November 20, 2019 • 39 mins
The Occupation of Alcatraz started 50 years ago on November 20, 1969 and went on for a year and a half. Last time, we talked about context and the events that led up to the occupation. Today we'll cover how the occupation itself played out.
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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. No, that' Holly Fry.
This is Part two of our podcast on the occupation
of Alcatraz, which started fifty years ago on November nine.
(00:24):
Last time, we talked about a bunch of contexts, so
unless you are already familiar with the US government's policies
of relocation and termination in the ni and fifties, I
really recommend listening to that one first. We also talked
about an earlier occupation of Alcatraz in Part one, and
before we start into Part two, I just have a
note about language and names. Some of the people who
(00:44):
were a big part of this are still living and
go by different names now than they did fifty years ago,
So for the sake of clarity, we'll mention the name
that you'll see if you go back to primary sources
from the time or older articles about it, But otherwise
we'll be sticking to the names that people are using
now as best we can. Also, as is the case
for other ethnic groups and political entities, it's very common
(01:07):
for one native nation to be known by multiple names
that came up last time. As well. There's the nation's
own name for itself, along with other names given by
other nations or by European colonists. And even though these
other names often have insulting or or offensive connotations, a
lot of times they're still connected to a nation's identity
(01:27):
in some way. Sometimes there are generational differences in which
name people prefer to use for themselves, as well as
more generally, whether people prefer to be called Indian or
Native American or something else. A lot of the times
the names that are formally referenced in laws or treaties
between the US government and a native nation are not
the same ones that most members of those nations actually
(01:50):
prefer to use, and this episode references a lot of
that kind of material and things that people said about
themselves fifty years ago, along with things like organization names
from fifty years ago, and in some cases, like the
preferred language today would be a little different. So. After
the federal government closed the prison on Alcatraz in nineteen
sixty three, the debate over what to do with the
island stretched on for years, with public hearings, committees, and
(02:14):
more than five hundred submitted proposals. In early nineteen sixty five,
it was recommended that the island be transferred to the
National Park Service. On September thirteenth of that year, Attorney
Elliott Layton filed a claim in U s District Court
on behalf of Richard Mackenzie, who was part of the
earlier occupation of the island that we talked about in
Part one, and he requested the land or a monetary
(02:36):
judgment in the amount of two point five million dollars.
Mackenzie's court case went on until July of nineteen sixty eight,
at which point the court dismissed his complaint. The judge
said that he didn't think Mackenzie truly believed he had
a valid claim to the island. The judge concluded that
the occupation had been done to attract attention or publicity.
It also appears that the home setting provisions of the
(02:58):
Treaty of Fort Laramie that we talked about last time,
which underpinned that earlier occupation, didn't actually apply in this case.
In the three years that passed between when Mackenzie's claim
was filed and when it was dismissed, there had still
been no final decision on what to do with Alcatraz.
In spite of the recommendation to turn it over to
the National Park Service, Congress didn't take any action to
(03:20):
make that official. So shortly before Mackenzie's case was dismissed,
the whole process started over from the beginning, this time
focusing on whether the state of California or the city
of San Francisco had a use for the island. There
was a lot of arguing about it that played out
over more than a year, with a Surplus Property commission
established to try to figure out what to do. On
(03:42):
July sixty nine, Lamar Hunt, son of Texas oil tycoon H. L. Hunt,
filed a proposal to turn Alcatraz into an amusement park.
He planned to leave the cell block there as a
tourist attraction and to add a replica of San Francisco
Sarka eighteen ninety and an underground space museum with rest
runts and shops, and at one point he was also
talking about a space tower with a revolving restaurant at
(04:05):
the top. People made comparisons to Las Vegas. You've been
to Alcatraz, I mean, I have seen it from the shore.
I haven't physically been out there. It's not that big,
so this seems so jamp backed to me. I'm like,
what what, how would you even what um? This proposal,
while it made me amused in its weirdness, made a
(04:28):
lot of people at the time validly really angry. They
thought it sounded tacky, and Hunt was an outsider. He
was also politically very conservative, and this was San Francisco,
just two years after the Summer of Love, and a
lot of people just did not like the idea of
turning Alcatraz into a private attraction that someone would be
making money off of. Fashion designer Alvin Duskin stepped in
(04:51):
with a save Alcatraz campaign. In spite of all the
public opposition, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved Hun's
proposal on Stepto twenty nine of nineteen sixty nine, and
a lot of people were furious about that decision, but
the city didn't feel like it could just back out.
That's when Adam Fortunate Eagle, then known as Adam Nordwall
got involved. He's a hereditary member of the Red Lake
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Band of Chippewa Indians who also has connections to other
nations and is currently living on the Pipster Shone Reservation
in Nevada. Fortunate Eagle contacted City Supervisor John Barbara Gelatta
to suggest that the city turn Alcatraz over to the
Native community in exchange for something symbolic, something that might
suggest the historical sale of the island of Manhattan in
(05:36):
exchange for beads and claws. Barbara Gelatta did not take
Fortunate Eagle up on this suggestion. At the same time,
though other Native people in the San Francisco Bay Area
we're also talking about plans for Alcatraz. We talked in
our last episode about how, starting in the nineteen forties,
the federal government encouraged Native people to relocate from reservations
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into several cities where they would, at least in theory,
receive job training and other assistance. Four of those cities
were in California. Between the government relocation effort and veterans
relocating after World War Two, the Native population of the
San Francisco Bay Area had grown dramatically over just a
couple of decades. By the late nineteen sixties, the Bay
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area was home to at least thirty clubs that were
by and four Native people. Following student protests and strikes.
Some of the colleges in the area had started ethnic
studies programs that included Native American studies, so politically active
Native students at those colleges already had experience planning and
coordinating protests. Several sources note that one of these college
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students was a Native woman and was the first one
to come up with the idea for another occupation of
Alcatraz in nineteen sixty nine, and Adam Fortunate Eagles memoir
he identifies her as a woman named Mary Luke Justice,
who was classmates with Richard Oakes at San Francisco State.
Richard Oakes was Mohawk and became one of the most
visible people involved with this occupation. This woman, though, apparently
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left the movement after an altercation with Oaks's wife. So
in the fall of nineteen sixty nine, a lot of
different Native people were talking about different ideas for Alcatraz,
but nothing had been put into action. Then on October
twenty eight, the San Francisco Indian Center burned down that
had existed for eleven years, functioning as a gathering place
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for Native clubs and organizations while also providing education, social services, employment,
counseling and other services. The United Bay Indian Council was
also headquartered there. This was just a colossal loss for
the Native community of the San Francisco Bay Area, and
it added a new element to the idea of turning
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Alcatraz over to Native people, that it would become home
to a cultural and education center that would be the
successor to the San Francisco Indian Center. Soon, Native college
students from several University of California and California State University
campuses were coming together to plan an occupation of Alcatra.
As many of the college students involved had come to
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California from other parts of the United States through the
government relocation program, and they represented a huge diversity of
Native American and Alaska Native nations. Over time, there were
some First Nations people from Canada connected to the occupation
as well. Older activists were also part of this planning.
To Adam Fortunate Eagle, for example, was about forty. He
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had moved to the San Francisco Bay Area on his
own earlier on and then trained as a termite inspector
before eventually starting his own business. Vindeloria Jr. Who was
Standing Rocks tou was thirty six when the occupation started.
He was an activist who had served in the Marines
and had published a book called Custard Died for Your
Sins and Indian Manifesto. Both men were among the people
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working on the occupation, primarily from the mainland, but they
didn't always feel trusted or welcomed by the college students
due to everything from their age, to their relative affluents,
to differences of opinion over politics and strategy. The date
for the occup patient of Alcatraz was set for November
nine nine. Members of the media were given a heads
(09:06):
up at a Halloween party at the home of Tim Findley,
who was a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. The
reporters were given this tip with the request that they
keep it confidential. Alcatraz was off limits to visitors, so
the occupation that was being planned was illegal. Organizers arranged
for five boats to carry a large group of Native
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people from Fisherman's Wharf to the island, but then on
the ninth those boats did not show up, and there
were reporters there at the dock watching what was going on,
planning to write about it. Richard Oakes read a proclamation
to the assembled media, which was something they had been
planning to do from the start, but was also an
effort to kind of stall for time while they tried
to figure out what to do about their missing boats.
