Indigenous Activists Claim Alcatraz Island (1969)

On November 20, 1969, eighty-nine Native Americans, led by activist Richard Oakes, seized control of Alcatraz. From 1934 until 1963 this small island in San Francisco Bay had been home to the federal prison Alcatraz. Nicknamed "The Rock," the maximum security facility had housed many notorious criminals. After the prison closed, activists representing “Indians of all tribes” reclaimed the island as indigenous land and stayed for more than a year. Finally, in June 1971, President Richard Nixon ordered federal marshals to end the occupation: they forced the remaining protestors to leave the island. The protest inspired similar Native American protests at Mount Rushmore, Ellis Island and other federal facilities. In this video, Richard Oakes announced the 1969 occupation with the Alcatraz Proclamation.

We, the Native Americans reclaim this 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 $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 the 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 cents per acre is greater than this 47¢ per acre that the white man is now paying the California Indians for their land. We will give to the inhabitants of this island a portion of that land for their own to be held in trust by the American Indian government, for as long as the sun shall rise and the rivers go down to the sea, to be administered by the Bureau of Caucasian Affairs.

We will further guide the inhabitants in a 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 our 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.