Personal life

In 1968, Trudell married his first wife, Fenicia "Lou" Ordonez.
In 1972, Trudell married Tina Manning, an activist of the Duckwater Shoshone Tribe. They had three children together: Ricarda Star, Sunshine Karma, and Eli Changing Sun. In February 1979, Tina (who was pregnant), the children and her mother Leah Hicks-Manning were all killed in a fire at her parents' house on the Duck Valley Reservation. Her father Arthur survived. Trudell was out of town.^[6]
Trudell was in a relationship with Marcheline Bertrand, the mother of actress Angelina Jolie, at the time of her death from cancer in 2007.^[13][14]
In early December 2015, it was announced that Trudell was in the last stages of terminal cancer.^[15] His death was prematurely announced on the evening of December 4, 2015; his publicist asked for a retraction and the stories were largely removed from the websites where they had been posted.^[15] Trudell died on December 8, 2015.^[16][17] Before dying, he said: "My ride showed up. Celebrate Love. Celebrate Life."