November 18, 2019 • 38 mins
This episode gives context for the Occupation of Alcatraz, including a brief survey of U.S. government policy toward Native people from the colonial period through the 1950. It also covers some Alcatraz history and an earlier occupation in 1964.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying.
We are coming up on the fiftieth anniversary of the
occupation of Alcatraz by a group of Native activists known
(00:22):
as Indians of All Tribes. This is something that's been
on my list for a while and I just kind
of held it knowing that the that the fiftieth anniversary
was coming up. This was a pivotal moment in Native
American activism and advocacy and for a lot of Native
people living at the time. They also talked about how
it shaped their own sense of identity, whether they physically
(00:43):
went to the island at some point or not. And
this is a story that we're going to be telling
in two parts because this act of protest was connected
to US government policies toward Native Americans in the nineteen
fifties and sixties that we haven't ever really talked about
on the show before. So today's episode is really about
the context for the occupation of Alcatraz, including sort of
(01:05):
a survey course of the long arc of US government
policy toward Native people from the colonial period up through
the nineteen fifties. It's basically like the very first portion
of the show. And then we'll talk about that policy
and how it set the stage for all of this,
and I get into a little bit of Alcatraz history
and an earlier occupation that happened in nineteen sixty four
(01:27):
before the nineteen sixty nine one. That is the bigger
part of this episode, and the next time we'll be
talking about that nineteen sixty nine occupation itself and its impact.
We do not have an exact count, or even an
agreed upon estimate, of how many people were living in
the Americas before Europeans arrived in four Sometimes you might
(01:47):
think no one was here, because the way history books
are written, that is false, super false. Europeans did not
really start trying to figure it out until decades or
even centuries after that fourteen ninety two start point of
when they started thinking about the Americas as somewhere they were,
and when their own activities had caused a massive population
drops through warfare, genocide, and introduced diseases. So the starting point,
(02:12):
based on what they observed around them, was a number
that had already been drastically reduced. Plus it worked in
Europeans own self interest to make it sound like the
continent had been very sparsely populated before colonization started. Again. Yeah,
that was not true at all. According to an article
published in Quaternary Science Reviews in March of en, there
(02:34):
were as many as sixty million people in the America's before,
with between two point eight million and five point seven
million of them living in North America. Some estimates for
the North American population go up as high as twenty
million people, with the total population of the America's being
much higher. That might not sound like that many compared
(02:54):
to how many people live here today, but like we're
talking about pre industrial populations, the whole world had fewer
people than it does today by a lot. This represented
thousands of different native nations, all of them with their
own languages and political systems and cultures and alliances. In
a general sense, you can divide US policy toward Native
(03:15):
Americans into a few general periods, some of which we
have talked about on the show before and some of
which we absolutely have not. The colonial period stretched from
fourteen ninety two to eighteen twenty eight, so from Columbus's arrival,
through the Revolutionary War, and then into the first few
decades of the United States existence as a nation. Of course,
the same process was also happening elsewhere in the America's
(03:38):
but we are really focusing on what is now the
US in these episodes. Some of our previous episodes on
this period cover, for example, Bacon's Rebellion, the Cochico Massacre,
and the Anglo Cherokee War. Obviously, the United States as
a nation didn't exist for all of that, and that
the colonial powers involved were not just England, but the
(03:58):
same patterns were similar through the whole continent. During this period,
European powers were claiming territory in the Americas under the
doctrine of Discovery, and this doctrine had roots in a
papal bull that had been issued by Pope Nicholas the
Fifth in fourteen fifty two. Eventually, though, that became part
of international law. Whatever European power quote discovered a non
(04:20):
Christian land had the right to claim that land and
to colonize it. A lot of this was about land
and resources, but a lot of the European nations involved
also wanted to convert the native population to Christianity, and
then once a European power had claimed territory, a lot
of times it formalized that claim through a treaty with
the native nation that was already living there. This may
(04:43):
seem basic, but a treaty is a formal agreement between
two sovereign nations. These treaties were not necessarily fair toward
the native people, and the process of negotiation was often
coercive at best. But by ratifying these treaties during the
colonial period, European governments were acknowledging that North America's Native
(05:03):
people's were sovereign nations with the right to self govern
This was not a right that the Europeans bestowed on
the native people. It was a right that the native
nations already had, which they had been exercising among themselves
and observing with their neighbors for thousands of years before
Europeans arrived. The years between eighteen twenty eight and eighteen
eighty seven are described as the Removal, reservation and Treaty period.
(05:27):
This is when the United States government started pressuring and
then forcing Native nations in the east to move west again.
Using treaties, the United States established reservations for the relocated people.
A lot of this removal and relocation was accomplished through
warfare and other violence. Some of our prior episodes from
this period include the Georgia gold Rush, the Tows Revolt,
(05:49):
and the Dakota War of eighteen sixty two and the
white Stone Hill Massacre, and those last bits are all
together in one episode and at least in theory. The
treaties that were signed in the mid to late nineteenth
century still recognize that the Native nations were sovereign nations.
I mean you have to be to sign a treaty.
They mostly specified that the United States and the Native
(06:11):
Nation would stop fighting and the Native Nation would see
land to the United States. In exchange, the United States
would establish a reservation for the Native people and usually
also provide some services like education or healthcare. But the
United States never really treated the Native people as though
they were part of a sovereign nation. In the words
of U. S. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall in eighteen
(06:34):
thirty one, native societies were quote domestic dependent nations. He
categorized their relationship to the US as the Native Nation
being award and the United States being a guardian. U S.
Native Policy tended to exist on a spectrum that went
from paternalistic to actively destructive, with increasingly strict laws and
(06:54):
policies that attempted to strict Native people of their governments, languages,
and cultures. In an eight seven, the policy shifted again
so one of allotment and assimilation. So rather than a
Native nation collectively holding its reservation land, the United States
government started allotting that land to individual tribal members. The
(07:14):
biggest law related to this that was passed during this
period was the General Allotment Act of eighteen eighty seven,
also called the DAWs Act, and we talked more about
allotment and its destructive effects in our episode on Susan
La flesh Picott. Although the US government stance was that
the allotment process was going to make Native people self sufficient,
in reality, it was another attempt to try to force
(07:36):
Native people to assimilate with white culture and to get
access to land that had previously been set aside for
Native nations, and this policy was incredibly damaging. Huge numbers
of people who were allotted land wound up losing that land,
so Native nations progressively lost what little territory they had
had as part of their reservations. During this period, the
(07:57):
United States government was also pressuring, or were saying, Native
people to send their children to boarding schools, where they
were forbidden to speak their own language or observe their
own cultural or religious practices. We talked about these schools
and their effects in our two parterre on the Fort
Shaw Indian schoolgirls basketball team. Although the United States was
no longer pursuing these ends through military conquest and it
(08:19):
wasn't as much about physical violence at this point, the
allotment process and the boarding schools were still efforts to
eradicate the Native population. And while there were certainly people
who thought that what they were doing was for the best,
that really does not matter because those intentions were still
rooted in white supremacy and the results were still deeply
damaging and destructive. We mentioned earlier that millions of Native
(08:42):
people lived in North America in fourteen ninety two. By
nineteen ten, that number in the United States was less
than two hundred fifty thousand, not just because of warfare
and introduced diseases, but also because of these government policies.
The years between nineteen thirty four and nineteen forty five
are known as the Reordization period, the US government ended
(09:03):
the policy of allotment and started taking some steps toward
actually recognizing the Native nations right to self govern This
shift in policy was largely influenced by World War One.
Huge numbers of Native people had served in the war,
and in response, on just as a gesture of thanks,
Congress authorized a survey into the conditions on reservations with
(09:23):
an intent to improve those conditions. The result was a
report called the Problem of Indian Administration, also known as
the Miriam Report, which was issued in n It was scathing.
It noted enormous problems with US policy toward Native Americans
dating back decades, and it called for sweeping, massive reforms.
