“We questioned our beliefs about ‘necessary violence’ and whether we should arm ourselves,” said Dennis Banks. “I didn’t want AIM to be seen as a group that advocated violence, but, on the other hand, I felt that our people should not face heavily armed, racist cops empty-handed. There was just too much evidence of racism in the streets, and sometimes a show of strength can prevent violence.”
At a rally in Wisconsin, AIM adopted the upside-down American flag as its symbol because it was the international signal for people in distress. “No one could deny that Indians were in bad trouble and needed help,” said Banks.
WE HOLD THE ROCK!
“We hold the rock!” came the cry across San Francisco Bay on the afternoon of November 20, 1969. This roar was extraordinary not simply because approximately 100 Native Americans had occupied Alcatraz Island, the notorious federal penitentiary closed five years earlier. Perhaps more incredible was that the call came from a group of young urban Indian college students who hailed from different tribes. They called themselves “Indians of All Tribes” and were the first to unite Native Americans from different tribes to work together against the injustices committed by the U.S. government. Prior to Alcatraz, Indian activism had been generally tribal in nature, centered in small geographic areas and focused on specific issues, such as illegal trespass or fishing rights.
INDIANS OF ALL NATIONS
THE ALCATRAZ PROCLAMATION
to the
Great White Father and his People
1969
Fellow citizens, we are asking you to join with us in our attempt to better the lives of all Indian people.
We are on Alcatraz Island to make known to the world that we have a right to use our land for our own benefit.
In a proclamation of November 20, 1969, we told the government of the United States that we are here “to create a meaningful use for our Great Spirit’s Land.”
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, 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 $0.47 per acre the white men are now paying the California Indians for their lands….
INDIANS OF ALL TRIBES
Occupying Alcatraz was the brainchild of Richard Oakes, a young charismatic Mohawk Indian and college student in the Bay area. He was inspired by an earlier occupation on March 9, 1964, led by Richard McKenzie and four other Sioux. McKenzie and his group stayed only four hours, but their demands for the use of the island for a cultural center and an Indian university resonated with Oakes.
On November 9, 1969, Oakes, along with Indian students he had met at the American Indian Studies Center at UCLA and Bay area urban Indians, symbolically occupied the island. They claimed the island in the name of the Indians of all tribes and departed that evening. Afterward, Oakes and the others realized that they actually could take hold of the island. Over the following week, they organized a long-term occupation of Alcatraz Island. On November 20, these young urban Indian students climbed into a chartered boat, the Monte Cristo, and made their way across San Francisco Bay to Alcatraz.
These idealistic men and women quickly began to organize, electing a council and giving everyone on the island a job: security, sanitation, cooking, and laundry. All decisions were made by unanimous consent. For the first few days, this remarkable utopian community worked well, but as the resistance from the federal government to their demands continued and the weeks passed, the organization could not hold. Many of the students began returning to school in January 1970 and were replaced by less disciplined participants from urban areas and reservations. As the news spread of the occupation, others, non-Indians, also began arriving on the island. Many were involved in the hippie and drug culture of San Francisco and looked at the occupation as an opportunity to have a party.
Protest graffiti on Alcatraz
“As a result of the occupation…the official government policy of termination of Indian tribes was ended…”
When tragedy occurred on January 5, the organizers were shattered. Richard Oakes’s thirteen-year-old step-daughter, Yvonne, fell three floors to her death within the prison. Oakes immediately departed, and competing groups began to battle for leadership.
Perhaps wisely, the government decided to wait the insurgents out. The FBI and Coast Guard surrounded the island but did not remove anyone or prevent anyone from landing on Alcatraz. In some ways this strategy incited the protesters even more. Time and again over the decade, when the government turned a blind eye to protests against its policies, protesters became more radical. This happened when the younger members of the Civil Rights Movement morphed into the Black Panther Party, and again when the more radical members of the SDS broke away to form the Weathermen. The government in its vast and sprawling bureaucracy could not see the pattern, but it was there.
As no progress was made in meeting their demands, the remaining protesters on Alcatraz Island became more entrenched. By June, nothing less than full title to the island and the establishment of a university and cultural center would end the siege. In response to this hardening of their position, the government cut off electricity and clean water to the island. At this point, a fire broke out and several historic buildings were destroyed. Whatever organization there had been now devolved into chaos, and there was no visible leadership with which the government would negotiate.
As the situation became more desperate on the island, people began looting, stripping copper wiring and copper tubing from the buildings and selling it as scrap metal. Finally, on June 10, 1971, one and a half years after the initial occupation, armed federal marshals, FBI agents, and special forces police launched an attack on the island and removed five women, four children, and six unarmed Indian men. With this action, the occupation ended.
