39 Facts About John Trudell

John Trudell was a Native American author, poet, actor, musician, and political activist.

John Trudell was the spokesperson for the Indians of All Tribes' takeover of Alcatraz beginning in 1969, broadcasting as Radio Free Alcatraz.

The documentary John Trudell was made about him and his life as an activist and artist.

John Trudell was born in Omaha, Nebraska on February 15,1946, the son of a Santee Dakota father and a Mexican mother.

John Trudell grew up in small towns near the Santee Sioux Reservation in northern Nebraska near the southeast corner of South Dakota.

John Trudell was educated in local schools and in Santee Dakota culture.

At the age of 17 in 1963, John Trudell dropped out of high school and left the Midwest to join the US Navy.

John Trudell served during the early years of the Vietnam War and stayed in the Navy until 1967.

John Trudell went to Alcatraz a week after the occupation started.

John Trudell used his background in broadcasting and ran a radio station from the island through a cooperative arrangement with students at the University of California, Berkeley, broadcasting at night over the Berkeley FM station KPFA.

John Trudell discussed the cause of the occupation and American Indian issues, and played traditional Native American music.

John Trudell became a spokesperson for the occupation specifically and for the Alcatraz-Red Power Movement generally, as the author Vine Deloria, Jr.

John Trudell was the spokesman for the nearly two-year-long occupation, until 1971.

John Trudell acted as its national chairman from 1973 until 1979.

John Trudell took the position after the first chairman, Carter Camp, was convicted for actions related to a protest and was sentenced to jail.

The house fire that killed John Trudell's family happened within 24 hours of him burning a US flag on the steps of the FBI building in Washington DC in protest of the government's treatment of Native Americans and the Sioux Nation.

John Trudell believed that the fire was meant to threaten and silence him and his activist wife.

John Trudell believed that the fire was arson, but the BIA police investigation claimed that it was accidental.

In 2004, John Trudell testified in the federal trial of Arlo Looking Cloud, an Oglala Lakota American Indian Movement member charged in the kidnapping and murder of Anna Mae Aquash, the highest-ranking woman in AIM, in December 1975.

John Trudell's testimony was part of the evidence considered by the Canadian judge who ordered Graham's extradition to the United States in February 2005.

John Trudell was the co-founder, with Willie Nelson, of Hempstead Project Heart, which became a project of Earth Island Institute in 2012.

John Trudell was involved with Seva Foundation and their Native American programs.

John Trudell performed at numerous benefit concerts in support of their work.

In 1968, John Trudell married his first wife, Fenicia "Lou" Ordonez, divorcing in 1970.

In 1972, John Trudell married Tina Manning, an activist of the Duck Valley Shoshone Paiute Tribe.

All of this occurred within a day of John Trudell burning the American Flag on the steps of the Capitol building in Washington DC.

John Trudell was in a relationship with Marcheline Bertrand, the mother of actress Angelina Jolie, at the time of her death from cancer in 2007.

In early December 2015, it was announced that John Trudell was in the last stages of terminal cancer.

John Trudell's death was prematurely announced on the evening of December 4,2015; his publicist asked for a retraction and the stories were largely removed from the websites where they had been posted.

In 1979, John Trudell met musical artist and activist Jackson Browne and became more interested in the musical world.

John Trudell recorded an album AKA Grafitti Man with Kiowa guitarist Jesse Ed Davis that was originally available on cassette tape format only.

In 1992, John Trudell remade and re-released AKA Grafitti Man as an audio CD to substantial critical and popular acclaim.

About six months after the deaths of his family, John Trudell started writing poetry.

John Trudell toured in 1993 with Peter Gabriel's global WOMAD production.

John Trudell was billed as John Trudell, performing his traditional songs and reading his poetry.

John Trudell created a career as an actor, performing in roles in Pow Wow Highway, Thunderheart, On Deadly Ground and Smoke Signals.

John Trudell was an adviser to the production of Incident at Oglala, directed by Michael Apted and produced by Robert Redford.

John Trudell played a character named Coyote in a story about A Spider and Coyote.

The filmmaker Heather Rae spent more than a decade making a documentary about John Trudell, which was released in 2005.