page_title: Occupation of Alcatraz
section_title: Occupation
hierarchical_section_title: Occupation of Alcatraz / Occupation
caption_attribution_description: English: “Yata-hey, Navajo greeting with Rain Cloud” Golden Gate National Recreation Area, GOGA-2438b
context_page_description: The Occupation of Alcatraz was a 19-month long protest when 89 American Indians and their supporters occupied Alcatraz Island. The protest was led by Richard Oakes, LaNada Means, and others; John Trudell was the spokesman. This group lived on the island together until the protest was forcibly ended by the U.S. government.
  The protest group chose the name Indians of All Tribes for themselves. The IOAT claimed that, under the Treaty of Fort Laramie between the U.S. and the Lakota tribe, all retired, abandoned, or out-of-use federal land was returned to the Indians who once occupied it. Alcatraz penitentiary had been closed on March 21, 1963, and the island had been declared surplus federal property in 1964, so a number of Red Power activists felt that the island qualified for a reclamation by Indians.
  The Occupation of Alcatraz had a brief effect on federal Indian Termination policies and established a precedent for Indian activism. Oakes was shot to death in 1972, and the American Indian Movement was later targeted by the federal government and the FBI in COINTELPRO operations.
context_section_description: In the early morning hours of November 20, 1969, 89 American Indians, including more than 30 women, students, married couples and 6 children, set out to occupy Alcatraz Island. A partially successful Coast Guard blockade prevented most of them from landing, but fourteen protesters landed on the island to begin their occupation. The island's lone guard, who had been warned of the impending occupation, sent out a message on his radio. "Mayday!  Mayday!" he called. "The Indians have landed!"
  At the height of the occupation there were 400 people. Native women, like Aranaydo, Woesha Cloud North (Ho-Chunk-Ojibwe), and Vicky Santana (Blackfoot) ran the school with the help of Douglas Remington, (Ute) and teacher's aids Justine Moppin, (Mono), and Rosalie Willie, (Paiute). There was also a daycare and Stella Leach (Colville-Lakota) set up the health clinic. Jennie R. Joe (Navajo) and Dorothy Lonewolf Miller (Blackfoot), assisted Leach as nurses, and Robert Brennan, Richard Fine, and Leach's boss, David Tepper, volunteered as doctors. Native and non-native people brought food and other necessary items to the people on the island, but the coast guard's blockades made it increasingly difficult to supply the occupants with food. The suppliers, after stealthily journeying across the bay via canoe, dropped off the supplies which then had to be carried up steep ladders. Aranaydo and Luwana Quitiquit (Pomo) were responsible for running the kitchen and cooking for the occupants. The occupation lasted about 19 months but ended peacefully. An employee of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Doris Purdy, who was also an amateur photographer, accompanied a group who went on November 29, stayed the night and recorded video footage.
  The protesters, predominantly students, drew inspiration and tactics from contemporary civil rights demonstrations, some of which they had themselves organized. Jerry Hatch and Al Miller, both present at the initial landing but unable to leave the boat in the confusion after the Coast Guard showed up, quickly turned up in a private boat. The first landing party was joined later by many others in the following days, including Joe Morris (a key player later as a representative of the Longshoreman's Union, which threatened to close both ports if the Occupiers were removed), and the man who would soon become "the Voice of Alcatraz", John Trudell.
  Although she would not receive the same recognition from mainstream media as Trudell and Oakes would, LaNada Means, who was one of the first to arrive and one of the last to leave, organized written statements and speeches that outlined the purpose of the occupation. Fellow activist Dean Chavers said Means was "the real leader of the occupation".  To the media and to the federal government, Means made it clear that the occupiers wanted complete Indian control over the island, under the Treaty of Fort Laramie, for the purpose of building a cultural center that included Native American Studies, an American Indian spiritual center, an ecology center, and an American Indian Museum. According to Means' grant proposal, the center would include full-time Indian consultants, Indian teachers, Indian librarians, and an Indian staff leading people around the center in order to tell the story of Indians of All Tribes.  The occupiers specifically cited their treatment under the Indian termination policy and they accused the U.S. government of breaking numerous Indian treaties.
  Richard Oakes sent a message to the San Francisco Department of the Interior:
  We invite the United States to acknowledge the justice of our claim. 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 do not fear your threat to charge us with crimes on our land. We and all other oppressed peoples would welcome spectacle of proof before the world of your title by genocide. Nevertheless, we seek peace.
  President Richard Nixon's Special Counsel Leonard Garment took o
caption: Graffiti from the occupation, featuring a Navajo greeting, "Yata Hey"
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