Occupying Alcatraz: Native American Activists Demand Change
INDIAN CLAIMS COMMISSION The US Congress created the ICC on August 13 1946 for the purpose of hearing and processing legal claims made by Native Americans against the United States Most of these claims involved treaty violations and what many in Native communities considered to be the wrongful confiscation of their ancestral lands Though it was only expected to last a decade the three member commission operated until September 1978 when the US Court of Federal Claims took control over any outstanding cases During that time nearly all of the federally recognized Native American nations filed at least one claim Approximately 342 awards totaling more than 800 million were distributed The individual judgments ranged from several hundred dollars to 31 2 million However many Native Americans believed no monetary compensation would bring true justice to the situation Critics felt the ICC simply forced Native Americans to monetize unfairly seized lands excess property Since then the government had been dragging its feet in coming up with a viable idea for what to do with the island and buildings Members of the Sioux Club were sure this was exactly the opportunity the Native American community needed Spearheaded by Richard D McKenzie president of the American Indian Council Allen Cottier Martin Martinez Garfield Spotted Elk and Walter Means a plot was hatched to peacefully invade and occupy Alcatraz Island The five Sioux leaders and their followers would charter a tugboat and pack it with enough food and supplies to last for 30 days After
they landed they would establish a control center INFAMOUS ALCATRAZ from which they could From the 1850s to 1963 San state their demands to Francisco Bay housed one of the strictest and most the government terrifying maximum security prisons in US history Notorious The First criminals such as gangster Occupation Al Scarface Capone and murderer Robert Birdman of On that breezy March Alcatraz Stroud were locked up in cramped cells behind afternoon in 1964 the its walls Nicknamed The Rock Sioux Club's scheme almost because of its steep jagged cliffs the prison was a virtually worked After Aylworth escape proof fortress Many attempts were made during stepped aside the five its years in operation first as Sioux leaders trekked up a military jail until 1933 then as a federal prison from 1934 the hill McKenzie waved to 1963 But no inmates are an American flag while known to have successfully escaped Due to expensive Cottier read a statement he maintenance costs the government shut down had written on deer hide Alcatraz in 1963 parchment We'll be more fair to the government than they were to us Cottier said We'll pay them forty seven cents an acre same as they paid California tribes when the government took their land 5 Walter Means and his son 26 year old Russell hammered a beat up mop handle into the ground to mark and claim their territory Another Sioux leader Tom
Brown scrambled up a stone railing and flashed a tin tray in the air three times to signal success to anyone watching back on the mainland The other Native Americans back near the boats whooped RUSSELL MEANS hollered and danced Russell Means was born in unison on the Pine Ridge Sioux Reservation in South Dakota But their euphoria was on November 10 1939 His short lived While the family moved to California when he was a young child group was busy celebrating His brief trip to Alcatraz with Aylworth had called his his father in 1964 when he was 25 years old inspired Means boss Richard Willard to stay active in the Native American rights movement In the last acting warden of 1973 he and other leaders of Alcatraz at Willard's home a Minnesota based group the American Indian Movement in Concord California AIM commanded a 71 day When Willard arrived armed standoff with Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI on the island he ordered agents and federal troops at Wounded Knee a town the intruders to leave at where a massacre of Native once Fight it in court Americans by US troops took place in 1890 The siege Don't fight it out here he resulted in hundreds of arrests and the deaths of two bellowed You got no right protesters In 1987 Means to trespass here You're campaigned to become the Libertarian Party's candidate violating the law and I'm for the US presidency but he lost to Ron Paul telling you somebody's going to get hurt
It's Over for Now After nearly four hours on the island Leighton advised McKenzie and his crew to back down Reluctantly they packed up their supplies boarded the boats and charted a course back to the mainland As they neared the shore The March 1964 occupation did not last long but it would be followed by more successful efforts to bring attention to Native American protests LOR medim M
