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John Trudell, musician, actor, Santee activist and poet said that when he buried his wife and three children, he became the earth that received them.

His family, along with his mother-in-law, died in a house fire he maintained to his death was set by the FBI in 1979 to silence him and AIM, the American Indian Movement.

Known for his peaceful opposition to unjust government policy towards Indigenous people—and as someone who had a key role in every significant event of his time having to do with equal rights for Native Americans—John also advocated for the earth because “the natural world has a right to existence and we are only a small part of it.”

Questioning society’s material addiction and misled priorities, he dedicated his life to Indigenous human rights and land issues.

His intelligent wit and outspoken lobbying also made him one of the FBI’s most wanted.

“After he lost his family, we never saw him, and he went into himself. That’s when his anger and sorrow began to come out in the poetry most people know him for,” said his half-sister Edna Baumann-Trudell. John, by this time, had retreated to Vancouver, trying unsuccessfully to obtain asylum and refugee status in Canada.

Lengthy gaps had always punctuated reunions between John and his birth family.

“He thought he was being followed by the FBI and he didn’t want to put any of us in danger,” Baumann-Trudell said. But she remembers her kid brother as a quick-talker who could get anybody to do anything.

“He got my sister to do his chores by telling her he didn’t know how to sweep and he wanted her to demonstrate. By the time she finished, the job was done and he skipped off. He was always doing stuff like that. Smart as a fox. And with a wicked sense of humour.”

Born on Feb. 15, 1946 in Omaha, Nebraska, John was raised by a truck-driving Santee Sioux father, Clifford Trudell, and a Mexican Indian mother who died in childbirth when he was only six.

“He was your typical boy who hated school,” said Baumann-Trudell. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy at 17 in 1963 to get away from book learning; upon returning to civilian life he went to California, got married, and trained for a career in radio and broadcas