Alcatraz Is Not An Island – Richard Oakes (1972)

From ‘Ramparts’, Dec. 1972, Berkeley, California

I grow up on the St. Regis Reservation in New York, near the Canadian border. It’s a big reservation, six miles square, with three thousand people and three thousand problems. My growing up was hard, as it is for most Indians. The hopes were there, the promises were there, but the means for achieving them weren’t forthcoming. I couldn’t adjust.

I went to the schools, went to high school until I was sixteen, but the system never offered me anything that had to do with being an Indian. They didn’t teach me how to hunt, how to skin deer, how to tan hides. All they wanted me to do was to become a part of the machinery, to make me into what they wanted: a white Indian. I wanted to do something for my people. But I didn’t know what.

I quit high school in the eleventh grade and went into iron work. My father and uncle taught me the trade. They passed it down, and when I was sixteen, I just started working. I worked all over, living on the reservation and off the reservation. I lived in New York, Massachusetts, the New England states . . . I went where the work was. I was an iron worker for eleven years. I made good money, but beyond that there was nothing.

I was working in Newport, Rhode Island when I decided to go out to California. I was building a bridge at that time, working a long shift. I just decided to go to California, gave up everything, and drove right across country. I wanted to come on out and see the world. It was a great experience. On the way, I stopped at other reservations, stopped here and there and saw the different conditions in which the tribes lived. I had done a lot of reading about Indian people when I was back home, but I saw little of what I’d read about.

There was a lot of talk about love and friendship for your fellow man, but I never saw it. What I saw instead was the bickering and barroom fights between the Indians, the constant drinking. Drinking seems to fill a void in the life of many Indians. It takes the place of the singing of a song, the sharing of a song with another tribe, the sharing of experiences that another tribe member might have had. Drinking is used as a way to create feelings of some kind where there aren’t any. It fills a void, that’s all. I saw the end of the rainbow, the wrong end.

When I got to San Francisco, I first took a job as a truckdriver. Then I went to work in Warren’s Bar as a bartender. Warren’s is an “Indian” bar in the Mission District of the city, where many Indians live, and I got familiar with quite a few of the problems down around that area. There was poor housing. The Indian people found that their own culture was inaccessible to them. They were enslaved by the white economic system and dependent on it in the city, either in the form of welfare or having to work to make someone else rich.

I went to work in a bar, the only sober Indian there. Then I started thinking of going back to school. I had been to Adirondack Community College and Syracuse University when I was working as an iron worker in Syracuse, so thought that coming to San Francisco might offer me the chance to continue. I got the chance to enroll in San Francisco State College in February of ’69. At that time, the college was going through a lot of changes itself in the Third World Liberation Strike. In the turmoil, an Ethnic Studies Program was being explored. When I went out there, they asked me to enroll. Through my job in the bar and my contacts in the community, I was able to recruit other students. They came out and we got into State. We started a Native American Studies Program.

I felt that Indians needed attention . . . not tomorrow, or the week after, but today. At about this time, the papers were full of controversy over what to do with Alcatraz. Lamar Hunt was proposing his preposterous plans for some kind of astrodome or space needle. Someone wanted to make it a pigeon-feeding station. There was an offer to turn it into a park, and somebody proposed that the government make it into a cemetery. I thought, “Why the hell make it for the dead? Why not make it for the living? We have a specific need. We need to live too, in our way!”

All of this was going on in the spring of 1969. During this time, while we were still in school, there was a meeting of all the Indian students throughout the state — state college students, university students, students from the Native American Studies Programs. We all got together, and I mentioned it there that taking Alcatraz would be a good thing to do. I announced it to all the students. At that time, they all laughed. However, it was there that one of the older people said, “All you young people, listen: We have been looking forward to this day when there would be something for you to do. You are our leaders.”

Well, the idea stayed in the minds of many of the students. I didn’t get a chance to meet some of them until much later, many months later. It was at the American Indian Center in San Francisco. We discussed the possibilities of it. We made tentative plans to do it in the summertime, in 1970. However, one fellow had jumped the gun and was already making plans with local reporters to develop the first news release in November 1969. We were supposed to get dressed up in all of their “television costumes” and just make a pass around the island, to symbolically claim Alcatraz.

