Writing Career
About six months after the deaths of his family, Trudell started writing. He describes his poetry as the following: “They’re called poems but in reality they’re lines given to me to hang on to.” He has written many poems, including "Baby Boom Che" and "Rant and Roll". He sets his poetry as lyrics for recordings, and in 1982 started to set them to traditional American Indian music.
In late 1988, Midnight Oil took Trudell (as Graffiti Man) on tour with them for From Diesel and Dust to the Big Mountain. They billed themselves as a Native American activist performance act. They played traditional instruments, sang in native American languages, and accompanied the songs with heavy Hendrix-style guitar. This brought Trudell to a new and larger audience.
Trudell toured in 1993 with Peter Gabriel's WOMAD tour. He was billed as John Trudell, performing his traditional songs and reading his poetry. In 2008, he published a book, Lines From a Mined Mind: The Words of John Trudell, a collection of 25 years of poetry, lyrics and essays.
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