(09:43):
Aside from some biographies of Native people who were alive
during these years, this is not a time that we
have talked about much on the show before, so that's
something for us to correct in the future. The Miriam Report, though,
set the stage for the United States to start pursuing
policies toward Native Americans that stressed self to termination and
self governance, and which were based on actual data rather
(10:04):
than things like conversion to Christianity, assimilation, or desire for land.
Especially compared to the entire rest of US history. So far,
the reorganization period was actually kind of promising. The federal
government repealed restrictive laws that had targeted Native people. Tribes
were still allowed to allot land if they chose to,
but this general policy of allotment that had caused so
(10:26):
much damage was abolished. The US government also adopted a
policy of returning surplus federal land to the tribes rather
than setting it aside for mostly white homesteaders. Native nations
were also encouraged to set up their own systems of government,
and then the federal government set aside funds to assist
them in this process. Some aspects of all of this
(10:47):
could still be assimilationist, and the federal government's prevailing opinion
was still that it would be better for Native people
to assimilate than it was for them to continue to
be part of a native nation. In In the lead
up to this period of reform, the Snyder Act had
granted citizenship and voting rights to Native Americans, something that
may have been intended to encourage assimilation, but also gave
(11:10):
Native people a political voice that they had previously been denied.
This reorganization process also encouraged Native nations to set up
governments and social systems that were a lot like the
US government rather than something that might more accurately reflect
their own traditional structure. Although to be clear, Native governments
and confederations had also influenced the creation of the U.
(11:31):
S Government back during the colonial period, so it's kind
of there was some mutual influence there. But you can
definitely look at the structures that were set up the
way the US government was encouraging people to set up
as like sort of templated after what we're doing. Yeah,
I don't think the Native people's were ever like, you
should do it this way, we know better than whereas
(11:52):
that does seem to be the flip on the the
other side of that coin. This period was also in
the federal government released arted relying on the idea of
blood quantum to determine who was and was not eligible
for support and services. This wasn't a totally new idea,
but it became a bigger part of federal law and policy. Basically,
you had to have enough so called Indian blood to
(12:15):
be eligible. But this idea of blood quantum wasn't part
of how a lot of Native nations were defining their
own citizenship at all. As sovereign nations, they have the
right to decide for themselves who does or does not
qualify as a citizen, But the federal government's reliance on
blood quantum wound up influencing tribal law and citizenship requirements
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for a lot of nations based on this concept that
was both arbitrary and not actually part of how they
were necessarily defining themselves before. This is a really complicated
and incredibly personal issue, and it has huge ongoing effects
into the lives of Native people from a lot of
nations today. If you want to learn more about it,
(12:57):
we recommend the NPR Code Switch podcast episode So what
exactly is Blood Quantum? That originally aired on February nine. So,
just to recap this period of federal policy toward Native
people had some problematic aspects, a lot of which were
still rooted in white supremacy, but at the same time,
overall it was a big step forward, so much so
(13:17):
that various legislation related to Native people from these years
was nicknamed the Indian New Deal. At the same time,
it did not magically spontaneously fix all of the issues
that had arisen from centuries of damage brought on by
US policy toward Native Americans. Since the removal period, the
United States had essentially forced Native people to live on
(13:38):
reservations and to be dependent on the US government for
all kinds of support and services. Then the government managed
the services terribly through corruption, in competence, racism, and intentional neglect.
In ninety three, almost a decade into the reorganization period,
Congress commissioned a survey of conditions on the reservations and
(13:58):
found them to still be appalling. Something that we're going
to talk about again in just a moment. So this
brief period of generally less destructive policy did not last
for very long. And we'll get to that next shift,
which is what led to the occupation of Alcatraz after
a sponsor break. Even as the United States was encouraging
(14:22):
Native nations to establish their own governments, which the U
s would then recognize the sovereign entities, it was also
still trying to encourage Native people to assimilate into white society.
In n the Bureau of Indian Affairs established a relocation
program to encourage Native people, especially young Native people, to
leave their mostly rural reservations and start new lives in cities.
(14:44):
This was something that evolved over the next few years
before being formalized under the Indian Relocation Act of nineteen
fifty six. Here is how in theory this would work.
The United States established several cities as relocation centers. You
will find slightly to rent lists depending on exactly when
a source is talking about, but they included Los Angeles,
(15:05):
San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland, California, along with Chicago, Illinois, Detroit, Michigan, Denver, Colorado,
and others. Native people were offered a one way bus
ticket to one of these relocation centers. Once they got there,
in theory, the government would give them financial and housing assistance,
vocational training, and support in finding a job. While this
(15:27):
program was going on, the government printed brochures that really
remind me of what non native people were seeing during
the period of westward expansion in the US. Now that
you were trying to entice Native people to move into
a city to start a new life. So they said
things like come to Denver, the chance of a lifetime,
good jobs, happy homes, training, beautiful Colorado or Chicagoland. Indians
(15:49):
get good jobs, jobs recently obtained, offer opportunity, security, reservations
tended to struggle with poverty and job shortages, so to
a lot of people, this program seemed like a real
good opportunity. Many who took it planned to move to
a city, go through their vocational training, make some money,
and then move back home better off than they had
been when they left. But this program did not work
(16:11):
out as it was intended, both from the government's point
of view and the relocates. Some of these cities already
did have a small Native population. More than forty thousand
Native Americans served in World War Two. Some of them
chose to stay in cities where they were after they
were discharged from the military. Obviously, there had been various
people that had moved into cities for other reasons at
(16:34):
some point. Some of these same cities, though, where a
lot of people stayed after getting out of the military,
were also relocation centers. But because the point was to
encourage assimilation with white society, the Bureau of Indian Affairs
made no effort to connect the people who were moving
through the relocation program with those existing Native residents. It
also made no effort to house people who are relocating
(16:56):
near other people from their same nation, or even near
other native of people of any nation. So other minorities
often had social and political organizations in cities that offered
assistance and support to new arrivals, but the native relocatees
were intentionally so isolated from each other that it really
took years for these kinds of organizations to really develop. Also,
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the quality of services and support that the relocatees were
supposed to be receiving was poor. Housing was substandard. People
who were expecting weeks or months of vocational training often
only got a few days, and that help finding a
job tended to be minimal, and the financial assistance that
was supposed to keep them afloat while they were being
(17:39):
trained usually ran out before they actually had a job.
There were people who got training and a job or
who started college, but many did not. And then on
top of that, the people who were relocating tended to
face a lot of disorientation, isolation, and culture shock. A
lot of the people who relocated had been educated in
government boarding schools and were relatively inexperienced out in the world.
(18:02):
A lot we're moving from rural areas into cities where
they didn't know anybody, They didn't have any kind of
network of more experienced people who could help them navigate
the city itself for day to day life, and they
also faced ongoing racism and discrimination from the non native
community there. According to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, two
hundred thousand Native people were relocated under this policy. By comparison,
(18:25):
eighty nine thousand were forced to relocate under the Indian
Removal Act of eighteen thirty. The government didn't keep clear
records of how many people stayed in the cities, and
some people moved back and forth between a relocation center
and their reservation multiple times, but it's estimated that as
many as half eventually returned to their reservations permanently, not
(18:46):
necessarily better off when they got there. So when it
came to offering Native people job training and relocation assistance,
this government effort wasn't all that successful, and it also
failed at encouraging Native people to assimilate with white culture.
Although it did take a while for Native run organizations
to develop in these relocation centers, once they did, they
(19:06):
really flourished. By the mid nineteen sixties, the relocation centers
were home to organizations for people from specific Native nations,
as well as social clubs that brought people together from
different nations who had common interests. A pan tribal movement
was evolving, one in which people from different nations, some
of which had historically been enemies, came together through clubs,
(19:27):
political organizations, social movement organizations, and events like pow wows.
This movement was also politically active and tried to influence local, state,
and federal policy and generally to make life better for
Native people. So instead of being a tool for assimilation,
this program wound up encouraging a renewed sense of Native
identity and the creation of more connections among different Native nations.
