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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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, 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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. 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 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 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, 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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, 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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, 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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. 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 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 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, 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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, 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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