But a lot of us were sick of doing things for the public; so when they sailed around the island, we decided to jump off the ship when it got close to Alcatraz, swim out to the island, and claim it. When we got within two hundred fifty yards, I said, “Come on. Let’s go. Let’s get it on!” So I left all my stuff in the boat and dove into the water. Four others followed, but they went all the way around the island and jumped when the boat was closer to the dock, on the east side. I jumped when it was way out. The tide was on the ebb, going towards the Golden Gate Bridge. The boats, the main boat and the press boats, well, they just kept going. They went right on by. People on the boats saw me and yelled, “Man overboard, man overboard,” but they just kept or going.

Before jumping I felt a great sense of urgency. I felt I had to do it, so I just jumped off. I didn’t have time to be scared. I didn’t weigh the possibilities of being attacked by a shark or the current taking me across the bay toll-free. It never entered my mind. I was too busy trying to get to the Rock, because that water was cold, and it was swift. I landed just to the left of the dock, on the rocks. I was being dragged in by the waves or the current, or something, underneath the barge. I was exhausted when I hit land. I’ve done a lot of swimming, but this was the toughest swim I’ve ever made.

I crawled up on the rocks to rest, and a dog came up and began to lick the salt off my body. I had to get that dog away from me. It just kept licking me up. I found out later that this was their “ferocious” guard dog. I found the other four guys. We claimed the island by right of discovery. We represented five different tribes, so we claimed it in the name of the Indians of all the tribes, not just one tribe. That was the first time we used the name which would become our name on the island; ” Indians of All Tribes.”

When we first discovered Alcatraz, we felt like Christians. The natives were very hostile and savage. After we were there for a couple of hours, their warriors, the Coast Guard, came and took us off. That same night fourteen students from UC Berkeley, some from UC Santa Cruz, and some from San Francisco State College set out again.

It was November 9, 1969, when we spent our first night on Alcatraz. We got a ride over with some Sausalito yachtsmen. We landed at about six o’clock and hid. I guess the caretaker was alerted that we had landed. I think by newsmen. He, his three patrolmen, and their ferocious guard dog came out and tried to find us. There were fourteen of us hiding in the grass, and at times they passed within inches of us. Even with their dog they couldn’t detect us. We could see that dog, wagging his tail and barking occasionally. I guess he was used to us by then.

They soon gave up the search, and we split up into three groups, just to be safe. Some of us slept outside and some in the buildings. It was cold that night. The next morning, we did a lot of exploring, looking for food, wood supplies, places to sleep, and generally getting the lay of the land for the next landing. The place was desolate. It was so run down that it was already beginning to feel like a reservation.

We had expected the natives to attack at sunrise, but they didn’t. Finally, Thomas Hannon, the GAO’s [correction: Government Services Administration (GSA)] regional administrator for the island (the GAO has responsibility for all U.S. government surplus property), came on with the Coast Guard and a horde of newsmen. The government couldn’t find us, but the newsmen did, in one of the cell-blocks where we had spent the night. The Coast Guard offered us a ride off, and at around noon time we went down to the exercise yard for a conference. We went down to the dock and read them our proclamation, claiming the island in the name of Indians of All Tribes and giving them our demands. We again vowed we’d be back.

This time, instead of going back to the Indian Center, I went down to UCLA. We felt that we needed more people and a little more time to think it over. By this time, we were sure that there was nothing to fear. The first two missions had confirmed this. They were like reconnaissance missions, each group returning to confirm that we’d be able to do the job.

I made a speech to the Indian students at UCLA and told them of our experiences, told them that there was nothing to fear. I said that we needed people who would be willing to live out there. I told them that it would mean a great deal to all Indians, and that it would take great dedication on the part of those that came out to stay. Eighty of them decided to come up to San Francisco. On November 20, 1969 we went out to Alcatraz, and this time we planned to stay.

Again, we came from Sausalito, and again, we came at night, dispelling the myth that Indians don’t attack after dark. This time the Coast Guard put up a blockade. They tried to take our boat that night, but some of us jumped on the Coast Guard boat and told them that if they tried to take our boat, we’d take theirs. They told us to get off the island, and we told them “No. This is Indian Land. Stay clear 200 yards.” They got out.

They set up a blockade. They sailed around in circles like the Indians did around wagon trains in movies and in pictures. This went on for a couple of days after that third landing. Also, that night, there were helicopters circling overhead. With the Coast Guard’s searchlights and all, it was quite a spectacle.