(19:51):
Will return to that idea because it's really a huge
part of the occupation of Alcatraz, But first we need
to talk about another federal policy that was happening at
same time. That was the policy of termination that two
thousand people relocating the Holly mentioned earlier, like that was
also part of this termination policy. In addition to the
formal relocation efforts. In the nineteen fifties, the US government
(20:14):
wanted to quote get out of the Indian business. In
other words, the US wanted to simply end its treaty
obligations towards the Native nations along with the other obligations
that existed through various federal laws. So, rather than addressing
the real problems that existed on the reservations, and those
were problems that the US had actively contributed to through
its own policies, the federal government decided it would just
(20:36):
abolish the tribes. The tribes assets and lands would be
sold off, with the proceeds distributed to their tribal members,
and the federal government would no longer recognize tribal sovereignty.
This attitude was formalized in nineteen fifty three through House
Concurrent Resolution one oh eight, which began quote, Whereas it
is the policy of Congress, as rapidly as possible, to
(20:57):
make the Indians within the territorial limits of the unit
United States subject to the same laws and entitled to
the same privileges and responsibilities as are applicable to other
citizens of the United States, to end their status as
wards of the United States, and to grant them all
of the rights and prerogatives pertaining to American citizenship. And
whereas the Indians within the territorial limits of the United
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States should assume their full responsibilities as American citizens. From there,
it went on to resolve that quote at the earliest
possible time. All of the Indian tribes and the individual
members thereof located within the states of California, Florida, New York,
and Texas, and all of the following named Indian tribes
and individual members thereof, should be freed from federal supervision
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and control and from all disabilities and limitations specially applicable
to Indians, the Flathead Tribe of Montana, the Klamath Tribe
of Oregon, the Menominee Tribe of Wisconsin, the Potawatamie Tribe
of Kansas and Nebraska, and those members of the Chippewa
Tribe who are on the Turtle Mountain Reservation, North Dakota.
It is further declared to be the sense of Congress
that upon the release of such tribes and individual members
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thereof from such disabilities and limitations, all offices of the
Bureau of Indian Affairs and the States of California, Florida,
New York, in Texas, and all other offices of the
Bureau of Indian Affairs whose primary purpose was to serve
any Indian tribe or individual Indian freed from federal supervision,
should be abolished It is further declared to be the
sense of Congress that the Secretary of the Interior should
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examine all existing legislation dealing with such Indians and the
treaties between the Government of the United States and each tribe,
and report to Congress at the earliest practicable date, but
not later than January first, nineteen fifty four, his recommendations
for such legislation, as in his judgment, may be necessary
to accomplish the purposes of this resolution passed August one,
(22:47):
ninety three. Only some Native nations and U. S States
are mentioned in this legislation, but that does not mean
that other nations were being left alone. The government had
just targeted some for immediate termination and others for eventual termination.
The plan was that at some point there would be
no more recognized Native nations and no more reservations anywhere.
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For the most part, the nations on the list for
the earliest termination were the ones whose lands included the
most natural resources that the government was eager to get
access to. In Congress, the advocates of this policy framed
it as comparable to the abolition of slavery. Was going
to undo the idea that the Native nations were subordinate
to the United States, and it was going to put
Native American people on equal footing with their non Native peers.
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Critics pointed out the potential problems with ending federal support
for people who had been relying on it, especially since,
based on that nineteen forty three survey that we mentioned earlier,
the conditions they were already living in were likely to
be poor. But even critics generally agreed that this was
a sign that the reservation should be abolished, rather than
a sign that the government should address these issues on
(23:54):
the reservations. There really wasn't a lot of debate about
this in Congress. This policy went beyond the text of
this one law. In nineteen fifty three, Public Law to
eighty gave the governments of California, Nebraska, Oregon, Wisconsin, and
the Territory of Alaska civil and criminal jurisdiction over the
nations in their borders. In nineteen fifty four, the Transfer
(24:15):
Act transferred responsibility for hospital and health facilities for Native
people from the Department of the Interior to what was
then known as the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
An Indian Claims Commission had been established in nineteen forty six.
At that time, it was viewed as being a step forward.
It gave Native people a formal process for filing claims
(24:36):
for stolen land, but the commission wasn't actually returning land
to anyone. It was instead offering financial compensation. So as
people realized that there was a lot more criticism about
what it was there for. Eventually, this commission would only
consider claims if the tribe involved was also working on
a termination plan. Authorities refused to issue building permits on reservations,
(24:57):
even for essential facilities like schools and hospitals, because of
the fear that people would be more reluctant to leave
a reservation that had new facilities. While the United States
was pursuing this policy, more than one hundred tribes and
bands were terminated, with their members losing the federal assistance
they had previously been entitled to. The tribal governments were dismantled,
(25:18):
the tribes no longer existed as sovereign entities, and their
members also lost their tribal affiliations. This affected more than
eleven thousand, four hundred people and led to the sale
of more than one point three million acres of land.
This is so messed up to me. Yeah, like the
just the the idea that one government could be like,
(25:38):
we're just not going to have these other governments anymore. Yeah. Well,
it's interesting because we talk about even even in this
is poor wording, but more enlightened modern discourse, where we
talked about how things happened, for example, during the Trail
of Tears, where land was taken and it was reappropriated
to other people. That sort of seems a little farther
(25:59):
back historically. No, in the nineteen fifties, we essentially did
a very similar thing with a lot more congressional involvement,
and it's like it's still not over, it's still ongoing today. Um,
there were a small number of Native people who were
actually in favor of termination. They were mostly people who
had already moved away from the reservations and had become
(26:20):
financially self sufficient or had started to assimilate into white society.
So for people who weren't still connected to a reservation
and who didn't think of their tribal affiliation as a
core part of their identity, that idea of getting proceeds
from the sale of land could sound appealing. But for
a lot of people living on reservations or people who
had relocated but still had close connections there. The prospect
(26:42):
of termination was naturally terrifying. This was especially true for
people who didn't have enough resources to begin with. People
thought they were going to lose support and the services
that they needed with nothing available to replace them. People
were so fearful of the idea of termination that it
affected their interpretation of pretty much any other decision that
the government made, something that came to be described as
(27:05):
termination psychosis. So we haven't really talked in this episode
about the Native response to any of this history. And
we cannot stress this enough, whether we're talking about the
colonial period or the termination period or now, or any
period of history in between. Native people and the nations
that they're part of have never just been passively accepting
(27:25):
all these laws and policies and actions on the part
of the federal government. Native people have been advocating for
their own rights and trying to influence federal policy since
the beginning, and we're going to get to some of
that and to Alcatraz after we first take another sponsor break.
(27:47):
The occupation of Alcatraz took place during a long discussion
of what to do with the island an eighteen fifty,
President Millard Fillmore had set it aside for federal use.
It became home to the West Coasts First Lighthouse in
eighteen fifty four, and then the U. S. Army occupied
at in eighteen fifty nine. It was under military administration
for the next seventy seven years. The military facilities on
(28:10):
the island included a prison that housed incarcerated military personnel
and prisoners of war, and of course, from nineteen thirty four,
Alcatraz became a maximum security federal prison, which housed infamous
people such as al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly, and Whitey Bulger.
In a way, Alcatraz was an ideal location for a prison,
at least in theory. The steep, rocky coast and distance
(28:33):
to the mainland made it harder to escape. There weren't
even many places on the island where a boat could
safely dock. But this location also made it a lot
more expensive to operate and maintain. Everything necessary to keep
the prison running had to be transported out to the island,
including food, freshwater, and electricity. In nineteen sixty one, the
federal government learned that the prison on Alcatraz needed an
(28:55):
estimated five million dollars worth of repairs in addition to
the already expensive costs just to keep it running. Soon after,
U S Attorney General Robert Kennedy announced that the prison
would close. The last people being housed there were transferred
to other facilities on March twenty one, nineteen sixty three.