(09:48):
You know, we'll get back to that proclamation. Shortly as
this was happening, Adam fortunate Eagle spotted Ronald Craig aboard
the bark Monte Cristo. This was a three masted wooden
vessel that he had been using to take people on
sightseeing tours of the bay. Fortunate Eagle convinced him to
take fifty people out to the island, circle it a
few times, and then come back so that the reporters
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who were waiting on a boat in the bay would
still have a story. Craig, who was Canadian, agreed. As
they approached the island, though Richard Oaks jumped overboard and
swam for shore along with a few other people, and
five of them representing five different tribes, ultimately made it there.
The people who jumped off and really struggled were rescued
by members of the press who were waiting off of
(10:30):
Alcatraz in a boat waiting to get their story. This
whole thing kind of terrified Ronald Craig, who really thought
he might be about to start an international incident since
he was sailing under a Canadian flag. Once he was
on the island, Richard Oakes claimed it by right of
discovery and read the proclamation again. Shortly thereafter, caretaker Glenn
Dodson asked them to leave, and they did. Since they
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had swum to the island after jumping from a boat,
they didn't have any kind of supplies for a prolonged stay,
and they also felt like they had made their point.
They were taken back to the mainland aboard Coastguard vessels.
Later that night, though, eleven men and three women made
their way back to Alcatraz, and this time they did
have some more supplies with them, though not enough for
a very long occupation. Once they got there, they split
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up into small groups to try to evade capture. In
the morning, authorities who arrived on the scene were met
by Richard Oakes. They told him that if everyone left peacefully,
they would not be arrested, and he agreed to these terms,
something that some of the other people who had come
to the island disagreed with him for doing. According to
one of her accounts, of the occupation. This included Leneda
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war Jack, then known as Leneda means a member of
the Shoshone Bannock tribes of Idaho. Lenedo war Jack was
a critical part of this occupation for its entirety. Although
some of the goals and messaging of the occupation of
Alcatraz shifted over time, that proclamation that they read on
the dock and then again on the island really summed
up a lot of what they are doing and why
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we're going to get to that, and too the longer
occupation after or a sponsor break. Like we said before
the break, the proclamation that was signed and read by
the Indians of all tribes packed in a lot of
detail about what the occupiers of Alcatraz were doing and
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why they were doing it. It's really full of some
cutting and sarcastic criticism of all those centuries of federal
policy toward Native Americans. It started quote proclamation to the
Great White Father and all his people, We the Native Americans,
reclaim the land known as Alcatraz Island in the name
of all American Indians by right of discovery. We wish
to be fair and honorable in our dealings with the
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Caucasian inhabitants of this land, and hereby offer the following treaty.
We will purchase said Alcatraz Island for twenty four dollars
in glass beads and red cloth, the precedent set by
the white man's purchase of a similar island about three
d years ago. We know that twenty four dollars in
trade goods for these sixteen acres is more than was
paid when Manhattan Island was sold. But we know that
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land values have risen over the years. Our offer of
a dollar and twenty four cents per acre is greater
than the forty seven cents per acre that the white
men are now paying the California Indians for their land.
As a memory refresher, that forty seven cents an acre
was a reference to how much money was being offered
to California Native nations for their land during the federal
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government's Termination policy. The proclamation continued, quote, we will give
to the inhabitants of this island a portion of that
land for their own, to be held in trust by
the American Indian government for as long as the sun
shall rise and the rivers go down to the sea,
to be administered by the Bureau of Caucasian Affairs. We
will further guide the inhabitants in the proper way of living.
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We will offer them our religion, our education, our life
ways in order to help them achieve our level of civilization,
and thus raised them and all their white brothers up
from their savage and unhappy state. We offer this treaty
in good faith and wish to be fair and honorable
in our dealings with all white men. It ended with
some criticisms of how the federal government had approached reservations. Quote,
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we feel that this so called Alcatraz Island is more
than suitable for an Indian reservation as determined by the
white man's own standards. By this, we mean that this
place resembles most Indian reservations in that one it is
isolated from modern facilities and without adequate means of transportation. Two,
it has no fresh running water. Three it has inadequate
sanitation facilities. For there are no oil or mineral rights.
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Five there is no industry, and so unemployment is very great.
Six there are no health care facilities. Seven, the soil
is rocky and nonproductive, and the land does not support game.
Eight there are no educational facilities. Nine, the population has
always exceeded the land base. Ten the population has always
been held as prisoners and kept dependent upon others. Further,
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it would be fitting in symbolic that ships from all
over the world entering the Golden Gate would first see
Indian Land unless be reminded of the true hist three
of this nation. This tiny island would be a symbol
of the great lands once ruled by the free and
noble Indians. Um that you'll see slightly different nuances sometimes
from the copy, because there are lots of different copies
of this floating around, but they all have that same
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general arc. This was signed by Indians of all tribes,
not only because so many different native nations and people's
were part of this occupation, but also because it was
meant to represent all of the Native peoples of the
United States. After that brief November nine occupation, Native college
students started seriously planning a longer occupation of Alcatraz, and
(15:36):
although there were lots of Native activists on the mainland
as well, who did things like procure supplies and generators
and managed donations and handle logistics secure transport back and
forth to the island, the actual effort on the island,
and the logistics of this initial landing were really primarily
the work of college students. Although there were discussions about
starting the occupation on Thanksgiving, Eventually the organiser settled on
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November twentieth, nineteen sixty nine, which was a week earlier.
That day, eight nine people gathered in Sauceletto, starting at
about one am, some at the No Name Bar and
others gathering directly on the waterfront. They made their way
to Alcatraz aboard a collection of vessels nicknamed the salcelto
Indian Navy. Thirty six people, including two reporters, were on
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the seaweed that was captained by Peter Bowen, About Twincy
Moore were on the Odin two, captained by Bob Teft,
and the rest were on a motor boat captain by
nineteen year old Mary Crowley, who brought her vessel out
under sail because the motor wouldn't start. Although Bowen had
said he would not transport children, the group did include
at least two. Those were Lenedo Warjack's two year old
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son and twelve year old Ivan Oaks. When they arrived
at the Alcatraz doc the only person on the island
was Glenn Dobson, who saw them and shouted, may day,
may day the Indians have landed before, then telling them
that he was one eighth Cherokee. The Indians of All
Tribes may their way from the dock to the interior
of the prison, where they established a camp and organized themselves. Later,
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Richard Oakes met with General Services Administrator Tom Hannon to
negotiate their terms. Hannon agreed that the Indians of All
Tribes could bring one vote of supplies back in the
morning and hold their demonstration on the island, but that
all the occupiers needed to be off the island by
the end of the following day. In reality, though, that
one supply boat brought not only supplies for a longer stay,
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but also the occupiers attorney Aubrey Grossmen, so they were
there at that point for the long haul. While occupying
the island, the Indians of All Tribes wanted a truly
egalitarian existence, sharing all food and supplies, and establishing a
seven person governing council with elections held every ninety days.
The first governing council was made up of seven men
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representing seven different native nations, although later councils also included women.
The entire population of the island was expected to take
part in any orton decision. One of the first orders
of business was to try to make the island more habitable.
It was an abandoned federal prison that had not been
used in years, so one of the big tasks at
the beginning was just making it a place they could stay,
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including getting more of the plumbing working. When they first arrived,
only three toilets were operational. They also established rules meant
to protect their safety and privacy. Weapons and alcohol were
not allowed. Everyone involved understood how different and more potentially
deadly the government's response to them would be if they
were armed, or if they were even believed to be armed. However,
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they did create a lot of graffiti on the island,
marking out federal signs labeling the island as Indian Land,
and painting peace and Freedom Welcome home of the Free
Indian Land on the water tower. When that water tower
was restored in that graffiti was restored as well. At first,
the federal government's response this occupation was largely to try
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to wait it out. The coast Guard did attempts to
establish a blockade around the island, but it was not
very effective. At some points it did cause people to
have to haul supplies up a rocky cliff using ladders
because they couldn't get to the actual doc Although the
government nominally agreed to negotiate, those negotiations were at an
impass from the very beginning. From the Indians of All
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Tribes point of view, the only acceptable outcome was for
Alcatraz to be handed over to Native people to be
made into a cultural and education center, and the government
was just not going to do that. The Indians of
All Tribes didn't have a clear plan on how to
proceed in the face of a stalemate. However, the occupiers
had a lot of support from outside the Native community.
