So, music is just so fundamental in bringing together communities in this intertribal connection.Įverardo Reyes is a fourth-year Ph.D. Richard Oakes talks about, in interviews, that the ability to play Indigenous Native American music on the island was just so fundamental in that first month that they were there.Īnd he talks about how they were playing music all night long around the drum - that it was bringing together Native American people from across the United States, but also Indigenous people from Mexico and Canada and South America. And Reyes explores how the occupation of Alcatraz - along with other acts of political resistance - led to big changes in federal Indian policy. Reyes’ research looks at how sound and music were used during the takeover to capture mass attention and amplify the Red Power movement, a civil rights movement formed by Native American youth in the second half of the 20th century. At some points, there were more than 400 Native people and their supporters on the island. They had huge plans for the island to really just become this amazing cultural center.Īs the takeover gained more attention and support, President Nixon ordered the Coast Guard to play a role of relative non-interference as long as the occupation remained peaceful. This is the stuff in my research that I’m trying to uncover now. They get food shipped in, and there’s powwow drumming. What ends up happening when they first take it over is there’s just so much support from people within the Bay Area. student in ethnomusicology in Berkeley’s Department of Music. “Our offer of $1.24 per acre is greater than the 47 cents per acre the white men are now paying the California Indians for their land,” Oakes reads.Įverardo Reyes is a fourth-year Ph.D. government paid for Manhattan 300 years before. Richard Oakes reads Indians of All Tribes’ proclamation in which the group offers to purchase Alcatraz Island for $24 in glass beads and red cloth - an equivalent price to what the U.S. To President Richard Nixon and the United Nations that said they would purchase the 16 acres of land for $24 in glass beads and red cloth - an equivalent price to what the U.S. The occupation would become one of the greatest acts of political resistance in American Indian history. The group made it to Alcatraz Island and took it over. Many of the protesters were Bay Area college students, including two of the group’s leaders: Richard Oakes, an Akwesasne Mohawk, from San Francisco State University, and LaNada War Jack, a member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, who was attending UC Berkeley.Īs the activists neared Alcatraz, they bypassed a Coast Guard blockade, which had been set up after earlier takeover attempts. government terminated the status of more than 100 tribes, withdrawing aid and services and seizing millions of acres of Native land. This was happening at a time when Native American livelihoods and cultures were acutely threatened by ongoing termination policies in which the U.S. The federal prison on Alcatraz had been closed for six years, and the 89 protesters aimed to occupy the island, stating that the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie required that unused federal land be given back to Native Americans. 20, 1969, a group of Indigenous Americans that called itself Indians of All Tribes took boats in the early morning hours to Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. 25, 1969, five days after the 19-month occupation began.Įpisode 102: Exploring the sound of the American Indian occupation of Alcatraz. Members of the activist group Indians of All Tribes stand on Alcatraz Island on Nov. After taking several classes with John-Carlos Perea, who last year was a visiting associate professor in Berkeley’s Department of Music, Reyes was inspired to research how radio and music were used during the Alcatraz takeover to capture mass attention and amplify the Red Power movement. The 19-month occupation that followed would be regarded as one of the greatest acts of political resistance in American Indian history.Įverardo Reyes is a Ph.D. They bypassed a Coast Guard blockade and took control of the island. 20, 1969, a group of Indigenous Americans that called itself Indians of All Tribes, many of whom were UC Berkeley students, took boats in the early morning hours to Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. Podcast about the people and research that makes UC Berkeley the world-changing place that it is.

Jack of all tribes