In 1969, Ricahrd Oakes and Adam Fortunate Eagle, then known as Adam Nordwall, instigated an invasion of Alcatraz by American Indians. From the mainland, Fortunate Eagle orchestrated the events, but they assumed an uncontrollable life of their own. Fortunate Eagle provides an intimate memoir of the occupation and the events leading up to it. Accompanied by a variety of photographs capturing the people, places, and actions involved, Heart of the Rock brings these turbulent times vividly to life.
From the start, public support was strong. Money poured in from around the country. Sausalito sailors and their "navy" transported supplies and people to the island. San Fransisco restaurants sent Thanksgiving dinner. A school was started; chores and responsibilities were shared by everyone. Alcatraz became home, and American Indians of all tribes became a family.
But the occupation lasted two years, and Oakes, who had become it spokesman, left after his stepdaughter's death on the island. Memoranda from the White House recommended doing "anything" to turn the public against the occupation so it could be ended. Water and electricity were cut off, reports of conflict on the island began appearing in the press, and suspicious fires burned five buildings. Nevertheless, the occupation of Alcatraz remains what historian Vine Deloria, Jr. has called "perhaps the most significant Indian action since the Little Bighorn."
HEART OF THE ROCK
THE INDIAN INVASION OF ALCATRAZ
By Adam Fortunate Eagle
Photography by Vincent Maggiore, Brooks Townes, and Ilka Hartmann
University of Oklahoma Press
Copyright © 2002 University of Oklahoma Press.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0-8061-3396-1
Chapter One
Turtle Island
I guess I am an old man now. At least these seventy-two years on my body would say I must be old. Even so, it seems to me that I will ride the back of this turtle for at least a few more years before I really feel like a senior citizen. It's an Ojibwa legend that the earth is a Turtle Island on a great lake. I like that, and I like it that younger people of my tribe today insist on the old term, "Ojibwa," instead of the anglicized "Chippewa" I used to call myself.
Turtle Island is one of those creation stories that anthropologists and missionaries love to compare among tribes, as if there is some hidden secret in them that binds together all people from the beginning of time. Maybe they are on to something.
In our case it was a great flood, a rising of the waters, that left all creatures adrift together on a log raft. A "Water World" that was better than the movies. Everywhere was water, along every horizon, without even so much as a mountain peak rising above it. The creatures became desperate in their search for land, and each of them tried in their own way to find it. Eagle soared up on the wind currents and looked far beyond where others could see, but there was nothing to be seen except water. Loon said he would find it beneath the surface where it had always been before. But even with the deep breath he took before diving in like an arrow, Loon could not see any bottom at all.
It was Muskrat who volunteered next. He could stay under much longer than Loon and swim as deep as to where it might be. The other creatures waited and waited. It was much too long even for Muskrat to be under the water, and they all feared that he must have drowned. Just then he popped back up to the surface and slowly rolled over on his back. They could see that Muskrat had made a valiant try, but it was too much for him. Together the other creatures brought poor Muskrat's body on to the raft and began to mourn for him. But Rabbit noticed that Muskrat's tiny fists were clenched on his stomach and that they were holding something. It was earth! Strong good soil that Muskrat must have found in a place too deep even for him.
"Put it on my back," said Turtle, "and we will grow from it." And so the earth began again on the back of Turtle Island.
My youngest daughter, Asha, listened through most of this story until she saw her little niece, Mishon, coming in from playing.
"I've got to go to the kitchen for a minute, Dad," she said. "Mishon, you listen to Grandpa. He's telling a story."
That's what you get when you're my age. Surrogate listeners.
There's even one member of my family who teases me all the time about telling "more damn Indian stories." I tell them anyway, just as our people have always done. It's a grandpa's privilege. That doesn't make me old, even if it does help establish me as an elder. I still work for hours every day in my shop, sculpting the artwork that pays our way. Other times, when my wife, Bobbie, and I are not traveling to some show or speaking engagement, I build on the earth lodge I am constructing from old tires and wooden beams the size of telephone poles. What "old" man still does that?
Now and then I look at one of those pictures of me from the past, me with my barbershop haircut, and even one when I'm wearing a tie and a suit. "Handsome dude," I think, "looks sort of like some movie star or politician." But was that really me? My braids have been twisted in gray and silver for many years now. I'm not certain I even have that one suit anymore, let alone have any use for it. It served its purpose, but the picture doesn't tell the story.
Bobbie and I have eleven grandchildren now, and just recently had our first great-grandchild. Our oldest grandchild, Asha's daughter, is nearly thirty and very successful where she lives in Seattle. We were so proud to give her her name when she was born: Benayshe-ba-equay, which is a combining of both our native languages—"benayshe" in Chippewa for bird, "ba" in Shoshone for water, and "equay" in Chippewa again for woman. Bird of the water woman.
Everyone calls her "Benay," and I'm not sure if she is still too shy about it to explain when people ask what it means. What it really refers to is the graceful, soaring flight of a bird that can carry away the imagination. A bird like the pelican, which in Spanish is "alcatraz."
It has been all that time of Benay's young life since Alcatraz so firmly held my full attention. At the time I wasn't much older than she is now, and as I remember it, there were so many others much younger than myself. Sometimes it seems to me that you don't really get older at all, you just find an age that suits you best and live with that. I was at about that age in 1969. That point in time seems to me like a center from which I can measure all fore and since. A place of laughter and great courage, and a place of suffering and foolish mistakes.
At the time, anthropologist Margaret Mead called the Alcatraz occupation "a magnificent piece of dramatization." Lehman Brightman, a Native American Studies instructor at Berkeley who was never particularly fond of me, called it "the most important event since we actually stopped warfare with white men in 1889." But that was before either of them, or I, could see how really important and meaningful it was.
I will now take you with me on the journey that is always a circle. It's a journey of Turtle Island.
Chapter Two
"If You Want It"
It seems to me that almost every time we invaded Alcatraz, some federal official was there to greet us with a memorable one-liner.
The first time, it was a befuddled-looking man who roared up to the dock in a pickup truck and identified himself as A. L. Aylworth, acting warden. In firmly polite terms he advised us that we were trespassing on federal property and should leave.
At that the attorney representing the American Indian Council, Elliott Leighton, popped open his briefcase and began reading from a sheaf of papers explaining the basis of Sioux claims to surplus federal property under terms of the 1868 Black Hills Treaty.
Aylworth listened, then scratched his head for a tense couple of seconds.
"Well," he said finally, "I guess if you want it, you can have it."
That was on a Sunday afternoon, March 8, 1964, barely a year after the last federal prisoner had been taken off the island. His name was Frank Weatherman, and he was reported to have said, as he turned his head and glared back on "the Rock" for the last time, "This place ain't never been no good for nobody."
Aylworth must have thought something of...
