February 22: Rise of Red Bird And Native American Rights

On February  22nd in 1876 native American writer, activist, educator, and musician Zitkala-Sa (Red Bird) was born on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

At a young age Quaker missionaries came to the Yankton Reservation and took several children to the White's Manual Labor Institute, a boarding school in Wabash, Indiana including Zitkala-Sa.
After graduation she attended Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana before becoming a teacher herself. Though she valued education she felt isolated in a white/european culture, and felt her identity was stripped away by the Quaker missionaries. She was further dismayed when returning to Yankton Reservation to find many of native Sioux traditions had fallen away and the reservation conforming to the dominant white culture.

Zitkala-Sa began archiving Native American customs and legends and was first published in 1900 when she published legends collected from Native American culture, as well as autobiographical narratives. She also wrote columns for the New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly, as well as writing the first Native American Opera.

in 1926 she and her husband founded the National Council of American Indians, dedicated to the cause of uniting the tribes throughout the U.S. in the cause of gaining full citizenship rights and served as it's president until her death in 1938.

Photo: Zitkala-Sa (1901) Public Domain photograph by Joseph Keiley

Thanksgiving Spotlight: Tonight We Take Alcatraz, Un-thank You Very Much!

Alcatraz Island

November 20, 1969, eighty nine American Indians (who called themselves Indians of All Tribes or IOAT) landed on and claimed Alcatraz Island for themselves in what is now called The Occupation of Alcatraz.

According to the IOAT, the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) between the U.S. and the Lakota, states all retired, abandoned or out-of-use federal land was to be returned to the Native people from whom it was stolen (The treaty and it's implications has been speculated on and argued over from both sides). Since Alcatraz penitentiary had been closed since March 21, 1963, and the island had been declared surplus federal property in 1964, a number of Red Power activists felt the island qualified for a reclamation. The Alcatraz Occupation lasted for a total of nineteen months, until June 11, 1971, before the occupants were forcibly removed by the U.S. government.

The Occupation began strong with sympathy for the IOAT from the general public, with sporadic cameos by celebrities such as Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda, and Jonathan Winters. Creedence Clearwater Revival even donated a $15,000 boat for use of bringing supplies to the Occupants.

Initially the Occupants offered to pay the federal government $9.40 for the entire island (roughly the same amount per acre that the government had initially offered at the Treaty of Fort Laramie), but over the course of a year negotiations had crumbled. Rumors of drug use helped deteriorate national sympathy, and morale had been all but crushed when a13 year old daughter of two occupants was killed in an accident.

Nearly 10 years after the Occupation of Alcatraz (On June 30, 1980) the United States Supreme Court ruled that the government had illegally taken the land covered by the Treaty of Fort Laramie and awarded the Lakota $15.5 million for the market value of the land in 1877, along with 103 years of a 5% interest, for a total of  $120 million. The Lakota Sioux refused to accept payment on the grounds that it would constitute a sales transaction, when in fact the land was taken from them.
The money was put in a trust for the Lakota but they have never taken a dime. The trust has now grown past $1.5 Billion.

The Occupation of Alcatraz is still recognized as a pivoting moment for Native American rights, and on Thanksgiving Day every year a public sunrise ceremony called Un-Thanksgiving is celebrated on Alcatraz Island.