7TH GRADE HUMANITIES
Unit 5
U5H14
American Indian
Movement
Name ___________________
Date __________________
Section 7.1
7.2
Alcatraz Island: Alcatraz Island is located in the San Francisco Bay, 1.5 miles offshore
from San Francisco, California, United States.
Directions:
 Read and react by leaving at least two (2) annotation per page.
 Fill out the Veen diagram located on the last page. Evaluate the “what” and “how” of each
article on Native American Civil Rights movement.
Source 1: Native American Rights
The movement for Native American rights expanded in the 1960s, resulting in the
creation of the American Indian Movement.
KEY POINTS
 Focused on unemployment, slum housing, and racism, the Native American civil
rights movement grew during the 1960s.
 The Native American rights movement prioritized demands to have the U.S.
government honor treaty obligations it made with various sovereign Native
American nations.
 In the late 1960s, the National Indian
Education Association was formed to fight for
equal education for American Indian schools,
which were afflicted with racism and
insufficient funds.
 The group Indians of All Tribes occupied the
island of Alcatraz from 1969 to 1971,
attracting national attention as they
demanded the reclamation of the land under
the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie.
 American Indian Movement activists marched
across the country in 1972, known as the "Trail of Broken Treaties," and took over
the Bureau of Indian Affairs to protest the U.S. government's failure to address
past treaty responsibilities to various Indian nations.
 The American Indian Movement also led a spiritual walk to Washington, D.C. to
draw attention to anti-Indian legislation, leading Congress to pass the American
Indian Religious Freedom Act and eventually passage of the Indian Civil Rights
Act, which guaranteed civil rights and equal protection.
 The American Indian Movement also led a spiritual walk to Washington, D.C. to
draw attention to anti-Indian legislation, leading Congress to pass the American
indian Religious Freedom Act and eventually passage of the Indian Civil Rights
Act that guaranteed civil rights and equal protection.
The movement for Native American centered
on the tension between rights granted to tribes
and rights that individual Indians retain as
U.S. citizens. Many of the demands of the
movement related to the U.S. government's
obligation to honor its treaties with the
sovereign Native American nations.
Native American Civil Rights
After years of unequal schooling, for reasons
from racist schools to insufficiently funded
schools, the National Indian Education
Association (NIEA) was formed in 1969 to fight
for equal education for American Indians. American Indian Activists strove for media
protection and to own their own media. Until 1935, American Indian people could be
fined and sent to prison for practicing their traditional religious beliefs. In more recent
times, there has been controversy around the use of American Indian symbols such as
for school or team mascots. Concerns are that the use of the symbols distort American
Indian history and culture and often stereotype in offensive ways, such as when
"savages" is used. One of the primary advocacy organizations for Native American
Rights, the American Indian Movement (AIM) was also formed during the 1960s.
Alcatraz Occupation: Catalyst for the Formation of AIM
The group Indians of All Tribes (IAT) occupied Alcatraz for nineteen months, from
November 20, 1969, to June 11, 1971, and
was forcibly ended by the U.S.
government. According to the IAT, the
Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) between the
U.S. and the Sioux should have returned all
retired, abandoned or out-of-use federal land
to the Native people from whom it was
acquired. Since Alcatraz penitentiary had been closed on March 21, 1963, and the island
had been declared surplus federal property in 1964, a number of activists felt the island
should be reclaimed. In 1970, the Occupation of Alcatraz was noted as "the symbol of a
newly awakened desire among Indians for unity and authority in a white world."
"Longest Walk"
"The Longest Walk" in 1978 was an AIM-led spiritual walk across the country to support
tribal freedoms and bring attention to 11 pieces of anti-Indian legislation. The first walk
began on February 11, 1978, with a ceremony on Alcatraz Island, where a Sacred Pipe
was loaded with tobacco and carried the entire distance. This 3,200-mile walk's purpose
was to educate people about the U.S. government's continuing threat to tribal
sovereignty; it rallied thousands representing many Indian Nations throughout the
United States and Canada.
Gaining Native American Civil Rights
On March 6, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson signed Executive Order 11399,
establishing the National Council on Indian Opportunity (NCIO). With the passage of
the Indian Civil Rights Act (ICRA) in 1968, also called the Indian Bill of Rights, Native
Americans were guaranteed many civil rights. In 1965, the Voting Rights Act put an end
to individual states claims on whether or not Indians were allowed to vote through a
federal law. Before the Voting Rights Act, many states had found ways to prevent Native
Americans from voting, such as residency or literacy requirements.
SOURCE 2: 1969 Alcatraz takeover 'changed the whole course of history' - CNN.com
From Nicole Lapin and Jason Hanna , CNN
San Francisco, California (CNN) -- Alcatraz Island was a
chilly, unwelcoming place once reserved for infamous
criminals. Not even the federal government appeared to want
it after the penitentiary closed in the 1960s.
Adam Fortunate Eagle remembers "The Rock" a little more
warmly: a place where fellow Native Americans took a stand
that may have helped end the U.S. policy of tribal
assimilation.
