November 22, 2019 • 8 mins
Tracy and Holly talk about the episodes that made up this week's two-parter on the Occupation of Alcatraz, including how they learned about Native American history in elementary school.
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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 Vie Wilson and I'm Holly Friend.
So we've started on every Friday having just a little
behind the scenes, short moment for what we have talked
(00:21):
about on the episode this week, and what we have
talked about this week was the occupation of Alcatraz. Yeah,
it's interesting because it's one of those things that was
happening when I was a tiny child. I was kind
of born in the midst of this going on, like
at the end of it. And I remember because I
lived in the Pacific Northwest not long after that, uh,
there being a lot of discussion of Native American rights
(00:45):
because you were still a pretty significant number of UM
Native people's in the Siving Northwest, as there still are,
but UM and us having a very weird and awkward
education around it in elementary school because it was still
developing and seemed a little bit closer to home maybe
than some other people might have experienced in other parts
(01:08):
of the country, where I don't remember a lot of
the details, but I do remember, particularly one teacher trying
to very delicately explain to like eight year olds the
nuances of this, which is very hard. Eight you're not
really ready for And the government did really bad things,
right like, unless you've from a privileged, largely white population.
(01:35):
It was of kids. It was a little bit of
a head scratcher. But I remember her so valiantly trying
to like not give us a fake version of events,
but also be cognizant that these things were still ongoing
and developing and that nothing was settled, which is also
hard to teach kids, right Like, I know, you're eight,
(01:55):
we're talking about history, but it's not really history, it's
right now. What. Yeah, I grew up on the East
Coast and I was born just a few years after
you were, so this was in the shortly before my
birth past um and really a lot of the legislative
stuff that we talked about in the episode, like that
was happening when I was too young to be aware
(02:15):
of things in that way. And because I grew up
in North Carolina, our North Carolina history class included things
like the removals, which was framed as the Cherokee removal,
which there were a lot of other nations besides the
Cherokee who were who were part of all that? But
like we learned a lot about that in in North
Carolina history class when I was probably maybe middle school age,
seems right. We did not learn about the termination and
(02:39):
relocation policies at all, not in my knowledge base before
I got into this episode, And as we both often do,
I had this conversation with my husband that was about
what was I was what I was working on for work,
and I was like, yeah, and there was this whole
policy of termination which I really was not familiar with.
And Patrick, my husband, grew up in New York very
(03:00):
close to a reservation, and he had not He was like, oh, yeah,
because I grew up so close to the reservation, Like I,
I am totally familiar with us. And I was like that,
this is not normally how our conversations go about the show,
because normally I asked him if he's ever heard of something,
and he's like, I don't know what you're talking about.
No shade to him at all, Like he's you know,
he know, it's plenty of about other things that are
(03:21):
not necessarily that, but yeah, that was a thing that
it was just not part of my education at all.
Um that was more something he knew about because of
his personal experience. What was your research like, particularly on
this episode, because we talked about in both of the
episodes that, like, as I was just saying, this isn't
all settled and it's not going So we even referenced
(03:44):
uh Leonada's book, which is not yet out as we're
talking about all this. Yeah, And to be clear, I
have not I have not read that book. I do
know it's forthcoming. What I when I first started thinking
about doing an episode episode on this, which was like
a year ago, the first thing that I wanted to
make sure of was to make sure that I was
reading things that were by people who were there um
(04:07):
or were by other Native people, and that I was
not getting like just a white perspective on things. And
so I had I had the book that we mentioned
at the very end of the episode was called American
Indian Activism Alcatraz to the Longest Walk, and that was
something that I had gotten specifically because the essays in
it were by so many different people who were actually involved.
(04:28):
In addition to having the historical analysis chapters at the end,
I also had picked up as one of the first
things that I picked up was Adam Fortunate Eagles memoir
of it. He's actually written a couple of different books
that are related to it, so I had picked up
the more recent of them. Um, And then as I
was reading through that, I kind of learned about how
(04:49):
he was one of the older people, Like he was
in his forties, he had a really successful business, he
drove a really nice car, like he he was pretty
well off, especially compared to some of the other people
that he was interacting with. And I sort of learned about, Okay,
how how there were like divisions within the movement which
are totally unsurprising, and how I needed to make sure
not just to get like the Native people's perspective, I
(05:11):
also needed to get like a breadth of perspective within
the movement. So there was a lot of reading accounts
of people who were actually there, watching interview footage with
people who are actually there, And then also you know,
some of these folks are still living. I mean the
people the college students who were involved fifty years ago
were in their twenties, so like some were still living
(05:33):
in like their sixties and seventies today, Like seeing what
what they're working on now, what kind of work they're
doing now, uh to kind of close that circle. Yeah,
it's one of those things that comes up periodically in
the news, not even specifically this, but just ongoing discussions, reparations, etcetera.