That left the federal government in possession of this rocky,
(29:16):
inaccessible island that contained an abandoned prison. After polling governmental
departments to see if anybody else wanted it, Alctaz was
classified as surplus federal property, except for the lighthouse and
fog horn that were part of the navigation system for
San Francisco Bay. The facilities were shut down. The island
became the responsibility of the General Services Administration, or g
(29:38):
s A on April twelve, ninety For the next few months,
various proposals were bandied about for what to do with
the island. Eventually, Congress passed legislation to establish a President's
Commission on the Disposition of Alcatraz Island, which would receive
and evaluate proposals. They planned to have a meeting on
the island on March nine, sixty or but before that
(30:01):
could happen on March eight, a group of native men
occupied the island, so to back up for just a moment,
before the arrival of European colonists from Spain and Portugal,
the San Francisco Bay area was home to several native
nations who used the island now known as Alcatraz for
various purposes. Some of the specifics are unclear because the
oral histories involving the island have been lost or distorted
(30:23):
through all that stuff we were talking about earlier. The
Oloney people may have used it to isolate or ostracized
people who had violated some kind of tribal law or taboo.
Other people's in the area considered its sacred, or use
it as a navigational marker, or as a place to
gather food, especially bird eggs. The name Alcatraz is not
(30:44):
for many of these peoples that it's from the Spanish
word for Pelican. Once the island became a prison, Native
Americans were among the people incarcerated there. The first was
known as Piute Tom. He arrived on June fifth, eighteen
seventy three, while it was still an army facility. It
is not clear why he was sent there, but he
(31:04):
was shot and killed by a guard two days later.
Other Native men followed. Among the other people who were
incarcerated at Alcatraz, the largest group of Native people who
were imprisoned there during this period where nineteen Hopie men
who arrived in January. They were imprisoned for refusing to
follow US government policies that required them to give up
(31:25):
their native languages and to send their children to government schools.
Although the occupation of Alcatraz that took place in March
of nineteen sixty four was carried out by five men,
it was planned by a woman, Belva Cottier or Cartier.
We didn't find a definitive pronunciation on her name, who
also did most of the legal and historical research that
led up to that occupation, and the research for it
(31:47):
traced back to the Treaty of Fort Laramie. The Treaty
of Fort Laramie is between the United States and the
Great stu Nation, also called the Acchetti chaqueline O late
where the people of the Seven Council fires. It was
signed on April eight. This was the treaty that designated
the Black Hills as part of the Great Sioux Reservation. However,
after Gold was discovered in the Black Hills, white prospectors
(32:10):
moved into that area anyway. This ultimately went before the
Supreme Court in the United States versus Nation of Indians.
Although the court ruled that the nation was entitled to
financial compensation, the nation has refused payment, insisting that it
should have the land that was specified in that treaty.
So that's another thing that's still going on today. The
Treaty of Fort Laramie also contained this language in section
(32:32):
six quote. And it is further stipulated that any male
Indians over eighteen years of age, of any band or
tribe that is or shall hereafter become a party to
this treaty, who now is, or who shall hereafter become
a resident or occupant of any reservation or territory not
included in the tract of country designated and described in
(32:53):
this Treaty for the permanent home of the Indians, which
is not mineral land, nor reserved by the United States
for special purpose US other than Indian occupation, and who
shall have made improvements thereon of the value of two
hundred dollars or more, and continuously occupied the same as
a homestead for the term of three years, shall be
entitled to receive from the United States a patent for
(33:15):
one hundred and sixty acres of land, including his set improvements.
The same to be in the form of the legal
subdivisions of the surveys of the public lands. So this
passage of the Treaty of Fort Laramie could be read
to mean that surplus land like the island of Alcatraz
could be granted to Native men over the age of
eighteen who belonged to the Great Sto Nation. So that's
(33:36):
why Richard Mackenzie, Martin fire Thunder, Martinez Garfield, Spotted Elk,
Walter Means, and an Alcott Here who was Belvi's husband,
were the ones chosen to occupy this island. I also
find found slightly different lists of names of who was
involved with us, but this was the one that was
repeated most often in the sources that seemed to be
most detailed. They had all moved to the Bay Area
(33:59):
from else where, some of them through that federal relocation
program we talked about earlier. They were all citizens of
one of the tribes that make up the Great Sioux Nation.
These five men went to Alcatraz by boat. In accounts
of the day from people who were involved. They are
described either as being in traditional dress or as being
in costume. Once they got to the island, they pounded
(34:20):
sticks into the soil to market as claimed. They cited
the Treaty of Fort Laramie as granting them the rights
to the island, and they offered to pay a price
of forty seven cents an acre. They came up with
that number by calculating the price per acre that was
being offered to the California Nations whose reservations were being
dissolved under the federal government's termination policy. Although they were
(34:42):
all making individual homestead claims, they also had plans for
an education and cultural center on the island. After arriving
on Alcatraz, these men were met by caretaker Al Alworth.
Prison administrator Richard Willard arrived from the mainland by boat
not long afterward and told the men that they should
take this matter through formal channels. The men left shortly thereafter,
(35:03):
having been on the island for about four hours. The
news coverage of this occupation was pretty dismissive, with headlines
like quote wacky Indian raid Alcatraz invaded, which ran in
the San Francisco Examiner. But as had been suggested, they
did take the matter through formal channels. On April tenth,
nineteen sixty four, an attorney filed a petition with the
(35:25):
General Services Administration on behalf of the men, citing the
Treaty of Fort Laramie and federal laws as justification for
turning Alcatraz over to them. As became one of many
proposals for what to do with Alcatraz, which we're still ongoing.
In nineteen sixty nine, when the larger occupation of the
island happened, and we will get to that in part two.
(35:46):
Do you a little bit of listener mail, Tracy, I do.
This listener mail is from Jason. Jason is the first
of approximately fifty people not inflating that number, that's the
real number who have written to us about this. Uh.
The subject line of this email is update Niagara Falls
(36:06):
scow has moved. Jason sends a link to a CBC
article and then says, I recently heard the listener mail
about the scow stuck at the top of Niagara Falls.
I grew up in the area and knew the story
from my earliest trips to the falls. Overnight on October thirty,
one Halloween, we had a big windstorm and heavy rain.
This weather caused the scow to move about a hundred
(36:28):
and sixty feet closer to the brink of the falls,
and I think now that it is dislodged, it may
not be long until the scal goes over the edge.
It seems to be sitting more exposed to the force
of the Niagara River. Anyway, just a timely update to
a recent story I heard on your podcast. I really
enjoy listening to your podcast on my ride to and
from work every day. Many topics you've talked about come
(36:49):
up in conversations, and I always attribute my knowledge to
your show. My son did a short essay in school
on the Triangle Shirt factory fire, which led into a
discussion about the Radium Girls and working cans in the past.
Thanks for all you do, Jason, Thank you Jason, and
to the like fifty other people who have emailed for
posted on our Facebook page, or tweeted at us about
the story. Yes, by total weird coincidence. We talked about
(37:13):
this in the listener mail of our episode on the
Paris Catacombs, and then mere days later this storm happened
and caused the thing to shift, so it is incredibly
easy to find a link to this story. Um, we
can also put it in the show notes, but if
you just google Niagarah like Niagara Scallet, it's all over everywhere.
(37:34):
So anyway, thanks again to everybody who has sent this
to us. I have not replied individually to everyone because
it was kind of an overwhelming volume of of messages.
So anyway, if you would like to write to us
about this or any other podcast, or if the Niagaras
galphoves again, it might go over the falls at some point, UH,
send us an email. Where a history podcast at how
stuff Works dot com and then we're all over social
(37:54):
media as Missed in History. That's where you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest,
and Instagram. You also come to our website, which is
Missed in History dot com and find the show notes
for all the episodes Holly and I have worked on together,
and a searchable archive of all of our previous episodes ever,
and you can subscribe to our show and Apple podcasts,
the I heart Radio app, and anywhere else you can
get a podcast. Stuff you Missed in History Class is
(38:20):
a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For
more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying.
