway our spirit bleeds
All over our lives.
Our lives become fuel
For predator needs

Hidden in the beauties of Babylon
The civilized behavioral notoriety
The more evil the empire
The more paranoid the society




-John Trudell


</blockquote>

[mothandrust]

Quote:

Quote:but i wholeheartedly agree - <span style="color:#66FF99">"We can't out-fight them, but we can out-think them" - something that seems lost by too many troofers.

Seems too defeatist to me. Who says you can't out-fight them with your mind? Isn't this what strategy is about? out-think and out-fight are the same (to me)

agreed faust, using the widest interpretation of fight - as one should perhaps use 'warrior' - but i think in separating thinking from fighting, (even though in a holistic sense they are inseparable) he is isolating and focusing the term to mean physical violence and that to my mind cannot be the answer.

(i think we are agreeing aren't we?)

[ccarota]

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 tribes 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 to knowledge. 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 t 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 the cure. 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: B, E, LIE, V, E. 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

[resonate]

Quote:Agreed, like non-violence will accomplish anything in this day in age... the fact of reality is that force is an essential tool for the elites. All laws/plans etc are backed up with force. In today's set-up, how can you non-violently say you're not going to pay taxes to a government you dont believe in? Even if 30 million rebelled and took the government to court, and the court deemed in favour of the non-tax payers, the judgement is enforced by law, which would be enforced by the police. Non-violence is futile and unrealistic ideal in todays world, we must fight to achieve this ideal in the long term for our descendants

Who are we fighting exactly?

We have to deem Government/Corporations unnecessary, and become collective-independants.

We have to know how to live without the grocery stores or "income" or "employer", and learning about natural systems is an answer. Because you can use this info for permacultural living, or being able to survive simply, in and out of the woods.

This technological way requires that we live the way we do. And it makes us think we like it! You know you don't fuckin like it! it's all a big waste of life. How can incessant repetition be interesting? more like artifically comforting.