After centuries of the United States Government ignoring and mistreating the Indigenous people of this land, the Alcatraz occupation in 1969 led by righteous college students, became the longest Indian occupation of federal ground in the history of the United States and a landmark for Indian self-determination. The documentary, Alcatraz is Not an Island, describes the occupation that made Alcatraz a symbol for Indigenous people as motivation to stand up against the cruelty that they have experienced since the arrival of the Europeans. Hence the name of the film, Alcatraz can be seen as an inspiration for Indigenous people rather than an island.
The first attempt to occupy Alcatraz took place in 1964 when a group of four Native Americans landed on the island and claimed it for four hours before the coast guard removed them. This became the inspiration for a group of San Francisco State students to attempt an occupation of their own in 1969. When attempting to make it to the island, only one boat agreed to assist the Native American's in their occupation. They were not able to dock on the island, but, Richard Oaks became the leader of the group when he jumped off the boat and swam to the island. After this brief occupation Richard Oaks returned to San Francisco and began to recruit people to join the movement. Oaks went to UCLA where eighty students agreed to join the movement. On November 20, 1969 a group of one-hundred Native Americans set sail from Sausalito and landed on Alcatraz Island, beginning the occupation that would last for nineteen more months.
The goal of the occupiers was for the United States Government to allow the Indigenous people to create a culture center, museum, and a Native American University on the island. The United States government repeatedly refused to negotiate, however the inspired occupiers refused to back down. The film showed how the Indians worked together to demand justice from the government. Over the nineteen month span hundreds of Native Americans as well as some non-native citizens lived on the island. The occupation ran into leadership issues when Richard Oaks stepped down as the leader due to the death of his daughter, which took place on the island. Just before the occupation ended, the United States government turned off the electricity and water supply to the island.
"The McGillivray Moment" and "Chief Joseph Surrenders" are both about struggles the Native American Indians went through in their lives and their encounters with the settlers of North America. The settlers of North America were not courteous to the rights the Native Americans had and to their traditions.
The lack of resources could have caused them to move inland to find more food and shelter than there was on the island. The colony most likely split into two separate groups one group that stay in case Smith ever came back and the other that moved in ward to find resources (Lawler, Andrew). The reason buildings and all were lost is because in order to move in ward they would have had to build a ship out of the wood from their houses. Once they moved in ward they would have found water and food to hunt. Eventually these people would have assimilated with Native American tribes (History.com). As for the other group that stayed they would have been taken over by the Native American tribe the Croatan. This explains the word Croatan carved into the tree that John White found. It would also explain the skeleton found but it still leaves the mystery of why there was only one skeleton
The film, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, documents the annihilation of the American Indians in the late 1800s. The film starts out in the Black Hills of the Dakotas, a land sacred to the Sioux Native Americans. The Sioux claimed the land and their population flourished due to the good resources in the area. The white people want to gain control of the land and force the natives to relocate to another area. They want the natives to assimilate and believe that this strategy will improve the nation. Senator Henry Dawes comes up with the plan to relocate the natives to several reservations, where they can learn the ways of the white people. Dawes uses an americanized native named Ohiyesa, or Charles, as proof of the success of assimilation. The Sioux are forced to assimilate in order to protect their lives.
It is not out of line to expect Native Americans to live like their ancestors, and I agree with the way that O'Nell made the government look like the wrongdoers. She talks like "indians" are just part of stories or like they have not kept up with the times. This book points out many of the problems for native americans by bringing out problems in identity, culture, and depression dealing with the Flathead Tribe in Montana. The book is divided into three parts to accomplish this. Part 1 is about the American government's policies that were put on the reservations and how it affected the culture of the Flathead Tribe attached to that reservation. This is the base for is to come in the next two parts, which talk about how lonliness an pity tie into the identity and depression.
The United States may be glamor of hope and prosperity for many nations still undergoing democratic maturity and development; however, her story is one that combines deadly struggles and an array of governmental decisions that defined the path to freedom of now the world’s most powerful country. One of the ways to understand the history of the United States is through revisiting the Trail of Tears, which is documented in the film. We Shall Remain: Trail of Tears. Notably, the film documentary with five parts in total highlighting the history of Native Americans from the 17th
Lakota Woman Essay In Lakota Woman, Mary Crow Dog argues that in the 1970’s, the American Indian Movement used protests and militancy to improve their visibility in mainstream Anglo American society in an effort to secure sovereignty for all "full blood" American Indians in spite of generational gender, power, and financial conflicts on the reservations. When reading this book, one can see that this is indeed the case. The struggles these people underwent in their daily lives on the reservation eventually became too much, and the American Indian Movement was born. AIM, as we will see through several examples, made their case known to the people of the United States, and militancy ultimately became necessary in order to do so.
The Americans came back to the island. They wanted to test the atomic bomb on the island. They forced the natives to move to an island south of Bikini. This did not make the natives happy, they didn't want to lose there island.