We are coming up on the fiftieth anniversary of the
occupation of Alcatraz by a group of Native activists known
(00:22):
as Indians of All Tribes. This is something that's been
on my list for a while and I just kind
of held it knowing that the that the fiftieth anniversary
was coming up. This was a pivotal moment in Native
American activism and advocacy and for a lot of Native
people living at the time. They also talked about how
it shaped their own sense of identity, whether they physically
(00:43):
went to the island at some point or not. And
this is a story that we're going to be telling
in two parts because this act of protest was connected
to US government policies toward Native Americans in the nineteen
fifties and sixties that we haven't ever really talked about
on the show before. So today's episode is really about
the context for the occupation of Alcatraz, including sort of
(01:05):
a survey course of the long arc of US government
policy toward Native people from the colonial period up through
the nineteen fifties. It's basically like the very first portion
of the show. And then we'll talk about that policy
and how it set the stage for all of this,
and I get into a little bit of Alcatraz history
and an earlier occupation that happened in nineteen sixty four
(01:27):
before the nineteen sixty nine one. That is the bigger
part of this episode, and the next time we'll be
talking about that nineteen sixty nine occupation itself and its impact.
We do not have an exact count, or even an
agreed upon estimate, of how many people were living in
the Americas before Europeans arrived in four Sometimes you might
(01:47):
think no one was here, because the way history books
are written, that is false, super false. Europeans did not
really start trying to figure it out until decades or
even centuries after that fourteen ninety two start point of
when they started thinking about the Americas as somewhere they were,
and when their own activities had caused a massive population
drops through warfare, genocide, and introduced diseases. So the starting point,
(02:12):
based on what they observed around them, was a number
that had already been drastically reduced. Plus it worked in
Europeans own self interest to make it sound like the
continent had been very sparsely populated before colonization started. Again. Yeah,
that was not true at all. According to an article
published in Quaternary Science Reviews in March of en, there
(02:34):
were as many as sixty million people in the America's before,
with between two point eight million and five point seven
million of them living in North America. Some estimates for
the North American population go up as high as twenty
million people, with the total population of the America's being
much higher. That might not sound like that many compared
(02:54):
to how many people live here today, but like we're
talking about pre industrial populations, the whole world had fewer
people than it does today by a lot. This represented
thousands of different native nations, all of them with their
own languages and political systems and cultures and alliances. In
a general sense, you can divide US policy toward Native
(03:15):
Americans into a few general periods, some of which we
have talked about on the show before and some of
which we absolutely have not. The colonial period stretched from
fourteen ninety two to eighteen twenty eight, so from Columbus's arrival,
through the Revolutionary War, and then into the first few
decades of the United States existence as a nation. Of course,
the same process was also happening elsewhere in the America's
(03:38):
but we are really focusing on what is now the
US in these episodes. Some of our previous episodes on
this period cover, for example, Bacon's Rebellion, the Cochico Massacre,
and the Anglo Cherokee War. Obviously, the United States as
a nation didn't exist for all of that, and that
the colonial powers involved were not just England, but the
(03:58):
same patterns were similar through the whole continent. During this period,
European powers were claiming territory in the Americas under the
doctrine of Discovery, and this doctrine had roots in a
papal bull that had been issued by Pope Nicholas the
Fifth in fourteen fifty two. Eventually, though, that became part
of international law. Whatever European power quote discovered a non
(04:20):
Christian land had the right to claim that land and
to colonize it. A lot of this was about land
and resources, but a lot of the European nations involved
also wanted to convert the native population to Christianity, and
then once a European power had claimed territory, a lot
of times it formalized that claim through a treaty with
the native nation that was already living there. This may
(04:43):
seem basic, but a treaty is a formal agreement between
two sovereign nations. These treaties were not necessarily fair toward
the native people, and the process of negotiation was often
coercive at best. But by ratifying these treaties during the
colonial period, European governments were acknowledging that North America's Native
(05:03):
people's were sovereign nations with the right to self govern
This was not a right that the Europeans bestowed on
the native people. It was a right that the native
nations already had, which they had been exercising among themselves
and observing with their neighbors for thousands of years before
Europeans arrived. The years between eighteen twenty eight and eighteen
eighty seven are described as the Removal, reservation and Treaty period.
(05:27):
This is when the United States government started pressuring and
then forcing Native nations in the east to move west again.
Using treaties, the United States established reservations for the relocated people.
A lot of this removal and relocation was accomplished through
warfare and other violence. Some of our prior episodes from
this period include the Georgia gold Rush, the Tows Revolt,
(05:49):
and the Dakota War of eighteen sixty two and the
white Stone Hill Massacre, and those last bits are all
together in one episode and at least in theory. The
treaties that were signed in the mid to late nineteenth
century still recognize that the Native nations were sovereign nations.
I mean you have to be to sign a treaty.
They mostly specified that the United States and the Native
(06:11):
Nation would stop fighting and the Native Nation would see
land to the United States. In exchange, the United States
would establish a reservation for the Native people and usually
also provide some services like education or healthcare. But the
United States never really treated the Native people as though
they were part of a sovereign nation. In the words
of U. S. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall in eighteen
(06:34):
thirty one, native societies were quote domestic dependent nations. He
categorized their relationship to the US as the Native Nation
being award and the United States being a guardian. U S.
Native Policy tended to exist on a spectrum that went
from paternalistic to actively destructive, with increasingly strict laws and
(06:54):
policies that attempted to strict Native people of their governments, languages,
and cultures. In an eight seven, the policy shifted again
so one of allotment and assimilation. So rather than a
Native nation collectively holding its reservation land, the United States
government started allotting that land to individual tribal members. The
(07:14):
biggest law related to this that was passed during this
period was the General Allotment Act of eighteen eighty seven,
also called the DAWs Act, and we talked more about
allotment and its destructive effects in our episode on Susan
La flesh Picott. Although the US government stance was that
the allotment process was going to make Native people self sufficient,
in reality, it was another attempt to try to force
(07:36):
Native people to assimilate with white culture and to get
access to land that had previously been set aside for
Native nations, and this policy was incredibly damaging. Huge numbers
of people who were allotted land wound up losing that land,
so Native nations progressively lost what little territory they had
had as part of their reservations. During this period, the
(07:57):
United States government was also pressuring, or were saying, Native
people to send their children to boarding schools, where they
were forbidden to speak their own language or observe their
own cultural or religious practices. We talked about these schools
and their effects in our two parterre on the Fort
Shaw Indian schoolgirls basketball team. Although the United States was
no longer pursuing these ends through military conquest and it
(08:19):
wasn't as much about physical violence at this point, the
allotment process and the boarding schools were still efforts to
eradicate the Native population. And while there were certainly people
who thought that what they were doing was for the best,
that really does not matter because those intentions were still
rooted in white supremacy and the results were still deeply
damaging and destructive. We mentioned earlier that millions of Native
(08:42):
people lived in North America in fourteen ninety two. By
nineteen ten, that number in the United States was less
than two hundred fifty thousand, not just because of warfare
and introduced diseases, but also because of these government policies.
The years between nineteen thirty four and nineteen forty five
are known as the Reordization period, the US government ended
(09:03):
the policy of allotment and started taking some steps toward
actually recognizing the Native nations right to self govern This
shift in policy was largely influenced by World War One.
Huge numbers of Native people had served in the war,
and in response, on just as a gesture of thanks,
Congress authorized a survey into the conditions on reservations with
(09:23):
an intent to improve those conditions. The result was a
report called the Problem of Indian Administration, also known as
the Miriam Report, which was issued in n It was scathing.
It noted enormous problems with US policy toward Native Americans
dating back decades, and it called for sweeping, massive reforms.
(09:43):
Aside from some biographies of Native people who were alive
during these years, this is not a time that we
have talked about much on the show before, so that's
something for us to correct in the future. The Miriam Report, though,
set the stage for the United States to start pursuing
policies toward Native Americans that stressed self to termination and
self governance, and which were based on actual data rather
(10:04):
than things like conversion to Christianity, assimilation, or desire for land.