It is ironic and sad in some ways how extreme measures almost always fail but often empower more moderate groups to take up the broader cause and change society. Historian Troy Johnson in his essay “The Alcatraz Indian Occupation” summed up the action this way:
The success or failure of the occupation should not be judged by whether the demands of the occupiers were realized. The underlying goals of the Indians on Alcatraz were to awaken the American public to the reality of the plight of the first Americans and to assert the need for Indian self-determination. As a result of the occupation, either directly or indirectly, the official government policy of termination of Indian tribes was ended and a policy of Indian self-determination became the official U.S. government policy.
While the island was occupied, President Nixon made a dramatic shift in policy. He returned Blue Lake and 48,000 acres of land to the Taos Indians. Eventually, an Indian university was created near Davis, California. In the bigger picture, Indians might have lost the battle on Alcatraz, but they clearly won the war, giving birth to a political movement.
TRAIL OF BROKEN TREATIES
Maybe we should do something like the Civil Rights Movement’s 1963 March on Washington.
—Native-American activist
The success and failure of the Alcatraz occupation provided a catalyst to broader and more ambitious action by many young Native Americans. By 1972, AIM had transformed itself from a local advocacy group organized to monitor the daily harassment of Indians by the Minneapolis police into the nation’s most visible Indian rights organization. Their mission expanded dramatically:
• Challenge Indian killings by whites.
• Speak out about treaty rights.
• Promote traditional culture
.
• Organize survival schools to teach heritage and religion.
• Sponsor religious ceremonies.
It was at a Sun Dance ceremony on the Rosebud Sioux reservation the summer of 1972 that the idea for a march on Washington was first mentioned. Within months, momentum grew and a cross-country caravan starting at three separate points on the West Coast was organized. Called the “Trail of Broken Treaties” (TBT), the march was to pick up Indians along the way and arrive in Washington, D.C., right before the 1972 presidential elections.
A long parade of old cars and trucks arrived November 2, five days before the election, bearing bumper stickers such as CUSTER HAD IT COMING, AND SO DO SOME OTHERS, REMEMBER CRAZY HORSE, AND UNITED STATES IS INDIAN COUNTRY. They came with a twenty-point plan for “securing an Indian future in America” (left).
* * *
**
PREAMBLE TO TRAIL OF BROKEN TREATIES 20-POINT POSITION PAPER
AN INDIAN MANIFESTO FOR RESTITUTION, REPARATIONS, RESTORATION OF LANDS FOR A RECONSTRUCTION OF AN INDIAN FUTURE IN AMERICA
THE TRAIL OF BROKEN TREATIES
We need not give another recitation of past complaints nor engage in redundant dialogue of discontent. Our conditions and their cause for being should perhaps be best known by those who have written the record of America’s action against Indian people. In 1832, Black Hawk correctly observed: You know the cause of our making war. It is known to all white men. They ought to be ashamed of it.
The government of the United States knows the reasons for our going to its capital city. Unfortunately, they don't know how to greet us. We go because America has been only too ready to express shame, and suffer none from the expression—while remaining wholly unwilling to change to allow life for Indian people.
We seek a new American majority—a majority that is not content merely to confirm itself by superiority in numbers, but which by conscience is committed toward prevailing upon the public will in ceasing wrongs and in doing right. For our part, in words and deeds of coming days, we propose to produce a rational, reasoned manifesto for construction of an Indian future in America. If America has maintained faith with its original spirit, or may recognize it now, we should not be denied.
**
* * *
As hundreds of Indians arrived in the city, they had no place to stay. The Indians gathered in the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) auditorium, where they camped. Quickly, things got out of hand and a group of young Indians seized the BIA building. They barricaded the doors, blocked the windows, and upended desks. Sheets bearing NATIVE AMERICAN EMBASSY were hung from the windows.
First, the government tried to broker a quick negotiation for the release of the building. After negotiations failed, the Nixon Administration panicked. The last thing they wanted was bad publicity just days before the election. On Monday, November 6, they convinced a judge to order the forcible removal of Indians by 6 p.m. that evening. In response, the young Indians holding the building lost control. The building was trashed. They threatened to set the building on fire by 5:45 p.m. if nothing positive occurred or if they saw police movement.
Staff members from the White House forced their way into the BIA building at 5:30 p.m. and negotiated a truce in which the White House counsel, the Office of Management and Budget director, and the Secretary of the Interior would negotiate directly with the Indians. By election morning, a meeting was held and a federal task force was agreed upon to examine wide issues in Indian country. As well, amnesty was promised and money for transportation home was allocated. A sigh of relief could be heard as Nixon won the presidential election.
* * *
GOONS
GOONS
(GUARDIANS OF THE OGLALA NATION)
“THE OGLALA SIOUX… TRIBE DOES NOT APPROVE OR CONDONE ANY AND ALL ACTIONS TAKEN BY THE AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT.”