The little Irish guy, the caretaker, came out and started blowing his bugle. He called up his boss on the phone and said, “The Indians are here, the Indians are here. I think they’re here to stay. It’s taken them thirty minutes to unload their boat.” He told us that we were trespassing, but we just didn’t give a damn. We told him that he was trespassing, and if he would cooperate, we would set up a Bureau of Caucasian Affairs and make him head of it. He laughed like hell, and later really did help us. He came over to our side.

The blockade was completely ineffective. We expected more people the next morning. Well, that day was just a fine day for sailing. The Sausalito Yacht Club just happened to have a sail that day, and there were so many boats out on the bay that the boats bringing people out to the island were able to slip by under the cover of the yachts. I don’t know if the yachting that day was intentional so far as we were concerned, but it was superb!

We needed food and supplies. The blockade was still on that night (November 21), but it didn’t stop us. A canoe slipped into the water, went over to San Francisco, and requested some supplies from the people over there. The mercy ship came over that night and beached on the Golden Gate side of the island, where there’s a sheer cliff. We made a makeshift ladder and brought up supplies that way. While all of this was going on, someone started a fire on the other side of the island, throwing firebombs at the rocks, to create a diversion. We followed all the rules in the book. Of course the Coast Guard fell for it.

We couldn’t have survived without all the people who ran that blockade, especially those first few days, that first week. I guess the people around San Francisco and the Bay Area saw the symbolic gesture of what we were doing, saw just how important this action was. They realized that it could be possible if they would contribute something. And they did, and it was very possible. They made it possible.

Sometimes, especially later, it felt like the monthly commodities coming in for the Indians. You know, surplus food for the Indians. “Here it comes, fellas.” We were sent a whole load of cans of goods and drinks containing cyclamates. I remember unloading it. I told them to take it back, and they did. Some of the cans that were given us were spoiled, leaking and probably poisonous. We weren’t getting only good stuff out there. We were even getting party dresses, high-heeled shoes, white starched shirts. I even found a tuxedo.

Those were hilarious times. Someone donated a live turkey. That poor turkey. He didn’t know what he was getting into. He had a beautiful coloring at first, white and other colors, but he soon turned gray, the color of the concrete. It would have been good if he’d gone into the frying pan, but he didn’t. He ended up living off what garbage there was in the dump. Ended up eating glass.

At first we did all of our cooking outside on an open fire. There was a big fire on the dock. The kids would fish for crab, and we would put a big pot on and cook the crab in there. Any fish that we caught were put right in tinfoil and directly into the fire. It was good. Everyone just came and ate the food that was there. There wasn’t any sense of mine and yours. Everything belonged to everybody.

We tried our best to set up housing for all the people coming onto the island. We set up a housing committee, a security committee, a school for the children. We appointed a head of security and would elect different people to work on the force. The housing committee would search out the island and find the available spots that were free for anybody to flop down on. Pete Bluecloud set up the kitchen, and he and his wife took great pains to see that it was done well.

We did a lot of singing in those days. I remember the fires at nighttime, the cold of the night, the singing around the campfire of the songs that aren’t shared by the white people . . . the songs of friendship, the songs of understanding. We did a lot of singing. We sang into the early hours of the morning. It was beautiful to behold and beautiful to listen to.

A few of us would go off alone and start talking about our experiences on the different reservations, about the more advanced problems and finding solutions to them. The outfit from Alaska would talk about their problems. The fellow from Oklahoma talked about how they got a terrible screwing. We talked of the Creeks and how they were once a great nation.

Pete Bluecloud and I, being the only Mohawks there, would talk about our own Iroquoian problems. We knew we had to keep the Idea of Alcatraz going. We knew we had to bring the experience back home, to the reservations. We vowed to ourselves to keep it going.

About a week after we had taken the island for the third time, the government began to realize that we weren’t going to leave. They were dealing with a new breed of Indian. They began to use all kinds of political moves and militant threats to get us off the island.

Thomas Hannon offered to build us another American Indian Center, to replace the one in San Francisco that had mysteriously burned down about two weeks before we seized the island. He said that the Presidio, the Army Base in San Francisco, would be an ideal place for us to have the Indian Center. You know, they wanted to move us back to the fort again, where they could watch us.

