11/20/22 - John Trudell’s Thanksgiving Day Address, 1980

Nov 22, 2022

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First Voices Radio digs deep into our 30-year-old archive and brings listeners another interpretation and observation surrounding the American holiday known as “Thanksgiving.” The late John Trudell’s “Thanksgiving Day Address” is from 1980 but how his observations have stood the test of time and still ring true. The names of U.S. politicians that John mentions have changed over the years but the issues that Native peoples faced then and now remain the same. John Trudell (1946-2015) has been identified as a poet, a fighter for Native American rights, an agitator, and many other things. But if you were to have asked him which of these descriptions best suits him he would have refused to be pinned down. “Actually I don’t consider myself to be any of those things. They’re things that I do…but they’re parts of me. They’re not the total.” Indeed, Trudell was the complex sum of all that he saw, endured and accomplished during his 69 years, a time when he experienced more than most people might in several lifetimes. More information about John Trudell can be found at https://www.johntrudell.com/.

Production Credits:
Tiokasin Ghosthorse (Lakota), Host and Executive Producer
Liz Hill (Red Lake Ojibwe), Producer
Malcolm Burn, Studio Engineer, Radio Kingston, WKNY 1490 AM and 107.9 FM, Kingston, NY
Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Audio Editor

Music Selections:
1. Song Title: Tahi Roots Mix (First Voices Radio Theme Song)
Artist: Moana and the Moa Hunters
Album: Tahi (1993)
Label: Southside Records (Australia and New Zealand)
(00:00:22)

2. Song Title: Caravan of Fools
Artist: John Prine
Album: The Tree of Forgiveness (2018)
Label: Oh Boy Records
(00:02:08)

3. Song: The Cleansing (Red Earth Song)
Artist: John Trudell
CD: Tribal Voice (1983)
Label: Effective Records
(00:29:30)

4. Song: Wildseed
Artist: John Trudell and Kwest
Album: Through the Dust (2014)
Label: Dialect Records
(00:45:15)

5. Song Title: The States I’m In
Artist: Bruce Coburn
Album: Bone on Bone (2017)
Label: True North
(00:50:15)

6. Song Title: This is not America
Artist: David Bowie and Pat Metheny Group
Single: The Falcon and the Snowman (1984)
Label: EMI

AKANTU INSTITUTE
Visit Akantu Institute, an institute that Tiokasin founded with a mission of contextualizing original wisdom for troubled times. Go to https://akantuinstitute.org/ to find out more and consider joining his Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/Ghosthorse.