(19:41):
Their nations of food, supplies and money really rolled in.
There has actually been a lot of debate about the
money over the years, because there's no documentation about how
much money was donated, or who got it, or what
exactly it was used for, and this has led to
various accusations of theft or other wrongdoing, which at this
point will probably never ben inclusively. Settled people also expressed
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their support of the occupiers to the government. For example,
on November nineteen sixty nine, President Richard Nixon got a
telegram which read, quote, for once in this country's history,
let the Indians have something. Let them have Alcatraz. Even
without a plan for how to proceed. In the face
of this stalemate with the federal government, the occupiers continued
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to improve their situation on the island. Their population continued
to grow. For a lot of the occupation, there were
about a hundred people there at any given time. Big
Rock School was established for the twelve full time residents
of the island who were in first through sixth grade,
which occupiers had accredited so that the students wouldn't be
forced to repeat their work once the occupation was over.
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Preschool was later established in the same building. Dr Dorothy
Lone Wolf Miller, who was Blackfoot, secured a grant for
the school and also allowed her office to be used
as the headquarters for the Indians of All Tribes and
handled a lot of the organization's finances. Stella Leach, who
was Lakota Colville, was a nurse, brought in first aid
kits and took a three month leave of absence from
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her job to establish a health clinic which had a
visiting doctor. Thanksgiving was celebrated on the island in nineteen
sixty nine with huge amounts of donated food, including entire
meals donated by a San Francisco restaurant, although which restaurant
that was berries from one account to another. As many
as four hundred people attended this celebration, including Native people
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from a lot of other parts of the United States.
In addition to the Thanksgiving meal, the day included Native
religious and spiritual ceremonies. December twenty, nineteen sixty nine, marked
the first broadcast of Radio Free Alcatraz, which was aired
on radio stations in Berkeley, Los Angeles, and New York City.
John Trudel, who grew up in the Santi Su Reservation,
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was the voice of Radio Free Alcatraz and became a
major voice of the occupation. Radio Free Alcatraz featured music,
interviews with the occupiers, news about what was happening on
the island, and other news and updates related to the movement.
To the beginning of this movement was just incredibly promising,
with the occupiers doing amazing work on the island and
other Native activists coordinating efforts on the mainland, and then
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widespread support from outside of the Native community. This included
attention from celebrities including Cream, musician Buffy st Marie merv Griffin,
Marlon Brando, and Jane Fonda. The cast of a California
production of Hair took up a donation for the occupation.
Credence Clearwater Revival donated money to buy a boat, which
was named the clear Water and became the occupants primary
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way of getting back and forth to the mainland. But
as the occupation continued for nineteen months, things, of course
became more difficult, and we're going to talk about that
a little bit after a sponsor break. Overall, the federal
government's strategy of essentially trying to wait out the Indians
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of all tribes made it harder and harder for them
to take action. There was a lot going on in
the United States politically and socially. The civil rights movement,
the Chicano movement, the Women's liberation movement, the gay rights movement,
and the independent living movement, which related to disabled people.
Those were all ongoing. Also ongoing was the deeply divisive
Vietnam War, and particularly after the Kent State massacre on
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May fourth, nineteen seventy, officials were also very fearful of
what could happen if they tried to force the occupiers
to leave in the situation became violent. The length of
the occupation also made things more difficult on the island.
Over All, the conditions were just inherently difficult. This was
an abandoned prison that had been sitting unused for years
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on a barren island, so it was cold and drafty.
Getting supplies could be difficult even with all that help.
There was not a great way to deal with garbage,
and a lot of non native people came out to
the island basically just to gawk and kind of be
lucky lose, which created a lot of traffic to deal with,
and over time people who were not natives started coming
to the island to stay, many of them hippies or
(24:05):
just people who had nowhere to go. There was also
turnover among the native occupiers. When college classes started up
again at the beginning of nineteen seventy, a lot of
the students involved initially went back to school, although some
of them then returned in the summer or during other breaks.
Native people from other parts of the United States and
Canada came for brief stretches of time, almost like a
(24:25):
spiritual journey. But eventually it got to this point where
most of the people on the island had not been
there at the beginning of the occupation, and the newcomers
weren't necessarily as committed to the egalitarian organization of the
island or to the rules prohibiting alcohol, drugs, and violence.
There were also some divisions among the occupiers, and there
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had basically been from the start. Richard Oaks had been
one of the most visible people involved, going all the
way back to the November ninth occupation. The media had
even nicknamed him the President of Alcatraz. He was charismatic, voted, genic,
and a good speaker, which is how he wound up
in that public role. But a lot of people were
frustrated that their attempt at egalitarianism had, at least to
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the outside world, a president, which is completely incongruous with
that ideology. In one way or another. Many disagreed with him,
and they really didn't like the fact that he was
being seen to be the one in charge. There were
also disputes between the people who had been there at
the start and the newcomers, like we just talked about
between the college students and the older activists between the
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urban natives and the people who came out to the
island directly from reservations. Members of the grassroots political organization
the American Indian Movement visited the island. They didn't necessarily
agree with the goals or the strategy of the Indians
of all tribes. None of this was surprising at all,
given the length of the occupation and the diversity of
the people involved in it. I mean, a lot of
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these people had different life experiences and different goals while
all being Native. But after a while, as things got
more tense and more difficult, the island's population and started
to drop, and support on the mainland started to fade.
On January third, nineteen seventy, thirteen year old van Oakes
fell three stories while playing in an open stairwell. She
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never regained consciousness, and she died five days later after
being airlifted from the island. She was Richard Oakes's stepdaughter,
and he always maintained that her death had been deliberately
caused by someone on the island who opposed him. The
FBI and the coroner both looked into it, and neither
found case for a deeper investigation. Oakes and the rest
of his family weren't really involved with the occupation after
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that point. Eventually, Tim Finley wrote a three part article
for the San Francisco Chronicle that detailed a lot of
the problems that had arisen on the island, from the
interpersonal conflicts to drugs and the media. Had first learned
about this about the November ninth occupation at a party
at his home, and he'd had working relationships with a
lot of the people involved with the Indians of All
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Tribes for quite some time. When he has talked about
his coverage of this new he seems to have recognized
what it meant for him to be a white reporter
trying to represent the stories of a Native occupation. But
after these articles were published, a lot of the people
he had previously considered friends did not want anything to
do with him. In March of nineteen seventy, the government
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offered the Indians of All Tribes a compromise that Alcatraz
would be made into a park with Native people involved
to quote maximize the Indian nous of the island in
the context of a park. The Indians of All Tribes refused.
Only the island in its entirety would suffice. In late
May of nineteen seventy, officials cut off the island's electrical
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supply and removed the barge that had been providing it
with fresh water. That June, a series of fires struck
the island. Occupiers maintained that they had been deliberately set
by government officials to try to get them to leave,
while the government, of course, maintained that the fires had
been set by the occupiers. That same month, that was
also announced that Alcatraz would become part of Golden Gate
(27:59):
National Recreation Area, which was finally after years of debate
about it what actually happened to the island. In August,
plans were in place for an armed nighttime removal of
the islands occupiers code named occupation Parks. It was scrapped
when details were leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle. Then
in October, someone on the island fired on a Coastguard
(28:21):
cutter while it was servicing a nearby bui. Throughout the occupation,
people had shot arrows at nearby watercraft, but this was
from a handgun. Authorities started to look at the idea
of removing the occupiers with more and more urgency. The
winter of seventy one was pretty difficult on the island.
With the main power cut off, the occupiers had to
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rely on gas power generators. Public interest and the occupation
had also really waned. We talked about that process earlier,
but at this point it was a lot a lot lower,
and the celebrities who had supported it had mostly moved
on to other things. The loss of power to the
island disabled the island's foghorn and lighthouse, although its function
was replaced with lighted buoy's from the water. When two
(29:04):
oil takers collided at the entrance to San Francisco Bay
in January of nineteen seventy one, officials specifically noted that
the lack of lighthouse and foghorn had nothing to do
with it, but it still gave the government more motivation
to try to remove the occupiers. Then, on April eighth,
the clear water sank that again had been their main
(29:25):
transport back and forth from the island, and the cause
of that thinking was never determined. Finally, armed U S
Marshals were dispatched to the island via Coastguard cutter on
June eleven nine. While in the occupations earlier months there
had usually been around one people on the island. Now
there were just fifteen six men, four women, and five children.