Especially compared to the entire rest of US history. So far,
the reorganization period was actually kind of promising. The federal
government repealed restrictive laws that had targeted Native people. Tribes
were still allowed to allot land if they chose to,
but this general policy of allotment that had caused so
(10:26):
much damage was abolished. The US government also adopted a
policy of returning surplus federal land to the tribes rather
than setting it aside for mostly white homesteaders. Native nations
were also encouraged to set up their own systems of government,
and then the federal government set aside funds to assist
them in this process. Some aspects of all of this
(10:47):
could still be assimilationist, and the federal government's prevailing opinion
was still that it would be better for Native people
to assimilate than it was for them to continue to
be part of a native nation. In In the lead
up to this period of reform, the Snyder Act had
granted citizenship and voting rights to Native Americans, something that
may have been intended to encourage assimilation, but also gave
(11:10):
Native people a political voice that they had previously been denied.
This reorganization process also encouraged Native nations to set up
governments and social systems that were a lot like the
US government rather than something that might more accurately reflect
their own traditional structure. Although to be clear, Native governments
and confederations had also influenced the creation of the U.
(11:31):
S Government back during the colonial period, so it's kind
of there was some mutual influence there. But you can
definitely look at the structures that were set up the
way the US government was encouraging people to set up
as like sort of templated after what we're doing. Yeah,
I don't think the Native people's were ever like, you
should do it this way, we know better than whereas
(11:52):
that does seem to be the flip on the the
other side of that coin. This period was also in
the federal government released arted relying on the idea of
blood quantum to determine who was and was not eligible
for support and services. This wasn't a totally new idea,
but it became a bigger part of federal law and policy. Basically,
you had to have enough so called Indian blood to
(12:15):
be eligible. But this idea of blood quantum wasn't part
of how a lot of Native nations were defining their
own citizenship at all. As sovereign nations, they have the
right to decide for themselves who does or does not
qualify as a citizen, But the federal government's reliance on
blood quantum wound up influencing tribal law and citizenship requirements
(12:37):
for a lot of nations based on this concept that
was both arbitrary and not actually part of how they
were necessarily defining themselves before. This is a really complicated
and incredibly personal issue, and it has huge ongoing effects
into the lives of Native people from a lot of
nations today. If you want to learn more about it,
(12:57):
we recommend the NPR Code Switch podcast episode So what
exactly is Blood Quantum? That originally aired on February nine. So,
just to recap this period of federal policy toward Native
people had some problematic aspects, a lot of which were
still rooted in white supremacy, but at the same time,
overall it was a big step forward, so much so
(13:17):
that various legislation related to Native people from these years
was nicknamed the Indian New Deal. At the same time,
it did not magically spontaneously fix all of the issues
that had arisen from centuries of damage brought on by
US policy toward Native Americans. Since the removal period, the
United States had essentially forced Native people to live on
(13:38):
reservations and to be dependent on the US government for
all kinds of support and services. Then the government managed
the services terribly through corruption, in competence, racism, and intentional neglect.
In ninety three, almost a decade into the reorganization period,
Congress commissioned a survey of conditions on the reservations and
(13:58):
found them to still be appalling. Something that we're going
to talk about again in just a moment. So this
brief period of generally less destructive policy did not last
for very long. And we'll get to that next shift,
which is what led to the occupation of Alcatraz after
a sponsor break. Even as the United States was encouraging
(14:22):
Native nations to establish their own governments, which the U
s would then recognize the sovereign entities, it was also
still trying to encourage Native people to assimilate into white society.
In n the Bureau of Indian Affairs established a relocation
program to encourage Native people, especially young Native people, to
leave their mostly rural reservations and start new lives in cities.
(14:44):
This was something that evolved over the next few years
before being formalized under the Indian Relocation Act of nineteen
fifty six. Here is how in theory this would work.
The United States established several cities as relocation centers. You
will find slightly to rent lists depending on exactly when
a source is talking about, but they included Los Angeles,
(15:05):
San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland, California, along with Chicago, Illinois, Detroit, Michigan, Denver, Colorado,
and others. Native people were offered a one way bus
ticket to one of these relocation centers. Once they got there,
in theory, the government would give them financial and housing assistance,
vocational training, and support in finding a job. While this
(15:27):
program was going on, the government printed brochures that really
remind me of what non native people were seeing during
the period of westward expansion in the US. Now that
you were trying to entice Native people to move into
a city to start a new life. So they said
things like come to Denver, the chance of a lifetime,
good jobs, happy homes, training, beautiful Colorado or Chicagoland. Indians
(15:49):
get good jobs, jobs recently obtained, offer opportunity, security, reservations
tended to struggle with poverty and job shortages, so to
a lot of people, this program seemed like a real
good opportunity. Many who took it planned to move to
a city, go through their vocational training, make some money,
and then move back home better off than they had
been when they left. But this program did not work
(16:11):
out as it was intended, both from the government's point
of view and the relocates. Some of these cities already
did have a small Native population. More than forty thousand
Native Americans served in World War Two. Some of them
chose to stay in cities where they were after they
were discharged from the military. Obviously, there had been various
people that had moved into cities for other reasons at
(16:34):
some point. Some of these same cities, though, where a
lot of people stayed after getting out of the military,
were also relocation centers. But because the point was to
encourage assimilation with white society, the Bureau of Indian Affairs
made no effort to connect the people who were moving
through the relocation program with those existing Native residents. It
also made no effort to house people who are relocating
(16:56):
near other people from their same nation, or even near
other native of people of any nation. So other minorities
often had social and political organizations in cities that offered
assistance and support to new arrivals, but the native relocatees
were intentionally so isolated from each other that it really
took years for these kinds of organizations to really develop. Also,
(17:19):
the quality of services and support that the relocatees were
supposed to be receiving was poor. Housing was substandard. People
who were expecting weeks or months of vocational training often
only got a few days, and that help finding a
job tended to be minimal, and the financial assistance that
was supposed to keep them afloat while they were being
(17:39):
trained usually ran out before they actually had a job.
There were people who got training and a job or
who started college, but many did not. And then on
top of that, the people who were relocating tended to
face a lot of disorientation, isolation, and culture shock. A
lot of the people who relocated had been educated in
government boarding schools and were relatively inexperienced out in the world.
(18:02):
A lot we're moving from rural areas into cities where
they didn't know anybody, They didn't have any kind of
network of more experienced people who could help them navigate
the city itself for day to day life, and they
also faced ongoing racism and discrimination from the non native
community there. According to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, two
hundred thousand Native people were relocated under this policy. By comparison,
(18:25):
eighty nine thousand were forced to relocate under the Indian
Removal Act of eighteen thirty. The government didn't keep clear
records of how many people stayed in the cities, and
some people moved back and forth between a relocation center
and their reservation multiple times, but it's estimated that as
many as half eventually returned to their reservations permanently, not
(18:46):
necessarily better off when they got there. So when it
came to offering Native people job training and relocation assistance,
this government effort wasn't all that successful, and it also
failed at encouraging Native people to assimilate with white culture.
Although it did take a while for Native run organizations
to develop in these relocation centers, once they did, they
(19:06):
really flourished. By the mid nineteen sixties, the relocation centers
were home to organizations for people from specific Native nations,
as well as social clubs that brought people together from
different nations who had common interests. A pan tribal movement
was evolving, one in which people from different nations, some
of which had historically been enemies, came together through clubs,
(19:27):
political organizations, social movement organizations, and events like pow wows.
This movement was also politically active and tried to influence local, state,
and federal policy and generally to make life better for
Native people. So instead of being a tool for assimilation,
this program wound up encouraging a renewed sense of Native
identity and the creation of more connections among different Native nations.
