‘You Are on Indian Land’: A Look Back at the Occupation of Alcatraz Island

By D&A Communications Staff

Living and working the Bay Area, we are surrounded by symbols of our diverse communities and the places which have a special meaning both historically and culturally. Some places, like Alcatraz Island, is overlooked, forever memorialized as a prison that held captive some of the most infamous criminals in American history.

But before all that, Alcatraz was something else.

10,000 years ago, that rocky and a rather inhospitable island in San Francisco Bay served as a place for the Ohlone Indians to fish and hunt for bird eggs. It was -- and still is -- a desolate, rocky place with barely any vegetation. At night, it is masked in fog. Indeed, the Ohlone believed that the island had dark powers, and as such, it was often used as a place to isolate tribal members who had violated their laws.

California’s colonizers, the Spanish and Portuguese, saw fit to use the island as a prison and incarcerated hundreds of Indians, and this continued throughout the? 1800s and early 1900s. From then on, the island’s identity as a prison was literally, cemented.

By1963, Alcatraz prison was formally closed due to the significant costs to maintain it. Local Native American activists saw an opportunity to return it to its tribal ownership.

In 1964, five members of the Sicangu Lakota, a tribe based in South Dakota, occupied the island for four hours demanding that the island be turned over to Indian rule in order to be transformed into a cultural center and university. While short-lived, the demonstration planted the seed for a much larger and more volatile Indian occupation in 1969.

This time, it was the charismatic Indian activist Richard Oakes who led over 100 Indians from multiple tribal backgrounds to occupy the island. A Coast Guard blockade successfully thwarted most of them, but fourteen people made it safely to the island.

The island's lone guard, called for help on his radio: "Mayday! Mayday!" he called. "The Indians have landed!"?

On December 24, 1969, Oakes and several other members held a press conference inside the prison to announce that the U.S. government owed them the deed to the island so that they could make it a place for the “Indians of All Tribes”. In time, the group of occupiers swelled to over 400 people.

While the U.S. refused their request, they allowed the Indians to temporarily live on the island as an act of defiance. Then-President Nixon ordered the FBI, Coast Guard, and all law enforcement to leave the Indians alone, thinking that inevitably, the social movement would crumble. But the momentum continued, as the founding members continued to work with lawyers and fundraise. The group had daily radio broadcasts, a newsletter, and successfully mobilized the public to join them on Thanksgiving Day to show their support.?

But life on the island was more challenging than originally thought.?

Alcatraz had no running water or wells, which meant it had to be transported by barge. Soon, the barges stopped coming, by order of the federal government. Then, the power was shut off. Then, food became a challenge because it had to be brought onto the island under the darkness of night so as not to draw the attention of the Coast Guard.?

The struggle to make political headway coupled with the difficulty of living on Alcatraz caused many to lose their conviction that their demands would be met.

By the end of 1970, many of the core members decided to leave. Newly arrived Indians and even non-Indians squabbled over strategy and how the island should be used. Soon the Island was attracting local hippies offered little more than lip service to the cause. They only diluted the cause and the drugs they brought over didn’t help matters. The atmosphere became contentious and anarchic. A 13-year-old girl fell down some stairs and died. An accidental fire destroyed a historic building. And some members began stripping the copper pipes and wire out of the buildings and selling them as scrap in order to buy food.?

By now, a largely sympathetic public had begun to turn away, seeing the occupation as a failure rather than act of cultural metamorphosis. On June 10, 1971, armed federal marshals, FBI agents, and special forces police swarmed the island and removed five women, four children, and six unarmed Indian men. They were all that was left.

While the 1969 occupation only lasted 19 months, with virtually no change in the island’s ownership, it nevertheless had a lasting influence.?

Following the occupation there were 200 other acts of civil disobedience by Native Americans across the country. It sparked a new awareness and acknowledgment by state and federal governments to the issues of Native American rights to self-determination and governance. Perhaps most importantly, the occupation of Alcatraz set in motion the American government's decision to end its Indian termination policy, resulting in the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975.?

While some might see the Occupation as divisive, we can’t help but see that such actions are necessary to shed light on the injustices suffered by indigenous people, who systematically were marginalized and removed from their native lands. Alcatraz was no place to live, but as a symbol, it represented temerity, conviction, a solid piece of stone jutting out of icy waters that remains steadfastly immovable, much like the conviction of those who occupied it that cold day in December 1969.?