(29:47):
None of them had been there on November twentieth, nineteen
sixty nine, when all of this began. Many of the
people who had been part of the movement at the
start were still involved, though just before the removal, Leneda
war Jack had been trying to persuade the remaining occupiers
to pursue an end of the occupation through litigation, something
their attorney was advising against. Leneda was on the mainland.
(30:09):
When the marshals arrived with the occupiers removed, the island
was found to be in shambles, I mean all of
those problems that we talked about. You could see evidence
of windows had been broken, Copper had been stripped from
the plumbing and electrical systems. Three people were arrested on
June twelfth, nineteen seventy one, for stealing a copper, and
they were later convicted. The occupation of Alcatraz was not
(30:31):
successful at getting the US government to turn the island
over to Native people, but by other measures it was
incredibly successful. It led to a huge upswelling in Native pride,
including the establishment of new social and political organizations for
Native people and new work on reservations. It reinvigorated the
pam Indian movement that had been growing when the occupation started.
(30:54):
Many of the people who were involved in the occupation
were or have been politically active in the field of
Indigenous people's rights for their entire lives. Over the next
nine years after the occupation, there were at least seventy
takeovers of buildings, facilities, and property patterned after the occupation
of Alcatraz. These included the takeover of the Bureau of
(31:14):
Indian Affairs building in nineteen seventy two and the occupation
of Wounded Knee in nineteen seventy three. Some of these
occupations were more militant than the occupation of Alcatraz had been. Together,
this takeover movement and its associated political advocacy came to
be known as the Alcatraz Red Power movement. The term
red power had actually been coined by Vindaloria Jr. Back
(31:35):
in nineteen sixty six. Thousands of Native people visited Alcatraz
during the occupation, including some people who later became prominent
Native leaders, and many talked about how important the occupation
had been to them as Native people. For example, Wilma
Mankiller visited the island and was one of the volunteers
working on the occupation from the mainland. She later said quote,
(31:55):
it was idealistic and the generosity of the spirit of
the people proved that we could change anything. Who I
am and how I governed was influenced by Alcatraz. The
way I viewed descent was totally influenced by Alcatraz. People
on the island were very strong about freedom of speech,
freedom of descent. I saw the importance of descent in government.
(32:17):
If you're not familiar with woman man Killer, she was
the first woman to become principal chief of the Cherokee Nation.
Alcatraz became a symbol of Native pride and Native self
determination in the first of the protest marches, known as
the Longest Walk, started with a ceremony at Alcatraz. The
march was in protest of a collection of anti native
bills that had been introduced in Congress, and then more generally,
(32:39):
to draw attention to the problems still faced by Native people.
After the Alcatraz ceremony, the marchers watched three thousand miles
to Washington, d c. Symbolically recreating the forced marches of
the removal era, and on top of that, there were
concrete legislative advances in Native rights that came out during
and after the occupation. As a result of this and
other vocacy, President Richard Nixon had made Native rights a
(33:03):
part of his platform, and while he was in office,
his administration increased the budget of the Bureau of Indian
Affairs by more than two It also established the Office
of Indian Water Rights and established so called Indian desks
in government HR offices to help ensure equal opportunities for
Native people. Other legislation followed after Nixon's resignation, including the
(33:25):
Indian Self Determination and Education Assistance Act that was passed
in nineteen seventy five. During these years, lands were also
returned to Native nations, including the return of Mount Adams
to the Yakama Nation in Washington State and the return
of Blue Lake in the surrounding land to Taos Pueblo
and New Mexico. Obviously, there is still a long way
(33:46):
to go in terms of tribal sovereignty and Native rights.
As was the case during the reorganization period, the laws
that were passed in the sixties and seventies were overall
a step forward, but they were also not without fault,
and they did not undo center reas of damaging policy
and ongoing patterns of racism and white supremacy. Today, there
are more than five hundred federally recognized tribes and approximately
(34:09):
three hundred seventy four ratified treaties between the US and
Native nations. According to the US Census, two point nine
million people identify as American, Indian, or Alaska Native alone,
and five point two million people identify as Native alone
or in combination with one or more other races. So
these issues affect the lives of a lot of people
(34:30):
from a diverse collection of nations and people's. Many Native
writers have also compared the occupation of Alcatraz to the
Standing Rock water protectors demonstrations against the Dakota Access Pipeline,
both in terms of how they have inspired for their
advocacy and further sense of identity, and also how they've
drawn more attention to Native American rights and social and
political issues involving Native people in nations in general. Today,
(34:54):
the International Indian Treaty Council and American Indian Contemporary Arts
organized Sunrise the Premonies on Alcatraz on Indigenous People's Day
and on Thanksgiving, with transportation provided by Alcatraz Cruises, which
is the official concession or to the National Park Service
as of when we are recording this podcast. Indians of
All Tribes also still exists and has been planning fiftieth
(35:17):
anniversary commemorations of this occupation. Richard Oakes was shot and
killed by a guard at a Y M c A
camp in September of ninety two. The guard said he
thought Oakes was going for a weapon, although he was unarmed.
On seventeen, Oakes was honored with a Google Doodle on
what would have been his seventy five birthday. Even though
(35:38):
we have given this uh topic of full two parts,
it still feels like we've only scratched the surface. But
there are fortunately lots of resources for people who would
like to know more. As one example, American Indian activism
Alcatraz to the Longest Walk from the University of Illinois
Press includes a lot of first hand accounts from Vindeloria Jr.
(35:59):
Adam Fortunate Eagle, Tim Findley, and Leneda war Jack then
known as Lenaeda Boyer, among others, along with historical analysis
of the occupation and related events leneda war. Jack also
went on to earn her PhD and has written a
book called Native Resistance, An Intergenerational Fight for Survival and Life,
which was still forthcoming as of when we recorded this podcast,
(36:21):
so not yet out, but I think it will be
out as of when the episode is out, but not yet. UM. Also,
these issues involving treaty rights and land rights and native
and tribal sovereignty, all of that is so ongoing for
so many people today. If if people want another source
all on all of this, I really recommend the podcast
This Land from Cricket Media, which is hosted by Rebecca Nagel.
(36:44):
She is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, and that
is about a case involving both land rights and the
Supreme Court. UM. As of right this minute is it
is an eight part series that covers a whole arc
and it is extremely good. UM. That is occupation of Alcatraz.
Do you have a listener mail? I do I have
listener mail from Claire Claire wrote to us after our
(37:08):
episode on the witch Finder General and Claire says, hi, y'all.
As soon as I listened to today's episode about Matthew Hopkins,
I knew I had to write in because I do,
in fact have a black cat named Pie Wackett, whose
name was inspired in part by the name of one
of the familiars listened in this episode. I got her
around Halloween eight years ago, so I knew she had
(37:28):
to have a spooky name. I picked pie Wackett not
only for its witchy historical connotation, but also because it's
the name of kN Novak's familiar in the movie Bell,
Book and Candle. I'm as much of an old movie
nerd as i am a history nerd, so this was
the perfect name for the cat who made me believe
in love at first sight. I've attached a picture of
her and all her furry glory. Thanks for all you do.
You make my long days in a cubicle bearable. Thank you, Claire,
(37:52):
I love your cat picture. Also thanks to Philip on Facebook,
who also put a note on our Facebook about Bell,
Book and Candle, plus a picture of his black cat
whose name is Carmen. What is funny to me is
that pie whack It has become a cat name. Um
and what what pie Whackett was back in the day
of Matthew Hopkins, which finding was an imp which is
(38:15):
a little different from a cat, but like now associated
with cats. I love it. I miss having a black cat.
I do well. I have two of them. I can
text you pictures. Neither of them are named after any familiars, though,
uh if you would like to write to us about
this or any other podcast Where History Podcasts and How
Stuff Works dot com and then we're all over social
media at miss in History and that's where you'll find
(38:36):
our Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter. You can come to
our website, which is missed in History dot com for
show notes for all the episodes Holly and I have
worked on together, and a searchable archive of every episode.
And you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcast,
the I heart Radio app, and anywhere else to get
your podcasts. Stuffy Missed in History Class is a production
(38:58):
of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts
for my heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H
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. No, that' Holly Fry.
This is Part two of our podcast on the occupation
of Alcatraz, which started fifty years ago on November nine.
