John Trudell (1946–2015)

John Trudell was born in Omaha, Nebraska on February 15, 1946. He studied radio and broadcasting at a college in San Bernardino, California. He served in the U.S. Navy on a destroyer off the Vietnamese coast. He became involved in Native American activism and was a spokesman for American Indian show more protesters during their 1969 occupation of Alcatraz Island and served as national chairman of the American Indian Movement from 1973 to 1979. He was a prolific poet, who combined spoken words and music on more than a dozen albums. He also acted in several movies including Thunderheart and Smoke Signals. There was a 2005 documentary about him called Trudell. In 2012, Trudell and singer Willie Nelson co-founded Hempstead Project Heart, which advocates for legalizing the growing of hemp for industrial purposes as a more environmentally sound alternative to crops used for clothing, biofuel and food. He died of cancer on December 8, 2015 at the age of 69. (Bowker Author Biography) show less