Biography
John Trudell was a Santee Dakota poet, musician, and the spokesperson for the 1969–71 Indigenous occupation of Alcatraz. He served as national chairman of the American Indian Movement from 1973 to 1979, during the height of FBI repression of AIM. On February 11, 1979 — twelve hours after he burned an American flag on the steps of the FBI headquarters in Washington in protest of the prosecution of Leonard Peltier — his pregnant wife Tina Manning Trudell, his three children Ricarda, Sunshine, and Eli, and his mother-in-law Leah Hicks-Manning all died in a fire that destroyed their home on the Duck Valley Reservation in Nevada. The fire was officially ruled accidental; Trudell and many AIM supporters maintained until his death that it was arson in retaliation for his organizing. Despite years of FBI surveillance documented in a roughly 17,000-page file, he was never convicted of a serious offense.