(00:24):
Last time, we talked about a bunch of contexts, so
unless you are already familiar with the US government's policies
of relocation and termination in the ni and fifties, I
really recommend listening to that one first. We also talked
about an earlier occupation of Alcatraz in Part one, and
before we start into Part two, I just have a
note about language and names. Some of the people who
(00:44):
were a big part of this are still living and
go by different names now than they did fifty years ago,
So for the sake of clarity, we'll mention the name
that you'll see if you go back to primary sources
from the time or older articles about it, But otherwise
we'll be sticking to the names that people are using
now as best we can. Also, as is the case
for other ethnic groups and political entities, it's very common
(01:07):
for one native nation to be known by multiple names
that came up last time. As well. There's the nation's
own name for itself, along with other names given by
other nations or by European colonists. And even though these
other names often have insulting or or offensive connotations, a
lot of times they're still connected to a nation's identity
(01:27):
in some way. Sometimes there are generational differences in which
name people prefer to use for themselves, as well as
more generally, whether people prefer to be called Indian or
Native American or something else. A lot of the times
the names that are formally referenced in laws or treaties
between the US government and a native nation are not
the same ones that most members of those nations actually
(01:50):
prefer to use, and this episode references a lot of
that kind of material and things that people said about
themselves fifty years ago, along with things like organization names
from fifty years ago, and in some cases, like the
preferred language today would be a little different. So. After
the federal government closed the prison on Alcatraz in nineteen
sixty three, the debate over what to do with the
island stretched on for years, with public hearings, committees, and
(02:14):
more than five hundred submitted proposals. In early nineteen sixty five,
it was recommended that the island be transferred to the
National Park Service. On September thirteenth of that year, Attorney
Elliott Layton filed a claim in U s District Court
on behalf of Richard Mackenzie, who was part of the
earlier occupation of the island that we talked about in
Part one, and he requested the land or a monetary
(02:36):
judgment in the amount of two point five million dollars.
Mackenzie's court case went on until July of nineteen sixty eight,
at which point the court dismissed his complaint. The judge
said that he didn't think Mackenzie truly believed he had
a valid claim to the island. The judge concluded that
the occupation had been done to attract attention or publicity.
It also appears that the home setting provisions of the
(02:58):
Treaty of Fort Laramie that we talked about last time,
which underpinned that earlier occupation, didn't actually apply in this case.
In the three years that passed between when Mackenzie's claim
was filed and when it was dismissed, there had still
been no final decision on what to do with Alcatraz.
In spite of the recommendation to turn it over to
the National Park Service, Congress didn't take any action to
(03:20):
make that official. So shortly before Mackenzie's case was dismissed,
the whole process started over from the beginning, this time
focusing on whether the state of California or the city
of San Francisco had a use for the island. There
was a lot of arguing about it that played out
over more than a year, with a Surplus Property commission
established to try to figure out what to do. On
(03:42):
July sixty nine, Lamar Hunt, son of Texas oil tycoon H. L. Hunt,
filed a proposal to turn Alcatraz into an amusement park.
He planned to leave the cell block there as a
tourist attraction and to add a replica of San Francisco
Sarka eighteen ninety and an underground space museum with rest
runts and shops, and at one point he was also
talking about a space tower with a revolving restaurant at
(04:05):
the top. People made comparisons to Las Vegas. You've been
to Alcatraz, I mean, I have seen it from the shore.
I haven't physically been out there. It's not that big,
so this seems so jamp backed to me. I'm like,
what what, how would you even what um? This proposal,
while it made me amused in its weirdness, made a
(04:28):
lot of people at the time validly really angry. They
thought it sounded tacky, and Hunt was an outsider. He
was also politically very conservative, and this was San Francisco,
just two years after the Summer of Love, and a
lot of people just did not like the idea of
turning Alcatraz into a private attraction that someone would be
making money off of. Fashion designer Alvin Duskin stepped in
(04:51):
with a save Alcatraz campaign. In spite of all the
public opposition, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved Hun's
proposal on Stepto twenty nine of nineteen sixty nine, and
a lot of people were furious about that decision, but
the city didn't feel like it could just back out.
That's when Adam Fortunate Eagle, then known as Adam Nordwall
got involved. He's a hereditary member of the Red Lake
(05:14):
Band of Chippewa Indians who also has connections to other
nations and is currently living on the Pipster Shone Reservation
in Nevada. Fortunate Eagle contacted City Supervisor John Barbara Gelatta
to suggest that the city turn Alcatraz over to the
Native community in exchange for something symbolic, something that might
suggest the historical sale of the island of Manhattan in
(05:36):
exchange for beads and claws. Barbara Gelatta did not take
Fortunate Eagle up on this suggestion. At the same time,
though other Native people in the San Francisco Bay Area
we're also talking about plans for Alcatraz. We talked in
our last episode about how, starting in the nineteen forties,
the federal government encouraged Native people to relocate from reservations
(05:56):
into several cities where they would, at least in theory,
receive job training and other assistance. Four of those cities
were in California. Between the government relocation effort and veterans
relocating after World War Two, the Native population of the
San Francisco Bay Area had grown dramatically over just a
couple of decades. By the late nineteen sixties, the Bay
(06:16):
area was home to at least thirty clubs that were
by and four Native people. Following student protests and strikes.
Some of the colleges in the area had started ethnic
studies programs that included Native American studies, so politically active
Native students at those colleges already had experience planning and
coordinating protests. Several sources note that one of these college
(06:39):
students was a Native woman and was the first one
to come up with the idea for another occupation of
Alcatraz in nineteen sixty nine, and Adam Fortunate Eagles memoir
he identifies her as a woman named Mary Luke Justice,
who was classmates with Richard Oakes at San Francisco State.
Richard Oakes was Mohawk and became one of the most
visible people involved with this occupation. This woman, though, apparently
(07:01):
left the movement after an altercation with Oaks's wife. So
in the fall of nineteen sixty nine, a lot of
different Native people were talking about different ideas for Alcatraz,
but nothing had been put into action. Then on October
twenty eight, the San Francisco Indian Center burned down that
had existed for eleven years, functioning as a gathering place
(07:22):
for Native clubs and organizations while also providing education, social services, employment,
counseling and other services. The United Bay Indian Council was
also headquartered there. This was just a colossal loss for
the Native community of the San Francisco Bay Area, and
it added a new element to the idea of turning
(07:42):
Alcatraz over to Native people, that it would become home
to a cultural and education center that would be the
successor to the San Francisco Indian Center. Soon, Native college
students from several University of California and California State University
campuses were coming together to plan an occupation of Alcatra.
As many of the college students involved had come to
(08:03):
California from other parts of the United States through the
government relocation program, and they represented a huge diversity of
Native American and Alaska Native nations. Over time, there were
some First Nations people from Canada connected to the occupation
as well. Older activists were also part of this planning.
To Adam Fortunate Eagle, for example, was about forty. He
(08:24):
had moved to the San Francisco Bay Area on his
own earlier on and then trained as a termite inspector
before eventually starting his own business. Vindeloria Jr. Who was
Standing Rocks tou was thirty six when the occupation started.
He was an activist who had served in the Marines
and had published a book called Custard Died for Your
Sins and Indian Manifesto. Both men were among the people
(08:45):
working on the occupation, primarily from the mainland, but they
didn't always feel trusted or welcomed by the college students
due to everything from their age, to their relative affluents,
to differences of opinion over politics and strategy. The date
for the occup patient of Alcatraz was set for November
nine nine. Members of the media were given a heads
(09:06):
up at a Halloween party at the home of Tim Findley,
who was a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. The
reporters were given this tip with the request that they
keep it confidential. Alcatraz was off limits to visitors, so
the occupation that was being planned was illegal. Organizers arranged
for five boats to carry a large group of Native
(09:26):
people from Fisherman's Wharf to the island, but then on
the ninth those boats did not show up, and there
were reporters there at the dock watching what was going on,
planning to write about it. Richard Oakes read a proclamation
to the assembled media, which was something they had been
planning to do from the start, but was also an
effort to kind of stall for time while they tried
to figure out what to do about their missing boats.
(09:48):
You know, we'll get back to that proclamation. Shortly as
this was happening, Adam fortunate Eagle spotted Ronald Craig aboard
the bark Monte Cristo. This was a three masted wooden
vessel that he had been using to take people on
sightseeing tours of the bay. Fortunate Eagle convinced him to
take fifty people out to the island, circle it a
few times, and then come back so that the reporters
(10:09):
who were waiting on a boat in the bay would
still have a story. Craig, who was Canadian, agreed. As
they approached the island, though Richard Oaks jumped overboard and
swam for shore along with a few other people, and
five of them representing five different tribes, ultimately made it there.
