American Indians Celebrate the 50th Anniversary Takeover and Occupation of Alcatraz
Indians of All Tribes
SAN FRANCISCO, California -- Indians of All Tribes will be celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the historic takeover and occupation of Alcatraz in 1969. The event will be celebrated with four days of prayer, ceremony, speakers, and entertainment beginning November 20 through November 23, 2019, on Alcatraz Island in conjunction with the National Park Service.
The event is intended to bring together veterans of the occupation and to educate visitors to the island about the history and struggles of the American Indian. Led by student activists, Richard Oakes, from San Francisco State and LaNada WarJack from UC Berkeley, fourteen American Indian student activists initiated the takeover on November 9, 1969. On November 20, 1969, an additional eighty-nine Indian occupiers that included entire families, joined them on the island.
The activists relied on federal policy and a provision of the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie that authorized Indians to settle land unused by the federal government. Alcatraz, formerly a federal prison, was closed under the Kennedy administration in 1963; therefore, the unused land fell under the provision of the Treaty that provided for resettlement by Indians. The students seized the land not only as a political statement but a cultural one. They sought to develop an environmental and cultural center and a school that would allow them to teach native languages and customs to preserve the cultural heritage that had been denied them by government programs that practiced forced assimilation.
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