And indigenous activist, poet and actor John Trudell has died in California at the age of 69. Trudell was the spokesman of the American Indian Movement during the 1969 occupation of Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay, where he set up a radio broadcast called Radio Free Alcatraz. He later served as the head of the American Indian Movement for most of the 1970s. Trudell was also a poet and musician. This is John Trudell speaking in New York City in 1979 from the 2005 documentary “Trudell.”

John Trudell: “I’m a member of the American Indian Movement, and I’m from the indigenous nations of the Western Hemisphere. As the indigenous people, we have watched. We have watched this thing happen on our hemisphere. We have seen what has happened. We have seen the community confused and attacked. We understand that the issue is the land, the issue is the earth. We cannot change the political system, we cannot change the economic system, we cannot change the social system, until the people control the land, and then we take it out of the hands of that sick minority that chooses to pervert the meaning and the intention of humanity.”