The people who jumped off and really struggled were rescued
by members of the press who were waiting off of
(10:30):
Alcatraz in a boat waiting to get their story. This
whole thing kind of terrified Ronald Craig, who really thought
he might be about to start an international incident since
he was sailing under a Canadian flag. Once he was
on the island, Richard Oakes claimed it by right of
discovery and read the proclamation again. Shortly thereafter, caretaker Glenn
Dodson asked them to leave, and they did. Since they
(10:52):
had swum to the island after jumping from a boat,
they didn't have any kind of supplies for a prolonged stay,
and they also felt like they had made their point.
They were taken back to the mainland aboard Coastguard vessels.
Later that night, though, eleven men and three women made
their way back to Alcatraz, and this time they did
have some more supplies with them, though not enough for
a very long occupation. Once they got there, they split
(11:15):
up into small groups to try to evade capture. In
the morning, authorities who arrived on the scene were met
by Richard Oakes. They told him that if everyone left peacefully,
they would not be arrested, and he agreed to these terms,
something that some of the other people who had come
to the island disagreed with him for doing. According to
one of her accounts, of the occupation. This included Leneda
(11:36):
war Jack, then known as Leneda means a member of
the Shoshone Bannock tribes of Idaho. Lenedo war Jack was
a critical part of this occupation for its entirety. Although
some of the goals and messaging of the occupation of
Alcatraz shifted over time, that proclamation that they read on
the dock and then again on the island really summed
up a lot of what they are doing and why
(11:57):
we're going to get to that, and too the longer
occupation after or a sponsor break. Like we said before
the break, the proclamation that was signed and read by
the Indians of all tribes packed in a lot of
detail about what the occupiers of Alcatraz were doing and
(12:18):
why they were doing it. It's really full of some
cutting and sarcastic criticism of all those centuries of federal
policy toward Native Americans. It started quote proclamation to the
Great White Father and all his people, We the Native Americans,
reclaim the land known as Alcatraz Island in the name
of all American Indians by right of discovery. We wish
to be fair and honorable in our dealings with the
(12:40):
Caucasian inhabitants of this land, and hereby offer the following treaty.
We will purchase said Alcatraz Island for twenty four dollars
in glass beads and red cloth, the precedent set by
the white man's purchase of a similar island about three
d years ago. We know that twenty four dollars in
trade goods for these sixteen acres is more than was
paid when Manhattan Island was sold. But we know that
(13:01):
land values have risen over the years. Our offer of
a dollar and twenty four cents per acre is greater
than the forty seven cents per acre that the white
men are now paying the California Indians for their land.
As a memory refresher, that forty seven cents an acre
was a reference to how much money was being offered
to California Native nations for their land during the federal
(13:23):
government's Termination policy. The proclamation continued, quote, we will give
to the inhabitants of this island a portion of that
land for their own, to be held in trust by
the American Indian government for as long as the sun
shall rise and the rivers go down to the sea,
to be administered by the Bureau of Caucasian Affairs. We
will further guide the inhabitants in the proper way of living.
(13:45):
We will offer them our religion, our education, our life
ways in order to help them achieve our level of civilization,
and thus raised them and all their white brothers up
from their savage and unhappy state. We offer this treaty
in good faith and wish to be fair and honorable
in our dealings with all white men. It ended with
some criticisms of how the federal government had approached reservations. Quote,
(14:09):
we feel that this so called Alcatraz Island is more
than suitable for an Indian reservation as determined by the
white man's own standards. By this, we mean that this
place resembles most Indian reservations in that one it is
isolated from modern facilities and without adequate means of transportation. Two,
it has no fresh running water. Three it has inadequate
sanitation facilities. For there are no oil or mineral rights.
(14:32):
Five there is no industry, and so unemployment is very great.
Six there are no health care facilities. Seven, the soil
is rocky and nonproductive, and the land does not support game.
Eight there are no educational facilities. Nine, the population has
always exceeded the land base. Ten the population has always
been held as prisoners and kept dependent upon others. Further,
(14:52):
it would be fitting in symbolic that ships from all
over the world entering the Golden Gate would first see
Indian Land unless be reminded of the true hist three
of this nation. This tiny island would be a symbol
of the great lands once ruled by the free and
noble Indians. Um that you'll see slightly different nuances sometimes
from the copy, because there are lots of different copies
of this floating around, but they all have that same
(15:15):
general arc. This was signed by Indians of all tribes,
not only because so many different native nations and people's
were part of this occupation, but also because it was
meant to represent all of the Native peoples of the
United States. After that brief November nine occupation, Native college
students started seriously planning a longer occupation of Alcatraz, and
(15:36):
although there were lots of Native activists on the mainland
as well, who did things like procure supplies and generators
and managed donations and handle logistics secure transport back and
forth to the island, the actual effort on the island,
and the logistics of this initial landing were really primarily
the work of college students. Although there were discussions about
starting the occupation on Thanksgiving, Eventually the organiser settled on
(16:00):
November twentieth, nineteen sixty nine, which was a week earlier.
That day, eight nine people gathered in Sauceletto, starting at
about one am, some at the No Name Bar and
others gathering directly on the waterfront. They made their way
to Alcatraz aboard a collection of vessels nicknamed the salcelto
Indian Navy. Thirty six people, including two reporters, were on
(16:21):
the seaweed that was captained by Peter Bowen, About Twincy
Moore were on the Odin two, captained by Bob Teft,
and the rest were on a motor boat captain by
nineteen year old Mary Crowley, who brought her vessel out
under sail because the motor wouldn't start. Although Bowen had
said he would not transport children, the group did include
at least two. Those were Lenedo Warjack's two year old
(16:43):
son and twelve year old Ivan Oaks. When they arrived
at the Alcatraz doc the only person on the island
was Glenn Dobson, who saw them and shouted, may day,
may day the Indians have landed before, then telling them
that he was one eighth Cherokee. The Indians of All
Tribes may their way from the dock to the interior
of the prison, where they established a camp and organized themselves. Later,
(17:06):
Richard Oakes met with General Services Administrator Tom Hannon to
negotiate their terms. Hannon agreed that the Indians of All
Tribes could bring one vote of supplies back in the
morning and hold their demonstration on the island, but that
all the occupiers needed to be off the island by
the end of the following day. In reality, though, that
one supply boat brought not only supplies for a longer stay,
(17:29):
but also the occupiers attorney Aubrey Grossmen, so they were
there at that point for the long haul. While occupying
the island, the Indians of All Tribes wanted a truly
egalitarian existence, sharing all food and supplies, and establishing a
seven person governing council with elections held every ninety days.
The first governing council was made up of seven men
(17:50):
representing seven different native nations, although later councils also included women.
The entire population of the island was expected to take
part in any orton decision. One of the first orders
of business was to try to make the island more habitable.
It was an abandoned federal prison that had not been
used in years, so one of the big tasks at
the beginning was just making it a place they could stay,
(18:13):
including getting more of the plumbing working. When they first arrived,
only three toilets were operational. They also established rules meant
to protect their safety and privacy. Weapons and alcohol were
not allowed. Everyone involved understood how different and more potentially
deadly the government's response to them would be if they
were armed, or if they were even believed to be armed. However,
(18:35):
they did create a lot of graffiti on the island,
marking out federal signs labeling the island as Indian Land,
and painting peace and Freedom Welcome home of the Free
Indian Land on the water tower. When that water tower
was restored in that graffiti was restored as well. At first,
the federal government's response this occupation was largely to try
(18:57):
to wait it out. The coast Guard did attempts to
establish a blockade around the island, but it was not
very effective. At some points it did cause people to
have to haul supplies up a rocky cliff using ladders
because they couldn't get to the actual doc Although the
government nominally agreed to negotiate, those negotiations were at an
impass from the very beginning. From the Indians of All
(19:18):
Tribes point of view, the only acceptable outcome was for
Alcatraz to be handed over to Native people to be
made into a cultural and education center, and the government
was just not going to do that. The Indians of
All Tribes didn't have a clear plan on how to
proceed in the face of a stalemate. However, the occupiers
had a lot of support from outside the Native community.
(19:41):
Their nations of food, supplies and money really rolled in.
