The words of John Trudell, who walked on late last year, ring out in this video by filmmakers Heather Rae, Cody Lucich and Ben Dupris, who recently spent time with the water protectors near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation who are trying to stop the Dakota Access oil pipeline’s proposed route under the Missouri River. His words, delivered in the 1980 speech We Are Power, are even more prophetic in the wake of the destruction of sacred burial grounds and the use of dogs and pepper spray against those who tried to stop it.
“The brutality of the American corporate state way of life is nothing more than violence and repression, and it has nothing to do with power,” Trudell’s voice says. “It is brutality. It’s a lack of a sane balance.”
Rae, who produced and directed the 2005 Sundance Film Festival documentary selection Trudell, teamed up with Lucich and Dupris and posted this on the Sundance Institute’s website. They graciously shared this, their footage of the movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline, with Indian Country Today Media Network.