(19:51):
Will return to that idea because it's really a huge
part of the occupation of Alcatraz, But first we need
to talk about another federal policy that was happening at
same time. That was the policy of termination that two
thousand people relocating the Holly mentioned earlier, like that was
also part of this termination policy. In addition to the
formal relocation efforts. In the nineteen fifties, the US government
(20:14):
wanted to quote get out of the Indian business. In
other words, the US wanted to simply end its treaty
obligations towards the Native nations along with the other obligations
that existed through various federal laws. So, rather than addressing
the real problems that existed on the reservations, and those
were problems that the US had actively contributed to through
its own policies, the federal government decided it would just
(20:36):
abolish the tribes. The tribes assets and lands would be
sold off, with the proceeds distributed to their tribal members,
and the federal government would no longer recognize tribal sovereignty.
This attitude was formalized in nineteen fifty three through House
Concurrent Resolution one oh eight, which began quote, Whereas it
is the policy of Congress, as rapidly as possible, to
(20:57):
make the Indians within the territorial limits of the unit
United States subject to the same laws and entitled to
the same privileges and responsibilities as are applicable to other
citizens of the United States, to end their status as
wards of the United States, and to grant them all
of the rights and prerogatives pertaining to American citizenship. And
whereas the Indians within the territorial limits of the United
(21:19):
States should assume their full responsibilities as American citizens. From there,
it went on to resolve that quote at the earliest
possible time. All of the Indian tribes and the individual
members thereof located within the states of California, Florida, New York,
and Texas, and all of the following named Indian tribes
and individual members thereof, should be freed from federal supervision
(21:41):
and control and from all disabilities and limitations specially applicable
to Indians, the Flathead Tribe of Montana, the Klamath Tribe
of Oregon, the Menominee Tribe of Wisconsin, the Potawatamie Tribe
of Kansas and Nebraska, and those members of the Chippewa
Tribe who are on the Turtle Mountain Reservation, North Dakota.
It is further declared to be the sense of Congress
that upon the release of such tribes and individual members
(22:04):
thereof from such disabilities and limitations, all offices of the
Bureau of Indian Affairs and the States of California, Florida,
New York, in Texas, and all other offices of the
Bureau of Indian Affairs whose primary purpose was to serve
any Indian tribe or individual Indian freed from federal supervision,
should be abolished It is further declared to be the
sense of Congress that the Secretary of the Interior should
(22:26):
examine all existing legislation dealing with such Indians and the
treaties between the Government of the United States and each tribe,
and report to Congress at the earliest practicable date, but
not later than January first, nineteen fifty four, his recommendations
for such legislation, as in his judgment, may be necessary
to accomplish the purposes of this resolution passed August one,
(22:47):
ninety three. Only some Native nations and U. S States
are mentioned in this legislation, but that does not mean
that other nations were being left alone. The government had
just targeted some for immediate termination and others for eventual termination.
The plan was that at some point there would be
no more recognized Native nations and no more reservations anywhere.
(23:10):
For the most part, the nations on the list for
the earliest termination were the ones whose lands included the
most natural resources that the government was eager to get
access to. In Congress, the advocates of this policy framed
it as comparable to the abolition of slavery. Was going
to undo the idea that the Native nations were subordinate
to the United States, and it was going to put
Native American people on equal footing with their non Native peers.
(23:33):
Critics pointed out the potential problems with ending federal support
for people who had been relying on it, especially since,
based on that nineteen forty three survey that we mentioned earlier,
the conditions they were already living in were likely to
be poor. But even critics generally agreed that this was
a sign that the reservation should be abolished, rather than
a sign that the government should address these issues on
(23:54):
the reservations. There really wasn't a lot of debate about
this in Congress. This policy went beyond the text of
this one law. In nineteen fifty three, Public Law to
eighty gave the governments of California, Nebraska, Oregon, Wisconsin, and
the Territory of Alaska civil and criminal jurisdiction over the
nations in their borders. In nineteen fifty four, the Transfer
(24:15):
Act transferred responsibility for hospital and health facilities for Native
people from the Department of the Interior to what was
then known as the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
An Indian Claims Commission had been established in nineteen forty six.
At that time, it was viewed as being a step forward.
It gave Native people a formal process for filing claims
(24:36):
for stolen land, but the commission wasn't actually returning land
to anyone. It was instead offering financial compensation. So as
people realized that there was a lot more criticism about
what it was there for. Eventually, this commission would only
consider claims if the tribe involved was also working on
a termination plan. Authorities refused to issue building permits on reservations,
(24:57):
even for essential facilities like schools and hospitals, because of
the fear that people would be more reluctant to leave
a reservation that had new facilities. While the United States
was pursuing this policy, more than one hundred tribes and
bands were terminated, with their members losing the federal assistance
they had previously been entitled to. The tribal governments were dismantled,
(25:18):
the tribes no longer existed as sovereign entities, and their
members also lost their tribal affiliations. This affected more than
eleven thousand, four hundred people and led to the sale
of more than one point three million acres of land.
This is so messed up to me. Yeah, like the
just the the idea that one government could be like,
(25:38):
we're just not going to have these other governments anymore. Yeah. Well,
it's interesting because we talk about even even in this
is poor wording, but more enlightened modern discourse, where we
talked about how things happened, for example, during the Trail
of Tears, where land was taken and it was reappropriated
to other people. That sort of seems a little farther
(25:59):
back historically. No, in the nineteen fifties, we essentially did
a very similar thing with a lot more congressional involvement,
and it's like it's still not over, it's still ongoing today. Um,
there were a small number of Native people who were
actually in favor of termination. They were mostly people who
had already moved away from the reservations and had become
(26:20):
financially self sufficient or had started to assimilate into white society.
So for people who weren't still connected to a reservation
and who didn't think of their tribal affiliation as a
core part of their identity, that idea of getting proceeds
from the sale of land could sound appealing. But for
a lot of people living on reservations or people who
had relocated but still had close connections there. The prospect
(26:42):
of termination was naturally terrifying. This was especially true for
people who didn't have enough resources to begin with. People
thought they were going to lose support and the services
that they needed with nothing available to replace them. People
were so fearful of the idea of termination that it
affected their interpretation of pretty much any other decision that
the government made, something that came to be described as
(27:05):
termination psychosis. So we haven't really talked in this episode
about the Native response to any of this history. And
we cannot stress this enough, whether we're talking about the
colonial period or the termination period or now, or any
period of history in between. Native people and the nations
that they're part of have never just been passively accepting
(27:25):
all these laws and policies and actions on the part
of the federal government. Native people have been advocating for
their own rights and trying to influence federal policy since
the beginning, and we're going to get to some of
that and to Alcatraz after we first take another sponsor break.
(27:47):
The occupation of Alcatraz took place during a long discussion
of what to do with the island an eighteen fifty,
President Millard Fillmore had set it aside for federal use.
It became home to the West Coasts First Lighthouse in
eighteen fifty four, and then the U. S. Army occupied
at in eighteen fifty nine. It was under military administration
for the next seventy seven years. The military facilities on
(28:10):
the island included a prison that housed incarcerated military personnel
and prisoners of war, and of course, from nineteen thirty four,
Alcatraz became a maximum security federal prison, which housed infamous
people such as al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly, and Whitey Bulger.
In a way, Alcatraz was an ideal location for a prison,
at least in theory. The steep, rocky coast and distance
(28:33):
to the mainland made it harder to escape. There weren't
even many places on the island where a boat could
safely dock. But this location also made it a lot
more expensive to operate and maintain. Everything necessary to keep
the prison running had to be transported out to the island,
including food, freshwater, and electricity. In nineteen sixty one, the
federal government learned that the prison on Alcatraz needed an
(28:55):
estimated five million dollars worth of repairs in addition to
the already expensive costs just to keep it running. Soon after,
U S Attorney General Robert Kennedy announced that the prison
would close. The last people being housed there were transferred
to other facilities on March twenty one, nineteen sixty three.