We said, “This is our place. This is it. It offers the kind of isolation necessary for the kind of intellectual development we need to build our movement.” This movement is one in which we are doing things for ourselves. It was just beginning. We weren’t about to give it up.

They told us that we were trespassers and that they could not be responsible for our safety. They stopped delivering water to the island. They turned off the lighthouse and all of the electricity on the island by refusing to service the generator and, finally, made plans to take us off the island by force. We refused to move, and they realized that there wasn’t a damned thing they could do about it. By this time, the whole world knew of the Alcatraz invasion, and the government wasn’t about to risk its shaky image by evicting us.

After Alcatraz was taken, Indians started coming in from all over. The people that came were not only from the United States. They came from Canada, from Mexico, from South America, from all over. For some, it was the first time that they had met with the people of other tribes, the first time they felt a unity with all Indians. The getting together of all Indians was something undreamed of since the Ghost Dance of 1889.

Alcatraz was symbolic to a lot of people, and it meant something real to a lot of people. There are many old prophecies that speak of the younger people rising up and finding a way for the People to live. The Hopi, the spiritual leaders of the Indian people, have a prophecy that is at least 1,200 years old. It says that the People would be pushed off their land from the East to the West, and when they reached the Westernmost tip of America, they would begin to take back the land that was stolen from them.

There was one old man who came on the island. He must have been eighty or ninety years old. When he stepped up onto the dock, he was overjoyed. He stood there for a minute and then said, “At last, I am free!”

Alcatraz was a place where thousands of people had been imprisoned, some of them Indians. We sensed the spirits of the prisoners. At times it was spooky, but mostly the spirit of mercy was in the air. The spirits were free. They mingled with the spirits of the Indians that came on the island and hoped for a better future.

Ironically, Alcatraz was a fitting place for us to take. As I’ve said before, in many ways it was like a reservation: barren, isolated, devoid of water. When we landed, the place felt full of despair, very hopeless, very uncompromising. It wouldn’t yield any kind of harvest at all. The white man has taken all of the productive land, the real Mother Earth. In a sense, the invasion represented the end of the era of the white man’s harshness to Mother Earth. All the white man does is spread concrete over the land. There are no vibrations; there’s no breath. Nothing can come from our Mother. She has been smothered.

When we got there, Alcatraz was twelve acres of concrete, full of barbed wire. It just looked like an army concentration camp. Coming up from the dock, there was a stair that seemed to go right up into the wall. They were huge stairs, going right to the top of the wall. I think they were made for Giants. Then we had to go across the yard into another long set of stairs to get up to the main cellblock. When you get up there, you either die of exhaustion or come away with massive muscles on your legs.

Walking into Cellblock One reminded me of walking into one of those huge airplane hangars, but when you walked further back, you found that there were no airplanes. Maybe grounded pilots, but no airplanes. We’re the only kind of birds that don’t fly . . . jailbirds. Jailbirds, wards of the government, prisoners of war . . . what’s the difference. Before it was known as the Bureau of Indian Affairs, our “governing agency” was the War Department. We were called “Prisoners of War” then. The two agencies are synonymous. During the Second World War, the Japanese prisoner of war camps were run by the same people that run the BIA. Somebody in Washington probably said, “Hey, this is a natural!” We still consider ourselves prisoners of war. We’ll always be at war with the values of this society!

On January 5, 1970, our daughter, Yvonne, fell three stories down a stairwell in the officers’ quarters. Two days later she died in a San Francisco hospital. She was just thirteen. About a week before the accident, my wife Anne told me of dreams and feelings of premonition she was having. She was afraid that someone in our family would be hurt if we stayed on the island. She felt that it was time to leave. I had been thinking about leaving to develop the idea of Alcatraz in other places. However, I put her off. I wish I had listened.

Yvonne’s death cast an air of gloom over the whole island. It was like a symbol of all the doubts we had hidden from ourselves during the whole Alcatraz experience. There had always been the possibility of failure, as there is in every movement, but we had to suppress this idea in order to survive. This time was the test. It was a time to look inward.

I think we have survived. We passed the test. The sorrow couldn’t bring her back. We could only take it and deal with it. Even in death she was still within the circle, the circle of life, our universe.

A few days after Yvonne died we returned to the island to get our clothes and few possessions and left. We had to go. We needed to be away from there. We needed time to gather ourselves together. Leaving the place itself wasn’t hard, and we have never left the people.