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# Only one side to the story
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/only-one-side-to-the-story/
- Published: 2006-02-24T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T17:18:13.000Z
- Author: Dan Dunn
- Tags: local, Santa Monica, #archive-import

Native American filmmaker Heather Rae spent upwards of a decade capturing images and collecting archival footage to chronicle the life of a true original, Native American poet/civil rights leader John Trudell. The result is a documentary that while informative and intermittently entertaining, is too one-dimensional to recommend very highly. Rae is enamored with her legendarily subversive subject, and this 80-minute exercise in hero worship eventually becomes wearisome. Balance is needed, but there is none. Rather than underscore Trudell’s epic struggle against the perceived forces of intolerance by including opposing viewpoints, Rae relies on Trudell’s provocative yet oblique anti-government proclamations along with laudatory testimonials from the likes of Robert Redford and Bonnie Raitt. With but one perspective in play, “Trudell” lacks the necessary element of conflict that makes for great documentaries. (NOT RATED. RUNNING TIME: 80 MINUTES)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 24, 2006.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/022406.pdf?ref=smdp.com)