John Trudell: Poet, actor, musician and activist for the rights of Native Americans who led an occupation of Alcatraz

John Trudell, who has died of cancer, was a poet and actor as well as a spokesman for American Indian protesters during their 1969 occupation of Alcatraz Island who later led the American Indian Movement.

He was born in 1946, in Omaha, Nebraska. His father was Santee Sioux, and Trudell grew up near the Santee Sioux Reservation. He became involved in Native American activism after a stint in the US Navy, serving in a destroyer off the Vietnamese coast.

In 1969, Trudell joined American Indians who had occupied Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay to demand that the former federal prison should be given to Native Americans under treaty rights. Trudell, who studied radio and broadcasting at a college in San Bernardino, California, became spokesman for the group that called itself the United Indians of All Tribes, and he ran a radio broadcast from the island called Radio Free Alcatraz.

The protest eventually dwindled, and the last demonstrators were removed by federal officers after 19 months. Trudell went on to serve as national chairman of the activist American Indian Movement from 1973 to 1979.

In 1979, while he was demonstrating in Washington, DC, his pregnant second wife, Tina Manning, three children and mother-in-law were killed in a fire at her parents’ home on the Duck Valley Indian Reservation in Nevada. Trudell and others long suspected government involvement, but the cause of the fire was never determined. Trudell later had a relationship with the actress and producer Marcheline Bertrand, mother of Angelina Jolie, before her 2007 death from cancer. She was an executive producer of the 2005 documentary, Trudell.

Trudell was a prolific poet, combining spoken words and music on more than a dozen albums, including one released earlier this year. His fans included Kris Kristofferson, who paid tribute to Trudell with the 1995 song “Johnny Lobo”, a tune Kristofferson still frequently performs live. Trudell also acted in several films, including 1992’s Thunderheart, starring Val Kilmer, and 1998’s Smoke Signals. In 2012, Trudell and the singer Willie Nelson co-founded Hempstead Project Heart, which campaigns for legalising the growing of hemp for industrial purposes as a more environmentally sound alternative to crops used for clothing, biofuel and food.

John Trudell, author, musician and activist: born Omaha, Nebraska 15 February 1946; twice married (three children, deceased); died Santa Clara County, California 8 December 2015.