John Trudell, a Native American, public speaker, human rights activist, poet, artist, musician, spiritualist, and man who stands for the oppressed, was bestowed with a vision to keep the peace among his people and was hated for it.

If you have never heard of Trudell, treat yourself for 79 minutes to the documentary film “Trudell” (directed by Heather Rae, produced by Appaloosa Pictures, written by Russell Friedenberg, 2005).

Trudell has exhibited an endless amount of energy, fighting for the protection of the earth and its environment and standing up for Native Americans and indigenous people throughout the world. Trudell has been a critic of lies, avarice, corporatocracy, and the United States’ constant avoidance of adhering to treaties the US has signed with the Native American people. He has been persecuted from all sides, which culminated in the murder of his wife, children and mother-in-law. Rather than letting hate and despair hold sway over his being, Trudell was strengthened and redeveloped his life of public speaking and art.

As the FBI launched their Counter Intelligence Program (COINTEL PRO) in the early 1970s, the American Indian Movement (AIM) and John Trudell came under excessive scrutiny and persecution. “John Trudell is extremely eloquent and therefore extremely dangerous …” read an FBI memo, according to the film. This was the beginning of an age of violence on a number of Native American reservations, in which the FBI and hired GOON Squads engaged in military assaults on AIM members throughout the Dakotas, resulting in the murder of many innocent Native Americans.

“Between 1968 and 1979 the FBI amassed a 17,000-page dossier on John Trudell, one of the longest in the agency’s history,” according to the documentary.

“The great lie is civilization,” Trudell explains. “It is not civilized. It has literally been the most blood-thirsty, brutalizing system ever imposed upon this planet. That is not civilization. And that is the great lie, that it represents civilization. Or if it does represent civilization, and if it that is what civilization truly is, then the great lie is that civilization is really what is good for us.”

Trudell began to recognize that there were greater forces at play that are attempting to enslave the minds of all people within the world, so as to continue to develop a machine that perpetuates greed, corruption and imbalanced wealth. This is Trudell’s fight to the present day: to insightfully uncover the lies that keep people from actualizing their freedom in a world populated with false ideologies that lead to over consumption and a lack of self-respect and indifference to the spirit of humanity and the earth.

Notable events in “Trudell” (with historical footage) are Native Americans’ 1969-1971 occupation of Alcatraz Island and the 1972 occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington D.C., the 1973 showdown at Wounded Knee, and the 1975 Pine Ridge shootout and the polluting of the Pine Ridge Reservation water resources.

Guest appearances include Robert Redford, Sam Shepard, Val Kilmer, and a number of leaders in the American Indian Movement.

Most video stores do not carry “Trudell”; however, it may be watched on YouTube or Google at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jm0iOoyED8 or order the film at http://www.trudellthemovie.com.

For more information about John Trudell, check out http://www.johntrudell.com.