Churchill claims that during the 1970s, the U.S. government carried out a "counterinsurgency war against the American Indian Movement" (Churchill 219) and their objective was to oppress and halt the American Indian Movement's ability to "pursue an agenda of Indian treaty rights, land recovery, and national sovereignty in North America" (Churchill 219) making them a target of negative propaganda and oppression. I believe that Churchill's claims are valid and deserve merit due to the fact that he supports his claims with evidence and refers to reliable authorities and sources. He also cites specific examples, uses valid numbers, statistics and facts to support his thesis and claims. I will also be using several outside sources, including the book Prison Writings written by Leonard Peltier to strengthen my position.
The internment camps in Manzanar don’t get enough recognition, it’s so sad that people don’t know what happened and what the Japanese American went through because of something totally out of their control. In Farewell to Manzanar there is a lot of information about how the Japanese Americans were being treated after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. We read about the Japanese Americans experience in the Manzanar internment camps and the processes they went through, what caused them to have to enter these camps, how there experience affected them long term., that is also what I will be explaining in this essay.
Native Americans have felt distress from societal and governmental interactions for hundreds of years. American Indian protests against these pressures date back to the colonial period. Broken treaties, removal policies, acculturation, and assimilation have scarred the indigenous societies of the United States. These policies and the continued oppression of the native communities produced an atmosphere of heightened tension. Governmental pressure for assimilation and their apparent aim to destroy cultures, communities, and identities through policies gave the native people a reason to fight. The unanticipated consequence was the subsequent creation of a pan-American Indian identity of the 1960s. These factors combined with poverty, racism, and prolonged discrimination fueled a resentment that had been present in Indian communities for many years. In 1968, the formation of the American Indian Movement took place to tackle the situation and position of Native Americans in society. This movement gave way to a series of radical protests, which were designed to draw awareness to the concerns of American Indians and to compel the federal government to act on their behalf. The movement’s major events were the occupation of Alcatraz, Mount Rushmore, The Trail of Broken Treaties, and Wounded Knee II. These AIM efforts in the 1960s and 1970s era of protest contained many sociological theories that helped and hindered the Native Americans success. The Governments continued repression of the Native Americans assisted in the more radicalized approach of the American Indian Movement. Radical tactics combined with media attention stained the AIM and their effectiveness. Native militancy became a repertoire of action along with adopted strategies from the Civil Rights Movement. In this essay, I will explain the formation of AIM and their major events, while revealing that this identity based social movement’s radical approach led to a harsher governmentally repressive counter movement that ultimately influenced the movements decline.
Many people would love to believe that Frank Morris and the two Anglin brothers lived through there escape from Alcatraz, but it cannot be proven. It has been fifty years since their escape and we still have no evidence as to whether or not they ever even lived. Alcatraz has become one of the most haunted places in America and was home to some of America's most notorious criminals. Some will choose to believe that the ghosts of Alcatraz exist, but others may not. So, why did Alcatraz shut down? How did the prisoners escape and are they alive?
In the colonization of Turtle Island (North America), the United States government policy set out to eliminate the Indigenous populations; in essence to “destroy all things Indian”.2 Indigenous Nations were to relocate to unknown lands and forced into an assimilation of the white man 's view of the world. The early American settlers were detrimental, and their process became exterminatory.3 Colonization exemplified by violent confrontations, deliberate massacres, and in some cases, total annihilations of a People.4 The culture of conquest was developed and practiced by Europeans well before they landed on Turtle Island and was perfected well before the fifteenth century.5 Taking land and imposing values and ways of life on the social landscape
The whites took the Native American children with the purpose to assimilate the children to the white culture. They would force all the native children to choose white names, cut their hair like a white man or woman, and gave them a strict schedule to follow along, they were also not allowed to speak their native language or else they would be punished heavily. Even though this action was for a good purpose, the white people ended up killing many of the Native children, which broke the promise they had made to the children’s parents back at the reservation. These events had occurred because the whites had the power to control the children to do, and follow the ways of the whites.
The Indians were an invented people. The place they inhabited was not the Indies, and their culture varied from tribe to tribe. The Indian in film is also an invented population of people. No distinction between reality and the imagination are made in these movies. The portrayal of the Native American, and the Native American ways of life were displayed incorrectly in film, and warped the image of the Native American in the eyes of all Americans, especially their descendants.
We stepped off the large tour boat with a look of fright in both our eyes. Some joy was there, but knowing what went on in this place made us feel the way we did. To me, Alcatraz didn't really look like a shut down prison at that moment. It looked more like an old worn down cemetery. The paint on most of the buildings was chipped off all the way down to the wood. Most of the buildings had collapsed down to some cement foundations and old rusted poles hanging every other way. As we walked to the building where you start your tour, that was probably the only building at this place with cleanliness to it. They gave us our tour headphones, which take you through the whole prison with a audio guide telling you how it was in the prison. Not just how it was for the prisoners, but how it was for the guards too.