Seizure of Alcatraz Island

In 1969, a group of American Indians from many different tribes occupied the island, and proposed an education center, ecology center, and cultural center. During the occupation, several buildings were damaged or destroyed, including the recreation hall, Coast Guard quarters, and the Warden's home. A number of other buildings (mostly apartments) were destroyed by the U.S. Government after the occupation had ended.

More than 5,600 American Indians joined the occupation-some for all eighteen months and some for just part of a day. American Indians, like many people of color in that era, were fed up with the status quo. The annual household income of an American Indian family was $1,500-one-fourth the national average. Their life expectancy was 44 when other Americans could expect to reach 65.

After 18 months of occupation, the government forced them off. The event resulted in major benefits for American Indians. Major policy and law shifts included passage of the Indian Self Determination and Education Act, revision of the Johnson O'Malley Act to better educate Indians, passage of the Indian Financing Act, passage of the Indian Health Act and the creation of an Assistant Interior Secretary post for Indian Affairs. Mount Adams was returned to the Yakama Nation in Washington State, and 48,000 acres of the Sacred Blue Lake lands were returned to Taos Pueblo in New Mexico. During the occupation Nixon quietly signed papers rescinding Termination, a policy designed to end federal recognition of tribes.

President Nixon increased the BIA budget by 225 percent, doubled funds for Indian health care and established the Office of Indian Water Rights. Also during Nixon's presidency, scholarship funds were increased by $848,000 for college students. The Office of Equal Opportunity provided more funds for economic development and drug and alcohol recovery programs and expanded housing, health care and other programs.

Statement Explaining the Choice of

Alcatraz Island

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 [$24] in glass beads and red cloth, a precedent set by the white man's purchase of a similar island about 300 years ago. We know that $24 in trade goods for these 16 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 $1.24 per acre is greater than the 47 cents per acre that the white men are now paying the California Indians for their land. We will give to the inhabitants of this land a portion of that land for their own, to be held in trust by the American Indian Affairs and by the bureau of Caucasian affairs to hold in perpetuity--for as long as the sun shall rise and the rivers go down to the sea.

· 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 raise 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…

· 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:

Further, it would be fitting and symbolic that ships from all over the world, entering the Golden Gate, would first see Indian land, and thus be reminded of the true history of this nation. This tiny island would be a symbol of the great lands once ruled by free and noble Indians.

Wounded Knee II and Leonard Peltier

After 1972, the expanding protests of urban Indian groups spread to the reservations and revealed increasing tensions within Indian communities, often characterized as "traditional" versus "assimilated" Indians. These conflicts came to a head at "Wounded Knee II," a ten-week siege on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The conflict at Wounded Knee involved the impeachment of Oglala Lakota (Sioux)'s tribal chairman, Richard Wilson, who was considered corrupt by many elders and traditional members of the tribe, including those associated with AIM. Other tribe members, many of whom were family members and friends who had received the few jobs and resources the tribal government had to offer, supported Wilson.

The two opposing factions armed themselves and a standoff ensued, involving tribal police, AIM, people living on the reservation, federal law enforcement officials, the BIA, celebrities, philanthropic, religious and legal organizations, the U.S. military and the news media. The siege ended May 9 after negotiations between President Nixon's representative and AIM leaders. During the standoff, two Native Americans and one FBI agent were killed. Wilson remained in office. In the next few years, numerous occupations occurred on reservations involving tribal factions associated with AIM or urban tribal members.

The last major event of the Alcatraz-Red Power Movement was The Longest Walk from February to July 1978. Several hundred Native Americans marched from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. to symbolize the forced removal of American Indians from their homelands and to draw attention to the continuing problems plaguing the Indian community. The march also attempted to call attention to backlash against Indian treaty rights that was gaining momentum in Congress. Unlike many protest events of the mid-'70s, the walk was a peaceful event.

The Alcatraz-Red Power Movement declined in the late '70s, due in large part to the FBI's suppression and infiltration through its then secret operation COINTELPRO, which sought to "neutralize" any activist organization with strong dissenting views against the federal government. Within three years of the Wounded Knee II siege, 69 members and supporters of AIM died violently on the reservation. Nearly 350 others were physically assaulted. None of their killers were convicted, and many of the cases were never investigated. Many AIM leaders were imprisoned. Divisions within AIM revealed a split in the movement between those who fought for the rights of the urban Indian community and others who favored a national activist agenda. After 1978, the tactic of property seizures fell out of favor, signaling the end of Red Power activism.

But the Red Power movement accomplished many of its goals. By the early 1980s, over 100 Indian studies programs had been created in the United States. Tribal museums opened, and the United Nations recognized an international indigenous rights movement. AIM continued fighting for Indian rights in land and grazing rights battles; protesting athletic team Indian mascots; and working for the repatriation of sacred objects taken from Indian land.

Every November since 1975, Indian people have gathered on Alcatraz Island on what is called "Un-Thanksgiving Day" to honor the occupation and those who continue to fight for Native American rights today.