There has actually been a lot of debate about the
money over the years, because there's no documentation about how
much money was donated, or who got it, or what
exactly it was used for, and this has led to
various accusations of theft or other wrongdoing, which at this
point will probably never ben inclusively. Settled people also expressed
(20:02):
their support of the occupiers to the government. For example,
on November nineteen sixty nine, President Richard Nixon got a
telegram which read, quote, for once in this country's history,
let the Indians have something. Let them have Alcatraz. Even
without a plan for how to proceed. In the face
of this stalemate with the federal government, the occupiers continued
(20:23):
to improve their situation on the island. Their population continued
to grow. For a lot of the occupation, there were
about a hundred people there at any given time. Big
Rock School was established for the twelve full time residents
of the island who were in first through sixth grade,
which occupiers had accredited so that the students wouldn't be
forced to repeat their work once the occupation was over.
(20:44):
Preschool was later established in the same building. Dr Dorothy
Lone Wolf Miller, who was Blackfoot, secured a grant for
the school and also allowed her office to be used
as the headquarters for the Indians of All Tribes and
handled a lot of the organization's finances. Stella Leach, who
was Lakota Colville, was a nurse, brought in first aid
kits and took a three month leave of absence from
(21:06):
her job to establish a health clinic which had a
visiting doctor. Thanksgiving was celebrated on the island in nineteen
sixty nine with huge amounts of donated food, including entire
meals donated by a San Francisco restaurant, although which restaurant
that was berries from one account to another. As many
as four hundred people attended this celebration, including Native people
(21:28):
from a lot of other parts of the United States.
In addition to the Thanksgiving meal, the day included Native
religious and spiritual ceremonies. December twenty, nineteen sixty nine, marked
the first broadcast of Radio Free Alcatraz, which was aired
on radio stations in Berkeley, Los Angeles, and New York City.
John Trudel, who grew up in the Santi Su Reservation,
(21:49):
was the voice of Radio Free Alcatraz and became a
major voice of the occupation. Radio Free Alcatraz featured music,
interviews with the occupiers, news about what was happening on
the island, and other news and updates related to the movement.
To the beginning of this movement was just incredibly promising,
with the occupiers doing amazing work on the island and
other Native activists coordinating efforts on the mainland, and then
(22:12):
widespread support from outside of the Native community. This included
attention from celebrities including Cream, musician Buffy st Marie merv Griffin,
Marlon Brando, and Jane Fonda. The cast of a California
production of Hair took up a donation for the occupation.
Credence Clearwater Revival donated money to buy a boat, which
was named the clear Water and became the occupants primary
(22:34):
way of getting back and forth to the mainland. But
as the occupation continued for nineteen months, things, of course
became more difficult, and we're going to talk about that
a little bit after a sponsor break. Overall, the federal
government's strategy of essentially trying to wait out the Indians
(22:58):
of all tribes made it harder and harder for them
to take action. There was a lot going on in
the United States politically and socially. The civil rights movement,
the Chicano movement, the Women's liberation movement, the gay rights movement,
and the independent living movement, which related to disabled people.
Those were all ongoing. Also ongoing was the deeply divisive
Vietnam War, and particularly after the Kent State massacre on
(23:21):
May fourth, nineteen seventy, officials were also very fearful of
what could happen if they tried to force the occupiers
to leave in the situation became violent. The length of
the occupation also made things more difficult on the island.
Over All, the conditions were just inherently difficult. This was
an abandoned prison that had been sitting unused for years
(23:42):
on a barren island, so it was cold and drafty.
Getting supplies could be difficult even with all that help.
There was not a great way to deal with garbage,
and a lot of non native people came out to
the island basically just to gawk and kind of be
lucky lose, which created a lot of traffic to deal with,
and over time people who were not natives started coming
to the island to stay, many of them hippies or
(24:05):
just people who had nowhere to go. There was also
turnover among the native occupiers. When college classes started up
again at the beginning of nineteen seventy, a lot of
the students involved initially went back to school, although some
of them then returned in the summer or during other breaks.
Native people from other parts of the United States and
Canada came for brief stretches of time, almost like a
(24:25):
spiritual journey. But eventually it got to this point where
most of the people on the island had not been
there at the beginning of the occupation, and the newcomers
weren't necessarily as committed to the egalitarian organization of the
island or to the rules prohibiting alcohol, drugs, and violence.
There were also some divisions among the occupiers, and there
(24:45):
had basically been from the start. Richard Oaks had been
one of the most visible people involved, going all the
way back to the November ninth occupation. The media had
even nicknamed him the President of Alcatraz. He was charismatic, voted, genic,
and a good speaker, which is how he wound up
in that public role. But a lot of people were
frustrated that their attempt at egalitarianism had, at least to
(25:09):
the outside world, a president, which is completely incongruous with
that ideology. In one way or another. Many disagreed with him,
and they really didn't like the fact that he was
being seen to be the one in charge. There were
also disputes between the people who had been there at
the start and the newcomers, like we just talked about
between the college students and the older activists between the
(25:29):
urban natives and the people who came out to the
island directly from reservations. Members of the grassroots political organization
the American Indian Movement visited the island. They didn't necessarily
agree with the goals or the strategy of the Indians
of all tribes. None of this was surprising at all,
given the length of the occupation and the diversity of
the people involved in it. I mean, a lot of
(25:50):
these people had different life experiences and different goals while
all being Native. But after a while, as things got
more tense and more difficult, the island's population and started
to drop, and support on the mainland started to fade.
On January third, nineteen seventy, thirteen year old van Oakes
fell three stories while playing in an open stairwell. She
(26:11):
never regained consciousness, and she died five days later after
being airlifted from the island. She was Richard Oakes's stepdaughter,
and he always maintained that her death had been deliberately
caused by someone on the island who opposed him. The
FBI and the coroner both looked into it, and neither
found case for a deeper investigation. Oakes and the rest
of his family weren't really involved with the occupation after
(26:34):
that point. Eventually, Tim Finley wrote a three part article
for the San Francisco Chronicle that detailed a lot of
the problems that had arisen on the island, from the
interpersonal conflicts to drugs and the media. Had first learned
about this about the November ninth occupation at a party
at his home, and he'd had working relationships with a
lot of the people involved with the Indians of All
(26:54):
Tribes for quite some time. When he has talked about
his coverage of this new he seems to have recognized
what it meant for him to be a white reporter
trying to represent the stories of a Native occupation. But
after these articles were published, a lot of the people
he had previously considered friends did not want anything to
do with him. In March of nineteen seventy, the government
(27:15):
offered the Indians of All Tribes a compromise that Alcatraz
would be made into a park with Native people involved
to quote maximize the Indian nous of the island in
the context of a park. The Indians of All Tribes refused.
Only the island in its entirety would suffice. In late
May of nineteen seventy, officials cut off the island's electrical
(27:36):
supply and removed the barge that had been providing it
with fresh water. That June, a series of fires struck
the island. Occupiers maintained that they had been deliberately set
by government officials to try to get them to leave,
while the government, of course, maintained that the fires had
been set by the occupiers. That same month, that was
also announced that Alcatraz would become part of Golden Gate
(27:59):
National Recreation Area, which was finally after years of debate
about it what actually happened to the island. In August,
plans were in place for an armed nighttime removal of
the islands occupiers code named occupation Parks. It was scrapped
when details were leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle. Then
in October, someone on the island fired on a Coastguard
(28:21):
cutter while it was servicing a nearby bui. Throughout the occupation,
people had shot arrows at nearby watercraft, but this was
from a handgun. Authorities started to look at the idea
of removing the occupiers with more and more urgency. The
winter of seventy one was pretty difficult on the island.
With the main power cut off, the occupiers had to
(28:42):
rely on gas power generators. Public interest and the occupation
had also really waned. We talked about that process earlier,
but at this point it was a lot a lot lower,
and the celebrities who had supported it had mostly moved
on to other things. The loss of power to the
island disabled the island's foghorn and lighthouse, although its function
was replaced with lighted buoy's from the water. When two
(29:04):
oil takers collided at the entrance to San Francisco Bay
in January of nineteen seventy one, officials specifically noted that
the lack of lighthouse and foghorn had nothing to do
with it, but it still gave the government more motivation
to try to remove the occupiers. Then, on April eighth,
the clear water sank that again had been their main
(29:25):
transport back and forth from the island, and the cause
of that thinking was never determined. Finally, armed U S
Marshals were dispatched to the island via Coastguard cutter on
June eleven nine. While in the occupations earlier months there
had usually been around one people on the island. Now
there were just fifteen six men, four women, and five children.
