November
22, 2023
An
annual celebration is held on Alcatraz Island to commemorate the 19-month-long
Native occupation that began there in 1969.
Activists from Indians of All Tribes occupy Alcatraz in this photo taken Nov. 27, 1969. (AP Photo/Robert W. Klein)
Each
year on the fourth Thursday of November, when many people start to take stock
of the marathon day of cooking ahead, Indigenous people from diverse tribes and
nations gather at sunrise in San Francisco Bay.
Their
gathering is meant to mark a different occasion – the Indigenous People’s
Thanksgiving Sunrise Ceremony, an annual celebration that spotlights 500 years
of Native resistance to colonialism in what was dubbed the “New World.” Held on
the traditional lands of the Ohlone people, the gathering is a call for
remembrance and for future action for Indigenous people and their allies.
As
a scholar of Indigenous literary and cultural studies, I introduce my students
to the long and enduring history of Indigenous peoples’ pushback against
settler violence. The origins of this sunrise event are a particularly
compelling example that stem from a pivotal moment of Indigenous activism: the
Native American occupation of Alcatraz Island, a 19-month-long takeover that
began in 1969.
Reclaiming
of Alcatraz Island
On
Nov. 20, 1969, led by Indigenous organizers Richard Oakes (Mohawk) and LaNada
War Jack (Shoshone Bannock), roughly 100 activists who called themselves
“Indians of All Tribes,” or IAT, traveled by charter boat across San Francisco
Bay to reclaim the island for Native peoples. Multiple groups had done smaller
demonstrations on Alcatraz in previous years, but this group planned to stay,
and it maintained its presence there until June 1971.
Before
this occupation, Alcatraz Island had served as a military prison and then a
federal penitentiary. U.S. Prison Alcatraz was decommissioned in 1963 because
of the high cost of its upkeep, and it was essentially left abandoned. In
November 1969, after a fire destroyed the American Indian Center in San
Francisco, local Indigenous activists were looking for a new place where urban
Natives could gather and access resources, such as legal assistance and
educational opportunities, and Alcatraz Island fit the bill.
Citing
a federal law that stated that “unused or retired federal lands will be
returned to Native American tribes,” Oakes’ group settled in to live on “The
Rock.” They elected a council and established a school, a medical center and
other necessary infrastructure. They even had a pirate radio show called “Radio
Free Alcatraz,” hosted by Santee Dakota poet John Trudell.
The
IAT did offer – albeit satirically – to purchase the island back, proposing in
the 1969 proclamation “twenty-four dollars (US$24) in glass beads and red
cloth, a precedent set by the white man’s purchase of a similar island about
300 years ago,” referring to the purchase of Manhattan Island by the Dutch in
1626.
On
behalf of IAT, Oakes sent the following message to the regional office San
Francisco office of the Department of the Interior shortly after they arrived:
“The choice now lies with the leaders of
the American government – to use violence upon us as before to remove us from
our Great Spirit’s land, or to institute a real change in its dealing with the
American Indian … We and all other oppressed peoples would welcome spectacle of
proof before the world of your title by genocide. Nevertheless, we seek peace.”
After
19 months, the occupation ultimately succumbed to internal and external
pressures. Oakes left the island after a family tragedy, and many members of
the original group returned to school, leaving a gap in leadership. Moreover,
the government cut off water and electricity to the island, and a mysterious
fire destroyed several buildings, with the Indigenous occupiers and government
officials pointing the blame at one another.
By
June 1971, President Richard Nixon was ready to intervene and ordered federal
agents to remove the few remaining occupiers. The occupation was over, but it
helped spark an Indigenous political revitalization that continues today. It
also pushed Nixon to put an official end to the “termination era,” a
legislative effort geared toward ending the federal government’s responsibility
to Native nations, as articulated in treaties and formal agreements.
Solidarity
at sunrise
In
1975, “Unthanksgiving Day” was established to both mark the occupation and
advocate for Indigenous self-determination. For many participants,
Unthanksgiving Day was also a reiteration of the original declaration released
by IAT, which called on the U.S. to acknowledge the impacts of 500 years of
genocide against Indigenous people.
These
days, the event is conducted by the International Indian Treaty Council and is
largely referred to as the Indigenous Peoples Thanksgiving Sunrise Gathering.
Participants
meet on Pier 33 in San Francisco before dawn and board boats to Alcatraz
Island, bringing Native peoples and allies together in the place that
symbolizes a key moment in the long history of Indigenous resistance.
At
dawn, in the courtyard of what was once a federal penitentiary, sunrise
ceremonies are conducted to “give thanks for our lives, for the beatings of our
heart,” said Andrea Carmen, a member of Yaqui Nation and executive director of
the International Indian Treaty Council, at the 2018 gathering.
Songs
and dances from various tribal nations are performed in prayer and as acts of
collective solidarity. At the same gathering, Lakota Harden, who is a
Minnecoujou/ Yankton Lakota and HoChunk community leader and organizer,
emphasized that “those voices and the medicine in those songs are centuries old
and our ancestors come and they appreciate being acknowledged when the sun
comes up.” Through the sharing of song and dance, they enact culturally
resonant resistance against the erasure of Native peoples from these lands.
The
Indigenous Peoples Thanksgiving Sunrise Gathering also gives people the chance
to bring greater community awareness to current struggles facing Indigenous
people across the globe. These include the intensifying impacts of climate
change, the widespread violence against Native women, children and two-spirit
individuals, and ongoing threats to the integrity of their ancestral homelands.
Resistance Beyond the Rock
Indigenous
Peoples Thanksgiving Sunrise Gathering lands near the end of Native American
Heritage Month, which is dedicated to celebrating the vast and diverse
Indigenous nations and tribes that exist in the United States. Professor Jamie
Folsom, who is Choctaw, describes this month as a chance to “present who we are
today … (and) to present our issues in our own voices and to tell our own
stories.”
The
people who will meet on Pier 33 on the fourth Thursday of November continue
this story of Indigenous political action on the Rock and, by extension, in
North America. The more than 50-year history of this gathering is a testament
to the endurance of the original message from Oakes and Indians of All Tribes.
It is also part of a larger network of resistance movements being led by Native
peoples, particularly young people.
As
Harden says, the next generation is asking for change. “They’re standing up and
saying we’ve had enough. And our future generations will make sure that things
change.”
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