Political controversy

In 2004, Trudell testified in the federal trial of Arlo Looking Cloud, an Oglala Lakota American Indian Movement (AIM) member charged in the kidnapping and murder of Anna Mae Aquash, the highest-ranking woman in AIM, in December 1975. Trudell testified that Looking Cloud had told him that John Graham, another low-level AIM member, was the gunman in the murder. Trudell identified Graham from photographs. Looking Cloud was convicted in 2004 and sentenced to life imprisonment.
His testimony was part of the evidence considered by the Canadian judge who ordered Graham's extradition to the United States in February 2005. On March 2, 2005, the Native Youth Movement Vancouver announced a boycott of John Trudell's music and poetry in retaliation for his testimony, and alleged that the FBI had killed Aquash.^[11] In early 2006, Michael Donnelly explored the issues related to the Aquash murder in the American political newsletter CounterPunch. He documented why Trudell's testimony should be considered substantive and that activists were getting on the wrong side of the issue by attacking him.^[12] In 2010, Graham was convicted in a South Dakota state court of felony murder of Aquash and sentenced to life imprisonment.