Forty years ago Friday, dozens of Native Americans -- mostly California college students
– went to the largely abandoned island in San Francisco Bay, starting an unarmed
occupation that lasted nearly 19 months and captured the attention of media around the
world. A revolving group of Native Americans held the island from November 20, 1969,
to June 10, 1971, staying in the former penitentiary buildings without running water,
phone service and, for part of the time, electricity.
"We changed the whole course of history, not only for the island, but for the government
and its relationship with the Indians," Fortunate Eagle, who helped organize the
occupiers but didn't stay on the island, said during a visit there with a CNN crew.
The initial group demanded control of Alcatraz so it could develop several Indian
institutions, such as a center of Native American studies, a spiritual center and a
museum, partly as replacements for a San Francisco Indian center that had burned
down.
The island was ready for the taking. The federal government, which closed Alcatraz's
prison in 1963, considered the island surplus property, though there were moves to find
a private buyer, said Craig Glassner, a U.S. National Park Service ranger on Alcatraz.
But another motive for the occupation was the government's general treatment of
Indians. The U.S. 16 years earlier had begun a policy of terminating Indian reservations
and relocating the inhabitants to urban areas.
"[The Alcatraz occupiers] wanted to focus attention on
broken treaties, broken promises and ending of tribal
areas," said Professor Troy Johnson, chairman of the
American Indian studies program at California State
University, Long Beach, and author of several publications
on the occupation.
The landing party -- calling itself Indians of All Tribes -was led by Richard Oakes, a Native American and student
at what was then San Francisco State College. Many of his
comrades were Native American college students he
recruited, largely from the University of California, Los
Angeles, Johnson said.
The government warned the occupiers to leave, and for
three days the U.S. Coast Guard tried to blockade the island. But humor -- and the Bay
Area's counterculture climate -- would work for the trespassers.
Fortunate Eagle, who said he generally remained at his Bay Area home but helped the
occupiers with logistics, released a public declaration of the group's intentions. In it, he
took shots at European explorers of centuries past, saying the group members claimed
Alcatraz by right of discovery and that they would pay for the island with $24 worth of
goods.
"The liberal people of San Francisco [and] Oakland, the Bay Area ... they loved what we
were doing because we used sass and humor," Fortunate Eagle, now 80, recalled.
The press covered the occupation, and the public began delivering supplies by boat -ignoring the blockade, he said.
The FBI intended to remove the occupiers, but the White House told it to back off and
ordered an end to the blockade, Johnson said. In time, other Native Americans would
join the occupation, with the high population point coming on Thanksgiving 1969, with
400 people, Fortunate Eagle said.
Fortunate Eagle's daughter, Asha Nordwall, was 15 at the time. She said she remembers
staying at the island on weekends, choosing for fun -- as other kids did -- to sleep in the
old penitentiary's cells while adults generally slept in buildings meant for the prison's
staff. "We were just kind of happy to be a part of all these Indians coming from
everywhere," Nordwall said.
The population changed over time, with newcomers
from across the country boating in and veterans
departing. One of them was now-TV and film actor
Benjamin Bratt, who as a child arrived with his siblings
and mother, who is a Quechua native from Peru.
"Forty years later, Native people still recognize the
occupation for what it was and remains: a seminal event
in American history that brought the plight of American
Indians to the world's attention," Bratt and his brother
Peter said in a statement.
"It's easy to pass off the Alcatraz event as largely symbolic, but the truth is the spirit and
dream of Alcatraz never died, it simply found its way to other fights," the Bratt brothers
said. "Native sovereignty, repatriation, environmental justice, the struggle for basic
human rights -- these are the issues Native people were fighting for then, and are the
same things we are fighting for today."
In January 1970, Oakes, the leader on the island, left for good after his stepdaughter fell
down a stairwell to her death, Johnson wrote in an account of the occupation posted on
the National Park Service Web site for Alcatraz. Oakes himself would die in a shooting
unrelated to the occupation in 1972, Johnson said.
In 1971, authorities decided to end the occupation by going in when the group was at its
smallest. Police and federal agents removed 15 people on June 10, nearly 19 months
after the occupation began, Johnson wrote in the online account.
The occupiers didn't get their demands. But President Nixon ended the U.S. tribal
termination policy in June 1970, while they still were on the island. This was a result of
the public spotlight that the occupation put on Indian issues, Johnson and Glassner
said. "It might have happened anyway, but Alcatraz had the attention of the nation, and
it led to those changes being initiated in the White House," Glassner said.
Today the island is part of the National Park Service, hosting hundreds of thousands of
people for tours each year.
Fortunate Eagle, who now lives on a reservation in Nevada, said the occupation was the
most significant event in Native American history since the 1876 Battle of the Little
Bighorn: "It brought the Indian issues to the forefront of the public awareness."
Part 3
 Directions: based off your reading use the Veen Diagram to evaluate the sources on
the history occupation of Alcatraz Island.