November 5, 1999
By Jacqueline Keeler
PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE
Thirty years ago, my parents' generation took a stand— they "held the Rock." That rock was a prison called Alcatraz. Al Capone never escaped nor did the Birdman, but for 19 months a group of young American Indians occupied the abandoned prison and declared it Indian land.
On November 9, 1969, several American Indian students dove off a boat chartered by American Indian community leaders to make a symbolic declaration of ownership of the island. The young people swam through the icy waters to the island shore and were quickly apprehended by the Coast Guard. The next day's San Francisco Examiner headline read, "Indians Invade the Rock: U.S. Counter Attacks."
The community returned in larger numbers on November 20 and took the island. The occupation attracted so much worldwide media attention that when San Francisco mayor Joseph Alioto traveled to Europe to promote tourism all the press wanted to know was "when are the Indians going to get their land back?"
Under treaty law, some tribes were entitled to claim land that had been declared surplus by the U.S. government — as Alcatraz had been. Occupiers noted, "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."
The takeover can be traced to the 1950s when Congress passed the Relocation and Termination Acts, laws designed to "terminate" tribes and treaty rights and to "relocate" tribal members from reservation land to urban centers.
This was only the most recent in a series of attempts to "break up the tribal mass" and "assimilate" America's most unwilling citizens.
To lure young people off the reservation, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) put up posters promising "good jobs, happy homes, training," but the reality was a little different.
When my dad relocated to Cleveland, he remembers getting a BIA voucher for a hotel with blood in the hallway from a shooting the night before. Just out of the Army and a former football player, he could take care of himself, but after spending the night with a crazy drunk trying to break his door down, he checked out.
The BIA refused to help him find another place to live, so he turned to the Episcopal Church — his Grandpa Yellowhair had been a minister on the reservation — and they put him up until he registered for school through the GI Bill. My dad was lucky; most relocatees had just the BIA to depend on and soon ended up broke and homeless.
By 1969 Congress and the BIA had succeeded in creating urban American Indian ghettos in "relocation centers" which included San Francisco. It was from these growing communities that a new American Indian activism arose against the policies of termination. Far from home, Indians from many tribes began to band together and to share information about their treaty rights and work together to pursue those claims.
The result of their work together could be seen by millions as the "Indians Welcome" sign the occupiers painted on the prison flashed across the screens of America's television sets.
In response, American Indians from all over the country converged on San Francisco. My mother-in-law, a Mo-hawk, was six months pregnant at the time with my husband and ready to drop everything to help. She never made it there, but from his earliest memories he remembers her telling him about the takeover. He'd say, "But mom, why would they want a prison?"
Why would they choose a prison? In a statement issued from the island during the takeover they said, "We hold the Rock. Our anger at the many injustices forced upon us since the first white man landed on these sacred shores has been transformed into a hope that we be allowed the long suppressed right of all men to plan and to live their own lives."
The generation that started the American Indian Movement and the National Indian Youth Council broke down old institutions meant to break us apart. They made it possible for us, the children, to have a beachhead on this land we call America.
As one Alcatraz veteran said at last week's 30-year celebration on the island, "we smashed Plymouth Rock." In exchange, they gave us our own rock to stand on, Alcatraz.
Jacqueline Keeler is a member of the Dineh Nation and the Yankton Dakota Sioux.
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