That left the federal government in possession of this rocky,
(29:16):
inaccessible island that contained an abandoned prison. After polling governmental
departments to see if anybody else wanted it, Alctaz was
classified as surplus federal property, except for the lighthouse and
fog horn that were part of the navigation system for
San Francisco Bay. The facilities were shut down. The island
became the responsibility of the General Services Administration, or g
(29:38):
s A on April twelve, ninety For the next few months,
various proposals were bandied about for what to do with
the island. Eventually, Congress passed legislation to establish a President's
Commission on the Disposition of Alcatraz Island, which would receive
and evaluate proposals. They planned to have a meeting on
the island on March nine, sixty or but before that
(30:01):
could happen on March eight, a group of native men
occupied the island, so to back up for just a moment,
before the arrival of European colonists from Spain and Portugal,
the San Francisco Bay area was home to several native
nations who used the island now known as Alcatraz for
various purposes. Some of the specifics are unclear because the
oral histories involving the island have been lost or distorted
(30:23):
through all that stuff we were talking about earlier. The
Oloney people may have used it to isolate or ostracized
people who had violated some kind of tribal law or taboo.
Other people's in the area considered its sacred, or use
it as a navigational marker, or as a place to
gather food, especially bird eggs. The name Alcatraz is not
(30:44):
for many of these peoples that it's from the Spanish
word for Pelican. Once the island became a prison, Native
Americans were among the people incarcerated there. The first was
known as Piute Tom. He arrived on June fifth, eighteen
seventy three, while it was still an army facility. It
is not clear why he was sent there, but he
(31:04):
was shot and killed by a guard two days later.
Other Native men followed. Among the other people who were
incarcerated at Alcatraz, the largest group of Native people who
were imprisoned there during this period where nineteen Hopie men
who arrived in January. They were imprisoned for refusing to
follow US government policies that required them to give up
(31:25):
their native languages and to send their children to government schools.
Although the occupation of Alcatraz that took place in March
of nineteen sixty four was carried out by five men,
it was planned by a woman, Belva Cottier or Cartier.
We didn't find a definitive pronunciation on her name, who
also did most of the legal and historical research that
led up to that occupation, and the research for it
(31:47):
traced back to the Treaty of Fort Laramie. The Treaty
of Fort Laramie is between the United States and the
Great stu Nation, also called the Acchetti chaqueline O late
where the people of the Seven Council fires. It was
signed on April eight. This was the treaty that designated
the Black Hills as part of the Great Sioux Reservation. However,
after Gold was discovered in the Black Hills, white prospectors
(32:10):
moved into that area anyway. This ultimately went before the
Supreme Court in the United States versus Nation of Indians.
Although the court ruled that the nation was entitled to
financial compensation, the nation has refused payment, insisting that it
should have the land that was specified in that treaty.
So that's another thing that's still going on today. The
Treaty of Fort Laramie also contained this language in section
(32:32):
six quote. And it is further stipulated that any male
Indians over eighteen years of age, of any band or
tribe that is or shall hereafter become a party to
this treaty, who now is, or who shall hereafter become
a resident or occupant of any reservation or territory not
included in the tract of country designated and described in
(32:53):
this Treaty for the permanent home of the Indians, which
is not mineral land, nor reserved by the United States
for special purpose US other than Indian occupation, and who
shall have made improvements thereon of the value of two
hundred dollars or more, and continuously occupied the same as
a homestead for the term of three years, shall be
entitled to receive from the United States a patent for
(33:15):
one hundred and sixty acres of land, including his set improvements.
The same to be in the form of the legal
subdivisions of the surveys of the public lands. So this
passage of the Treaty of Fort Laramie could be read
to mean that surplus land like the island of Alcatraz
could be granted to Native men over the age of
eighteen who belonged to the Great Sto Nation. So that's
(33:36):
why Richard Mackenzie, Martin fire Thunder, Martinez Garfield, Spotted Elk,
Walter Means, and an Alcott Here who was Belvi's husband,
were the ones chosen to occupy this island. I also
find found slightly different lists of names of who was
involved with us, but this was the one that was
repeated most often in the sources that seemed to be
most detailed. They had all moved to the Bay Area
(33:59):
from else where, some of them through that federal relocation
program we talked about earlier. They were all citizens of
one of the tribes that make up the Great Sioux Nation.
These five men went to Alcatraz by boat. In accounts
of the day from people who were involved. They are
described either as being in traditional dress or as being
in costume. Once they got to the island, they pounded
(34:20):
sticks into the soil to market as claimed. They cited
the Treaty of Fort Laramie as granting them the rights
to the island, and they offered to pay a price
of forty seven cents an acre. They came up with
that number by calculating the price per acre that was
being offered to the California Nations whose reservations were being
dissolved under the federal government's termination policy. Although they were
(34:42):
all making individual homestead claims, they also had plans for
an education and cultural center on the island. After arriving
on Alcatraz, these men were met by caretaker Al Alworth.
Prison administrator Richard Willard arrived from the mainland by boat
not long afterward and told the men that they should
take this matter through formal channels. The men left shortly thereafter,
(35:03):
having been on the island for about four hours. The
news coverage of this occupation was pretty dismissive, with headlines
like quote wacky Indian raid Alcatraz invaded, which ran in
the San Francisco Examiner. But as had been suggested, they
did take the matter through formal channels. On April tenth,
nineteen sixty four, an attorney filed a petition with the
(35:25):
General Services Administration on behalf of the men, citing the
Treaty of Fort Laramie and federal laws as justification for
turning Alcatraz over to them. As became one of many
proposals for what to do with Alcatraz, which we're still ongoing.
In nineteen sixty nine, when the larger occupation of the
island happened, and we will get to that in part two.
(35:46):
Do you a little bit of listener mail, Tracy, I do.
This listener mail is from Jason. Jason is the first
of approximately fifty people not inflating that number, that's the
real number who have written to us about this. Uh.
The subject line of this email is update Niagara Falls
(36:06):
scow has moved. Jason sends a link to a CBC
article and then says, I recently heard the listener mail
about the scow stuck at the top of Niagara Falls.
I grew up in the area and knew the story
from my earliest trips to the falls. Overnight on October thirty,
one Halloween, we had a big windstorm and heavy rain.
This weather caused the scow to move about a hundred
(36:28):
and sixty feet closer to the brink of the falls,
and I think now that it is dislodged, it may
not be long until the scal goes over the edge.
It seems to be sitting more exposed to the force
of the Niagara River. Anyway, just a timely update to
a recent story I heard on your podcast. I really
enjoy listening to your podcast on my ride to and
from work every day. Many topics you've talked about come
(36:49):
up in conversations, and I always attribute my knowledge to
your show. My son did a short essay in school
on the Triangle Shirt factory fire, which led into a
discussion about the Radium Girls and working cans in the past.
Thanks for all you do, Jason, Thank you Jason, and
to the like fifty other people who have emailed for
posted on our Facebook page, or tweeted at us about
the story. Yes, by total weird coincidence. We talked about
(37:13):
this in the listener mail of our episode on the
Paris Catacombs, and then mere days later this storm happened
and caused the thing to shift, so it is incredibly
easy to find a link to this story. Um, we
can also put it in the show notes, but if
you just google Niagarah like Niagara Scallet, it's all over everywhere.
(37:34):
So anyway, thanks again to everybody who has sent this
to us. I have not replied individually to everyone because
it was kind of an overwhelming volume of of messages.
So anyway, if you would like to write to us
about this or any other podcast, or if the Niagaras
galphoves again, it might go over the falls at some point, UH,
send us an email. Where a history podcast at how
stuff Works dot com and then we're all over social
(37:54):
media as Missed in History. That's where you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest,
and Instagram. You also come to our website, which is
Missed in History dot com and find the show notes
for all the episodes Holly and I have worked on together,
and a searchable archive of all of our previous episodes ever,
and you can subscribe to our show and Apple podcasts,
the I heart Radio app, and anywhere else you can
get a podcast. Stuff you Missed in History Class is
(38:20):
a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For
more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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