And not just in the US. Canada has had a
(05:55):
lot of this going on, and I wonder if there
will will ever be a point where it feels as
though it is resolved in some way, Which is hard
for me to even get my head around such a
concept right one. It's not my life experience to know too.
(06:15):
I mean, we're talking about hundreds and hundreds of years, Like,
at what point do you go, No, we're even now.
I don't I don't know how you would even quantify
such thing well, especially given how recently and how ongoing
a lot of these things are still still are, Like
there are still so many, so many people, so many
like so many Native nations who were given land specifically
(06:36):
under the terms of the treaty. That treaty has never
been abolished, that treaty has never been a return, still
supposed to have that land, but other people have taken it,
and it's like it's still going on like a p
today um. And then the termination and removal policies are
in such the recent past and we're a pent just
a hole in my knowledge. Um and as I said
(06:57):
in the episode, that's so messed up. Like I still
this is not this is not a completely apt comparison
because it's a different situation. But it's almost like if
the UK said not just that Whales isn't going to
be part of the UK anymore, but that Whales doesn't
exist anymore. Like that's the level of how messed up
(07:18):
that is, right, and any cultural element of being Welsh
has to be completely obliterated. Yeah, yeah, it is. It's
hard to part a modern day like a current event
equivalent that isn't a land a case like this where
native people's were completely overrun and kind of walked on
(07:40):
it's it is, it's very messed up. Ye uh yeah,
we're concurrence on this issue. Yes, So I wanted to
be sure to do this episode not just because it's
the fiftieth anniversary, because it's just such an example of
how much of this is still going on today and
how if if folks live in a place where there's
not a large population of eight of people, um, people
(08:01):
sometimes imagine that there aren't anymore which is totally false.
People also kind of imagine that like there was, like
we said in the episode, that there was just sort
of passivity of accepting whatever the federal government said. That's
totally false. Like this was. This is a story that
that counteracts so many false tropes um that I thought
it was really important to have it. I'm so glad
you picked it. Thank you. All right, We will see
(08:24):
you guys back here next week with more topics. Stuff
you missed in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radios 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 Vie Wilson and I'm Holly Friend.
So we've started on every Friday having just a little
behind the scenes, short moment for what we have talked
(00:21):
about on the episode this week, and what we have
talked about this week was the occupation of Alcatraz. Yeah,
it's interesting because it's one of those things that was
happening when I was a tiny child. I was kind
of born in the midst of this going on, like
at the end of it. And I remember because I
lived in the Pacific Northwest not long after that, uh,
there being a lot of discussion of Native American rights
(00:45):
because you were still a pretty significant number of UM
Native people's in the Siving Northwest, as there still are,
but UM and us having a very weird and awkward
education around it in elementary school because it was still
developing and seemed a little bit closer to home maybe
than some other people might have experienced in other parts
(01:08):
of the country, where I don't remember a lot of
the details, but I do remember, particularly one teacher trying
to very delicately explain to like eight year olds the
nuances of this, which is very hard. Eight you're not
really ready for And the government did really bad things,
right like, unless you've from a privileged, largely white population.
(01:35):
It was of kids. It was a little bit of
a head scratcher. But I remember her so valiantly trying
to like not give us a fake version of events,
but also be cognizant that these things were still ongoing
and developing and that nothing was settled, which is also
hard to teach kids, right Like, I know, you're eight,
(01:55):
we're talking about history, but it's not really history, it's
right now. What. Yeah, I grew up on the East
Coast and I was born just a few years after
you were, so this was in the shortly before my
birth past um and really a lot of the legislative
stuff that we talked about in the episode, like that
was happening when I was too young to be aware
(02:15):
of things in that way. And because I grew up
in North Carolina, our North Carolina history class included things
like the removals, which was framed as the Cherokee removal,
which there were a lot of other nations besides the
Cherokee who were who were part of all that? But
like we learned a lot about that in in North
Carolina history class when I was probably maybe middle school age,
seems right. We did not learn about the termination and
(02:39):
relocation policies at all, not in my knowledge base before
I got into this episode, And as we both often do,
I had this conversation with my husband that was about
what was I was what I was working on for work,
and I was like, yeah, and there was this whole
policy of termination which I really was not familiar with.