* * *
Not everyone was happy with the agreement, and the Nixon administration would come to regret their capitulation. The consequences of the action did not simply embarrass the U.S. government but also split what had seemed like a unified Indian nation. Dick Wilson, tribal chairman of the Oglala Sioux and leader of a corrupt group called GOONS, wired the government: “THE OGLALA SIOUX…TRIBE DOES NOT APPROVE OR CONDONE ANY AND ALL ACTIONS TAKEN BY THE AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT.” These words left the government feeling humiliated. What started out as a triumph of unification ended up tearing the Indian nations and the government apart. “Alcatraz had been tolerated, then ended in time to avoid conflict with the election. Then these same Indians invaded the capitol on election eve. The next time, there would be no toleration. In the White House’s own words, these were twentieth-century ‘renegades,’” wrote historian Kenneth S. Stern in his acclaimed Loud Hawk: The United States Versus the American Indian Movement.
BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE
The whites are crazy!
The whites are crazy!
—ghost-dance song
March 1, 1973 Presidential News Summary:
U.S. officers sealed off the entire Oglala Sioux reservation where about 300 militants of Amer. Indian Movement seized Wounded Knee, SD, and took 10 hostages and exchanged fire w/officers…. All nets noted trading post was stripped of food, clothes, gun and Indian relics as Indians who say they’ll die for cause attempted to force attention on what they say is corruption and mismanagement w/in BIA.
March 3, 1973 Presidential News Summary:
CBS w/ominous film of Indians fixing sights on weapons and Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs) in area. Meanwhile food supplies of Indians and villagers are dwindling.
March 5, 1973 Presidential News Summary:
“Tension grows worse every day,” said a typically ominous report on NBC Sunday…. “Another showdown is in the making at Wounded Knee,” said NBC Sat. where gov’t’s “flexing of the muscles” w/the APCs was featured along w/Molotov cocktails and “fortresses” being built by the hopelessly out-manned Indians faced by gov’t demands for “unconditional surrender.”
These reports that President Nixon received in the Oval Office were referring to the February 27 occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Reservation by approximately 200 Sioux. The occupation was a spontaneous uprising that came when a meeting organized by traditional Chief Frank Fools Crow was moved from a community building that was too small for the large crowd to a larger hall across the reservation. On the way to the other hall, the caravan of vehicles passed through Wounded Knee, site of the infamous massacre of 300 Sioux by the U.S. Seventh Cavalry in 1890.
In the months leading up to the 1973 siege, Pine Ridge was torn between supporters of AIM and followers of the corrupt tribal government under Dick Wilson. Frequent acts of violence ranging from beatings to murders erupted regularly between the groups. Wilson had organized a special police force, commonly known as GOON squads (Guardians of the Oglala Nation), and used them as his private army to intimidate the people living on the reservation. AIM members and supporters felt persecuted and threatened.
Upside-down distress flag displayed at Wounded Knee protest
“…nobody is recognizing the Indian people as human beings…”
It was in this atmosphere on the evening of February 27 that AIM members and supporters finally decided to take a stand. As they passed through the tiny village of Wounded Knee, the tragic history of persecution resonated with the group. At that moment the symbolic power of Wounded Knee seemed like the ideal reason to take a stand. The caravan stopped and took over the village, holding eleven allies of the tribal president hostage. Within hours, local authorities and federal agents, who were responsible for law enforcement on reservations, descended. The next day, the Sioux traded gunfire with the federal marshals surrounding Wounded Knee, and AIM leader Russell Means began negotiations for the release of the hostages, demanding that the U.S. Senate launch an investigation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Pine Ridge, and all Sioux reservations in South Dakota, and that the Senate
Committee on Foreign Relations hold hearings on the scores of Indian treaties broken by the U.S. government.
The Wounded Knee occupation lasted for a total of seventy days, during which time two Sioux men were shot to death by federal agents. One federal agent was paralyzed after being shot. On May 8, the AIM leaders and their supporters surrendered after White House officials promised to investigate their complaints. The AIM leaders were arrested, but on September 16, 1973, a federal judge dismissed the charges against them because of the U.S. government’s unlawful handling of witnesses and evidence.
Violence continued on the Pine Ridge Reservation throughout the rest of the 1970s, with several more AIM members and supporters losing their lives in confrontations with the U.S. government. The government took no steps to honor broken Indian treaties. Nevertheless, like other civil rights groups, Native Americans won in the courts and won major settlements from federal and state governments in cases involving tribal land claims.
Russell Means, AIM leader at Wounded Knee:
“This is our last gasp as a sovereign people. And if we don’t get these treaty rights recognized, as equal to the Constitution of the United States—as by law they are—then you might as well kill me, because I have no reason for living. And that’s why I’m here in Wounded Knee, because nobody is recognizing the Indian people as human beings….
America Dreaming Page 14