On This Day: Native American occupation of Alcatraz Island ends after 19 months - June 11, 1971

(edited from Wikipedia)
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June 11, 1971 - The U.S. Government forcibly removes the last holdouts to the Native American Occupation of Alcatraz, ending 19 months of control.

Alcatraz Island

Alcatraz Island is a small island 1.25 miles offshore from San Francisco, California, United States. The island was developed in the mid-19th century with facilities for a lighthouse, a military fortification, and a military prison. In 1934, the island was converted into a federal prison, Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. The strong currents around the island and cold water temperatures made escape nearly impossible, and the prison became one of the most notorious in American history. The prison closed in 1963, and the island is now a major tourist attraction.

Beginning in November 1969, the island was occupied for more than 19 months by a group of Native Americans, initially primarily from San Francisco, who were later joined by AIM and other urban Indians from other parts of the country, who were part of a wave of Native American activists organizing public protests across the US through the 1970s. In 1972, Alcatraz was transferred to the Department of Interior to become part of Golden Gate National Recreation Area. It was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1986.

Today, the island's facilities are managed by the National Park Service as part of Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Native American occupation

Beginning on November 20, 1969, a group of Native Americans called United Indians of All Tribes, mostly college students from San Francisco, occupied the island to protest federal policies related to American Indians. Some of them were children of Native Americans who had relocated in the city as part of the Bureau of Indian Affairs' (BIA) Indian termination policy, which was a series of laws and policies aimed at the assimilation of Native Americans into mainstream US society. It encouraged Native Americans to move away from the Indian reservations and into cities to take advantage of health, educational and employment opportunities. A number of employees of the Bureau of Indian Affairs also occupied Alcatraz at that time.

The occupiers, who stayed on the island for nearly two years, demanded that the island's facilities be adapted and new structures built for an Indian education center, ecology center, and cultural center. The American Indians claimed the island by provisions of the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) between the US and the Sioux; they said the treaty promised to return all retired, abandoned, or out-of-use federal lands to the native peoples from whom they were acquired.

Indians of All Tribes claimed Alcatraz Island by the "Right of Discovery"; as historian Troy R. Johnson states in The Occupation of Alcatraz Island, generations of indigenous peoples knew about Alcatraz at least 10,000 years before any European knew about any part of North America. Begun by urban Indians of San Francisco, the occupation attracted other Native Americans from across the country, including American Indian Movement (AIM) urban activists from Minneapolis.

During the occupation, President Richard Nixon rescinded the Indian termination policy, designed by earlier administrations to end federal recognition of many tribes and their special relationship with the US government. He established a new policy of self-determination, in part as a result of the publicity and awareness created by the occupation. The occupation ended on June 11, 1971.

Indian termination policy

Indian termination is a phrase describing United States policies relating to Native Americans from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s. It was shaped by a series of laws and practices with the intent of assimilating Native Americans into mainstream American society. Cultural assimilation of Native Americans was not new; the belief that indigenous people should abandon their traditional lives and become what the government considers "civilized" had been the basis of policy for centuries. What was new, however, was the sense of urgency that, with or without consent, tribes must be terminated and begin to live "as Americans." To that end, Congress set about ending the special relationship between tribes and the federal government.

In practical terms, the policy ended the federal government's recognition of sovereignty of tribes, trusteeship over Indian reservations, and the exclusion of state law's applicability to Native persons. From the government's perspective, Native Americans were to become taxpaying citizens subject to state and federal taxes as well as laws from which they had previously been exempt.

From the Native standpoint, a former US Senator from Colorado Ben Nighthorse Campbell, of the Northern Cheyenne, said of assimilation and termination in a speech delivered in Montana:

If you can't change them, absorb them until they simply disappear into the mainstream culture.... In Washington's infinite wisdom, it was decided that tribes should no longer be tribes, never mind that they had been tribes for thousands of years.

— Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Opening Keynote Address

The policy for termination of tribes collided with the Native American peoples' own desires to preserve Native identity. The termination policy was changed in the 1960s and rising activism resulted in the ensuing decades of restoration of tribal governments and increased Native American self-determination.

[Movement toward self-determination]

The Occupation of Alcatraz had a direct effect on federal Indian policy and, with its visible results, established a precedent for Indian activism. While the Nixon administration did not accede to the demands of the protesters, it was aware of the delicate nature of the situation, and so could not forcibly remove them.

Spurred in part by Spiro Agnew's support for Native American rights, federal policy began to progress away from termination and toward Indian autonomy. In Nixon's July 8, 1970, Indian message, he decried termination, proclaiming, "self-determination among Indian people can and must be encouraged without the threat of eventual termination." While this was a step toward substantial reform, the administration was hindered by its bureaucratic mentality, unable to change its methodical approach of dealing with Indian rights.

Nixon's attitude toward Indian affairs soured with the November 2, 1972, occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).

[Later protests]

Much of the Indian rights activism of the period can be traced to the Occupation of Alcatraz. The Trail of Broken Treaties, the BIA occupation, the Wounded Knee incident, and the Longest Walk all have their roots in the occupation. The American Indian Movement noted from their visit to the occupation that the demonstration garnered national attention, while those involved faced no punitive action.

[Symbol for "unity and authority in a white world"]

When AIM members seized the Mayflower II on Thanksgiving, 1970, the Occupation of Alcatraz was noted as "the symbol of a newly awakened desire among Indians for unity and authority in a white world". The occupation of Alcatraz Island served as a strong symbol and uniting force for indigenous peoples everywhere because of the importance the island held in their ancestors' lives. Indians traveled to Alcatraz about 10,000 years before the Europeans even entered the Bay Area. Over the course of their history, the island served the purpose of a camping ground, was used as a place to hunt for food, and at one point became an isolated and remote place where law violators were held.

The occupation which began in 1969 caused Native Americans to remember what the island meant to them as a people.

[Women, who were the majority of occupiers, receive little attention]

Although the Alcatraz occupation inspired many other Pan-Indian movements to occur, it also showed how gender played a part in Indian activism. Mainstream media had an obsession with documenting the stereotype of the male Indian warrior and as such it was only the men that were highlighted as being the leaders and creators of movements. Women at the occupation of Alcatraz, such as LaNada Means and Stella Leach, receive little attention for contributing to the movement. As a result, the many women who had initiated movements such as the Wounded Knee Incident would never be as well known as Russell Means and other AIM leaders, even though, in the case of Wounded Knee, of the 350 occupiers, just 100 were men. Quoted in John William Sayer's Ghost Dancing the Law: The Wounded Knee Trials, John Trudell admitted, in reflection, "We got lost in our manhood."
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcatraz_Island
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_termination_policy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Alcatraz

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