And Patrick, my husband, grew up in New York very
(03:00):
close to a reservation, and he had not He was like, oh, yeah,
because I grew up so close to the reservation, Like I,
I am totally familiar with us. And I was like that,
this is not normally how our conversations go about the show,
because normally I asked him if he's ever heard of something,
and he's like, I don't know what you're talking about.
No shade to him at all, Like he's you know,
he know, it's plenty of about other things that are
(03:21):
not necessarily that, but yeah, that was a thing that
it was just not part of my education at all.
Um that was more something he knew about because of
his personal experience. What was your research like, particularly on
this episode, because we talked about in both of the
episodes that, like, as I was just saying, this isn't
all settled and it's not going So we even referenced
(03:44):
uh Leonada's book, which is not yet out as we're
talking about all this. Yeah, And to be clear, I
have not I have not read that book. I do
know it's forthcoming. What I when I first started thinking
about doing an episode episode on this, which was like
a year ago, the first thing that I wanted to
make sure of was to make sure that I was
reading things that were by people who were there um
(04:07):
or were by other Native people, and that I was
not getting like just a white perspective on things. And
so I had I had the book that we mentioned
at the very end of the episode was called American
Indian Activism Alcatraz to the Longest Walk, and that was
something that I had gotten specifically because the essays in
it were by so many different people who were actually involved.
(04:28):
In addition to having the historical analysis chapters at the end,
I also had picked up as one of the first
things that I picked up was Adam Fortunate Eagles memoir
of it. He's actually written a couple of different books
that are related to it, so I had picked up
the more recent of them. Um, And then as I
was reading through that, I kind of learned about how
(04:49):
he was one of the older people, Like he was
in his forties, he had a really successful business, he
drove a really nice car, like he he was pretty
well off, especially compared to some of the other people
that he was interacting with. And I sort of learned about, Okay,
how how there were like divisions within the movement which
are totally unsurprising, and how I needed to make sure
not just to get like the Native people's perspective, I
(05:11):
also needed to get like a breadth of perspective within
the movement. So there was a lot of reading accounts
of people who were actually there, watching interview footage with
people who are actually there, And then also you know,
some of these folks are still living. I mean the
people the college students who were involved fifty years ago
were in their twenties, so like some were still living
(05:33):
in like their sixties and seventies today, Like seeing what
what they're working on now, what kind of work they're
doing now, uh to kind of close that circle. Yeah,
it's one of those things that comes up periodically in
the news, not even specifically this, but just ongoing discussions, reparations, etcetera.
And not just in the US. Canada has had a
(05:55):
lot of this going on, and I wonder if there
will will ever be a point where it feels as
though it is resolved in some way, Which is hard
for me to even get my head around such a
concept right one. It's not my life experience to know too.
(06:15):
I mean, we're talking about hundreds and hundreds of years, Like,
at what point do you go, No, we're even now.
I don't I don't know how you would even quantify
such thing well, especially given how recently and how ongoing
a lot of these things are still still are, Like
there are still so many, so many people, so many
like so many Native nations who were given land specifically
(06:36):
under the terms of the treaty. That treaty has never
been abolished, that treaty has never been a return, still
supposed to have that land, but other people have taken it,
and it's like it's still going on like a p
today um. And then the termination and removal policies are
in such the recent past and we're a pent just
a hole in my knowledge. Um and as I said
(06:57):
in the episode, that's so messed up. Like I still
this is not this is not a completely apt comparison
because it's a different situation. But it's almost like if
the UK said not just that Whales isn't going to
be part of the UK anymore, but that Whales doesn't
exist anymore. Like that's the level of how messed up
(07:18):
that is, right, and any cultural element of being Welsh
has to be completely obliterated. Yeah, yeah, it is. It's
hard to part a modern day like a current event
equivalent that isn't a land a case like this where
native people's were completely overrun and kind of walked on
(07:40):
it's it is, it's very messed up. Ye uh yeah,
we're concurrence on this issue. Yes, So I wanted to
be sure to do this episode not just because it's
the fiftieth anniversary, because it's just such an example of
how much of this is still going on today and
how if if folks live in a place where there's
not a large population of eight of people, um, people
(08:01):
sometimes imagine that there aren't anymore which is totally false.
People also kind of imagine that like there was, like
we said in the episode, that there was just sort
of passivity of accepting whatever the federal government said. That's
totally false. Like this was. This is a story that
that counteracts so many false tropes um that I thought
it was really important to have it. I'm so glad
you picked it. Thank you. All right, We will see
(08:24):
you guys back here next week with more topics. Stuff
you missed in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radios 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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