Help me build a library to honor and amplify John Trudell's life and message at https://github.com/siznax/trudell.
To my knowledge, no one has collected the works of John Trudell—radio broadcasts, interviews, articles, letters, poems, music, performances, speeches, and talks—other than by fragmentary uploads to social media, personal blogs, some commercial websites, and public reporting.
I am archiving much of this material, organizing it, and will attempt to present in such a way as to amplify John Trudell's voice and powerful words, and to make them freely available forever to everyone. This would not include his commercially viable output, which this library would seek to promote for the benefit of his estate.
However, archiving John Trudell's life and work is not enough. I am also archiving everything John Trudell and his family struggled against, including the known (oral and documented) history of the indigenous people of Turtle Island (North America) since the arrival of Europeans.
I am gathering and organizing material on GitHub because is easy to use, free, accessible, reliable, durable, and capacious. However, GitHub is still a commercial enterprise with all of the attendant vulnerabilities. Therefore, all documents and media there will be uploaded/copied to a new collection at a non-government archive which has a mandate to preserve, maintain, and make available this collection to the public for free, for ever.
I claim no right to do this other than that of free speech. I am only a strongly like-minded human (and coincidental technologist). I was born in the U.S. but I am partly of European descent and not a member of a tribe. However, John Trudell's life and words have changed my understanding of the world and what I choose to do with my time here.
I am seeking guidance and participation from friends of John Trudell, tribal members, and like-minded people everywhere. If there is a better way to preserve, contextualize, and amplify his voice, please contact me. I would very much like to help because non-indigenous people continue to do great harm to the indigenous, so it is critical to help the non-indigenous to understand that.
With indigenous guidance and participation, I know that we can build an independent "American Indian" collection that far exceeds the quality, accessibility, impact, and durability of vulnerable personal collections on commercial platforms like Facebook and YouTube, official records retained by governments, or even Trudell's commercially available products. I also know that honoring John Trudell's life and work with a dedicated library would be of tremendous benefit to this world, especially now, in the wake of the brutal killing of George Floyd and the subsequent hightened awareness of persistent white supremacist forces at work in this country.
I propose this collection be the basis for a new library to be named in honor of John Trudell and his family for their contributions to indigenous people everywhere. My hope is that announcing the library could be an occasion for a pow wow where selections from Trudell’s 1983 album Tribal Voice may be performed live with a drum group and speakers selected to read his poems.
In solidarity,
Steve Sisney
San Francisco, CA
May 2020