(29:47):
None of them had been there on November twentieth, nineteen
sixty nine, when all of this began. Many of the
people who had been part of the movement at the
start were still involved, though just before the removal, Leneda
war Jack had been trying to persuade the remaining occupiers
to pursue an end of the occupation through litigation, something
their attorney was advising against. Leneda was on the mainland.
(30:09):
When the marshals arrived with the occupiers removed, the island
was found to be in shambles, I mean all of
those problems that we talked about. You could see evidence
of windows had been broken, Copper had been stripped from
the plumbing and electrical systems. Three people were arrested on
June twelfth, nineteen seventy one, for stealing a copper, and
they were later convicted. The occupation of Alcatraz was not
(30:31):
successful at getting the US government to turn the island
over to Native people, but by other measures it was
incredibly successful. It led to a huge upswelling in Native pride,
including the establishment of new social and political organizations for
Native people and new work on reservations. It reinvigorated the
pam Indian movement that had been growing when the occupation started.
(30:54):
Many of the people who were involved in the occupation
were or have been politically active in the field of
Indigenous people's rights for their entire lives. Over the next
nine years after the occupation, there were at least seventy
takeovers of buildings, facilities, and property patterned after the occupation
of Alcatraz. These included the takeover of the Bureau of
(31:14):
Indian Affairs building in nineteen seventy two and the occupation
of Wounded Knee in nineteen seventy three. Some of these
occupations were more militant than the occupation of Alcatraz had been. Together,
this takeover movement and its associated political advocacy came to
be known as the Alcatraz Red Power movement. The term
red power had actually been coined by Vindaloria Jr. Back
(31:35):
in nineteen sixty six. Thousands of Native people visited Alcatraz
during the occupation, including some people who later became prominent
Native leaders, and many talked about how important the occupation
had been to them as Native people. For example, Wilma
Mankiller visited the island and was one of the volunteers
working on the occupation from the mainland. She later said quote,
(31:55):
it was idealistic and the generosity of the spirit of
the people proved that we could change anything. Who I
am and how I governed was influenced by Alcatraz. The
way I viewed descent was totally influenced by Alcatraz. People
on the island were very strong about freedom of speech,
freedom of descent. I saw the importance of descent in government.
(32:17):
If you're not familiar with woman man Killer, she was
the first woman to become principal chief of the Cherokee Nation.
Alcatraz became a symbol of Native pride and Native self
determination in the first of the protest marches, known as
the Longest Walk, started with a ceremony at Alcatraz. The
march was in protest of a collection of anti native
bills that had been introduced in Congress, and then more generally,
(32:39):
to draw attention to the problems still faced by Native people.
After the Alcatraz ceremony, the marchers watched three thousand miles
to Washington, d c. Symbolically recreating the forced marches of
the removal era, and on top of that, there were
concrete legislative advances in Native rights that came out during
and after the occupation. As a result of this and
other vocacy, President Richard Nixon had made Native rights a
(33:03):
part of his platform, and while he was in office,
his administration increased the budget of the Bureau of Indian
Affairs by more than two It also established the Office
of Indian Water Rights and established so called Indian desks
in government HR offices to help ensure equal opportunities for
Native people. Other legislation followed after Nixon's resignation, including the
(33:25):
Indian Self Determination and Education Assistance Act that was passed
in nineteen seventy five. During these years, lands were also
returned to Native nations, including the return of Mount Adams
to the Yakama Nation in Washington State and the return
of Blue Lake in the surrounding land to Taos Pueblo
and New Mexico. Obviously, there is still a long way
(33:46):
to go in terms of tribal sovereignty and Native rights.
As was the case during the reorganization period, the laws
that were passed in the sixties and seventies were overall
a step forward, but they were also not without fault,
and they did not undo center reas of damaging policy
and ongoing patterns of racism and white supremacy. Today, there
are more than five hundred federally recognized tribes and approximately
(34:09):
three hundred seventy four ratified treaties between the US and
Native nations. According to the US Census, two point nine
million people identify as American, Indian, or Alaska Native alone,
and five point two million people identify as Native alone
or in combination with one or more other races. So
these issues affect the lives of a lot of people
(34:30):
from a diverse collection of nations and people's. Many Native
writers have also compared the occupation of Alcatraz to the
Standing Rock water protectors demonstrations against the Dakota Access Pipeline,
both in terms of how they have inspired for their
advocacy and further sense of identity, and also how they've
drawn more attention to Native American rights and social and
political issues involving Native people in nations in general. Today,
(34:54):
the International Indian Treaty Council and American Indian Contemporary Arts
organized Sunrise the Premonies on Alcatraz on Indigenous People's Day
and on Thanksgiving, with transportation provided by Alcatraz Cruises, which
is the official concession or to the National Park Service
as of when we are recording this podcast. Indians of
All Tribes also still exists and has been planning fiftieth
(35:17):
anniversary commemorations of this occupation. Richard Oakes was shot and
killed by a guard at a Y M c A
camp in September of ninety two. The guard said he
thought Oakes was going for a weapon, although he was unarmed.
On seventeen, Oakes was honored with a Google Doodle on
what would have been his seventy five birthday. Even though
(35:38):
we have given this uh topic of full two parts,
it still feels like we've only scratched the surface. But
there are fortunately lots of resources for people who would
like to know more. As one example, American Indian activism
Alcatraz to the Longest Walk from the University of Illinois
Press includes a lot of first hand accounts from Vindeloria Jr.
(35:59):
Adam Fortunate Eagle, Tim Findley, and Leneda war Jack then
known as Lenaeda Boyer, among others, along with historical analysis
of the occupation and related events leneda war. Jack also
went on to earn her PhD and has written a
book called Native Resistance, An Intergenerational Fight for Survival and Life,
which was still forthcoming as of when we recorded this podcast,
(36:21):
so not yet out, but I think it will be
out as of when the episode is out, but not yet. UM. Also,
these issues involving treaty rights and land rights and native
and tribal sovereignty, all of that is so ongoing for
so many people today. If if people want another source
all on all of this, I really recommend the podcast
This Land from Cricket Media, which is hosted by Rebecca Nagel.
(36:44):
She is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, and that
is about a case involving both land rights and the
Supreme Court. UM. As of right this minute is it
is an eight part series that covers a whole arc
and it is extremely good. UM. That is occupation of Alcatraz.
Do you have a listener mail? I do I have
listener mail from Claire Claire wrote to us after our
(37:08):
episode on the witch Finder General and Claire says, hi, y'all.
As soon as I listened to today's episode about Matthew Hopkins,
I knew I had to write in because I do,
in fact have a black cat named Pie Wackett, whose
name was inspired in part by the name of one
of the familiars listened in this episode. I got her
around Halloween eight years ago, so I knew she had
(37:28):
to have a spooky name. I picked pie Wackett not
only for its witchy historical connotation, but also because it's
the name of kN Novak's familiar in the movie Bell,
Book and Candle. I'm as much of an old movie
nerd as i am a history nerd, so this was
the perfect name for the cat who made me believe
in love at first sight. I've attached a picture of
her and all her furry glory. Thanks for all you do.
You make my long days in a cubicle bearable. Thank you, Claire,
(37:52):
I love your cat picture. Also thanks to Philip on Facebook,
who also put a note on our Facebook about Bell,
Book and Candle, plus a picture of his black cat
whose name is Carmen. What is funny to me is
that pie whack It has become a cat name. Um
and what what pie Whackett was back in the day
of Matthew Hopkins, which finding was an imp which is
(38:15):
a little different from a cat, but like now associated
with cats. I love it. I miss having a black cat.
I do well. I have two of them. I can
text you pictures. Neither of them are named after any familiars, though,
uh if you would like to write to us about
this or any other podcast Where History Podcasts and How
Stuff Works dot com and then we're all over social
media at miss in History and that's where you'll find
(38:36):
our Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter. You can come to
our website, which is missed in History dot com for
show notes for all the episodes Holly and I have
worked on together, and a searchable archive of every episode.
And you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcast,
the I heart Radio app, and anywhere else to get
your podcasts. Stuffy Missed in History Class is a production
(38:58):
of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts
for my heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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