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Nine-tenths of the Law. Hannah Dobbz
Читать онлайн.Название Nine-tenths of the Law
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781849351195
Автор произведения Hannah Dobbz
Жанр Юриспруденция, право
Издательство Ingram
Under the U.S. Code we as Sioux Indians are settling on Federal land no longer appropriated. Because we are civilized human beings, and we realize that these acts give us land at no cost we are willing to pay the highest price for California land set by the Government—47 cents per acre. It is our intention to continue to allow the U.S. Government to operate the lighthouse, providing it does not interfere with our settlement.[28]
The 1964 group only stayed on the island for a matter of hours, dancing in the shadow of the lighthouse and running around “laying claim to various parts of the island, just as the many whites who had come to our land had claimed our rivers, forests, hills, and meadows. For a few exhilarating hours,” wrote Russell Means, “I felt a freedom that I had never experienced, as though Alcatraz were mine.”[29]
When U.S. marshals arrived, the occupiers went home to file paperwork with the Bureau of Land Claims in Sacramento. Indeed, this was meant less as a media ploy (albeit partially) and more as a serious attempt to bureaucratically acquire title. “This is no uprising or any such wild plot. We’re entitled to the land free under the law,” said Richard McKenzie, one of the occupiers. “We feel the rights given to the American Indian should and can be exercised.”[30]
U.S. Attorney Cecil Poole stated that no charges would be brought upon the group, as they hadn’t done any damage to the property during the “invasion.” He then jokingly said that if the government wanted to punish the five men, it “might actually make them stay” on the island, which was isolated, windswept, and chilly.[31]
In 1965, when the U.S. government began holding public hearings on how Alcatraz should be developed, McKenzie filed an injunction against the sale of Alcatraz. He argued that he should receive title to the property as well as a judgment of $2,500,000 or the assessed value of the island. An answer was filed in February 1966, and the injunction proved unsuccessful. On May 15, 1968, Attorney General Ramsey Clark informed Senator Edward V. Long that the Department of Justice had “concluded that there is not any legal basis for the claims of the American Indian Foundation or similar groups to Alcatraz.”[32] Three weeks later, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California threw out McKenzie’s case for “lack of prosecution.” The federal government asserted that the occupation had been nothing more than a sophomoric publicity stunt and therefore carried no legal weight.[33]
Inspired by the stunt, in 1969, as indigenous rage over the dispossession of land and heritage was reaching a boiling point, a militant Mohawk named Richard Oakes burst onto the American Indian activist scene. In the following years he would participate in dozens of occupations, and he became a household name during the two-year-long Alcatraz takeover.
Only three months after the Summer of Love, on November 9, 1969, Oakes and forty other Bay Area Indians took the island in the name of the Indians of All Tribes and claimed it under the Doctrine of Discovery. And this time, they promised, they wouldn’t leave so easily. Richard Oakes and Adam Nordwall were frequently pegged as the “leaders” of the occupation because they were often the most visible to the media, but both maintain that the movement had no official leader.[34] Collectively, the Indians of All Tribes released this derisive tongue-in-cheek statement, chiding white colonizers for their treatment of natives both past and present:
To the Great White Father and All His People:
We, the native Americans, re-claim the land known as Alcatraz Island in the name of all American Indians by right of discovery. We wish to be fair and honorable in our dealings with the Caucasian inhabitants of this land, and hereby offer the following treaty: We will purchase said Alcatraz Island for 24 dollars ($24) in glass beads and red cloth, a precedent set by the white mans’ purchase of a similar island about 300 years ago. We know that $24 in trade goods for these sixteen acres is more than was paid when Manhattan Island was sold, but we offer that land values have risen over the years. 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. We will give to the inhabitants of this land a portion of that land for their own, to be held in trust by the American Indian Government—for as long as the sun shall rise and the rivers go down to the sea—to be administered by the Bureau of Caucasian Affairs (BCA). We will further guide the inhabitants in the proper way of living. We will offer them our religion, our education, our life-ways, in order to help them achieve our level of civilization and thus raise them and all their white brothers up from their savage and unhappy state. We offer this treaty in good faith and wish to be fair and honorable in our dealings with the white men.[35]
The group was removed from the island twice, and on November 20 they went back a third time, this time with a group of eighty-nine Indians. Most were college students, but the cluster also included half a dozen children between the ages of two and six, and a few married couples. The Coast Guard was alerted to this invasion attempt and prevented the boat from docking—but Oakes and some others jumped overboard and swam to shore. Upon arriving, they informed Glenn Dodson, the spooked and frenzied caretaker, that if he cooperated, the Indians would create a Bureau of Caucasian Affairs and appoint him the head of it. Dodson agreed, noting that he was one-eighth Indian himself.[36]
When the island’s chief security officer, John Hart, who had been away on vacation, returned to Alcatraz, he appeared amicable to the Indians’ presence as well. “As long as you’re here, you might as well be comfortable,” he said, and directed the Indians to the buildings with working plumbing, alerting them to some of the hazards of the deteriorating landscape. With that, the Indians made themselves at home on the island, preparing for what would be a two-year stay, though they didn’t know it at the time. They painted giant “no trespassing” signs, including one that read “You Are Now on Indian Land” and another that read “Warning Keep Off Indian Property” (an alteration from the original sign, which had read “Warning Keep Off U.S. Property”).[37]
The Indians of All Tribes’ reasoning for the long-term takeover seemed sound: “How are we to be charged with trespassing on the white man’s land when the white man has taken all of this land from us?” they asked.[38] “If a one-day occupation by white men on Indian land years ago established squatter’s right, then the one-day occupation of Alcatraz should establish Indian rights to the island.”[39]
The U.S. government’s response to the occupation was cautious. Though the event had quickly exploded into a national domestic crisis, officials wanted to be sure that they handled the situation prudently. In light of some recent public-relations disasters, such as the My Lai and Kent State Massacres, the government did not want to react violently to the occupation and risk further blood on their hands. Instead, they employed a Coast Guard blockade. If occupiers were unable to receive shipments of food and supplies, then eventually the government would have starved them out. But officials underestimated the tenacity, the militancy, and the overall cunning of the occupying force.
Supporters would trick the Coast Guard by sailing alongside other boats in the bay and then surreptitiously toss provisions onto the Alcatraz barge, which was docked on the island. When this happened, the Coast Guard would blare its sirens and chase the boat away. While they were pursuing the first boat, a second boat would slide up to the barge and unload supplies. Occupiers also dealt with the blockade by creating diversions such as starting fires or throwing firebombs along one shore of the island while a canoer slipped up onto the other side to unload food donations from people on the mainland.[40]
Eventually realizing that the blockade was ineffective—and potentially counter-productive, as it appeared to call more attention and favorable publicity to the occupation—the government lifted the blockade on November 24. The government’s new plan was to wait until it could negotiate a compromise with the Indians of All Tribes or until the Indians left on their own. They hoped for the latter.
Five months into the occupation, the government was engaged in constant, sweaty-browed negotiations with the occupiers, who were enjoying an increasingly favorable public opinion. And there was no shortage of publicity. News of the Alcatraz occupation stretched