Oh, thank creator. It's, uh, it's more like think about like the difference between somebody who comes

and grew up

in village,

like, and goon. Um, who now, you know, or for Ida, like, Haidaberg or something like that versus someone like me who grew up in Juneau, the regional capital. And thus I am as urban Indian on think it, oni as a think it person can be.

So, uh, it's

useful to acknowledge those differences in perspective and outlook and experience.

So after the initial landing, more people would come and groups would go back and forth for supplies. They elected a council decisions were made unanimous unanimously by the citizens and everyone had a job. At first it was security, sanitation, like laundry, daycare and schooling, but it would eventually grow into more stuff in the course of the three years. Uh, there would be an initial back and forth of the government insisting they leave and then, uh, the IATIN refusing to do so. You know, Russell Means and Dennis Banks would both be there to represent AIM. And from there, they would go on to do other occupations.

Like, uh, hot maker. Um, software

engineer. Um, so

they saw the occupation as a great success. Uh, and it was up until like the end and it's because, well, like Richard Oaks and like all the initial people leave and then it's pretty much just people who were. Like the lump in proletariat of the island who were left. Uh, because like the people who were the main organizers were like college students, so they all had to go back to school. You know, um, and then the

people that didn't really have anywhere else to go just stayed. Yeah, they,

they came along and they saw this great movement and it's just some people are cut out to lead, I guess. And so when you're having this, uh, natural spring up, like they did, it's, it's one of the problems about mass movements is that they lose momentum if they don't have demands that are easily realizable by like the general population. Like, uh, occupy Wall Street. Like they never had a list of demands. And

classic, classic. Yeah, at

least here they had a list of demands, but they had the island and they were just living the day to day, you know, uh, but like, um,

They would, right, they had, they had their demands, but they had also taken action. Yeah, exactly. And at the same time as they presented their demands. And that's why we're talking about them still today. Exactly.

And so we'll come back to why it like died down later on in the show. Um, but as great of success as the occupation, occupation. God, why do I have such a bad problem with this word?

It's a shitty word, bro. It's English.

It's all shitty.

Uh, making it

last until 71 was the difficult part, you know, at first they gathered in the prison square, were playing kickball. They would cook fry bread and, you know, eat just traditional foods as well, or whatever they can bring back from the shore, you know. Um, they had written spray paint and slogans like custard had a custard had a coming. Um, uh, walls. So I think that's pretty great. Uh, look forward to our first coming episode with the revolutionary left radio where we talk about the death of custard. Yeah. Wait. Um,

that's going to be a bombshell.

That's going to fucking rock our world. Yeah.

They found kinship and their population would grow as large as 600 people on the island, mostly college students and activists at first, like I mentioned. Uh, a sizable band being a mass there. They developed a clinic, a PR department, and the Bureau of Caucasian Affairs, which was an obvious play on the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Yeah, I

can't get

over that. That's so good.

So this is 1969.

Is it still 1969 or a way of moved on? Uh, this is 1969.

Uh, this is the best

year. I love this. Uh, the BCA would patrol the shores and prevent intruders for making it on the island, like just kick them off the island. It's pretty awesome. Yeah.

Yeah.

You don't need fucking. Yeah. Never mind.

Life on the rock in 1969 was so great for the occupation and the gain so much unexpected traction. For entertainment, a soon named John Trudel hosted Radio Free Alcatraz, which.

Tell me

the recording. I don't know. I've never looked at that. I'm going to find out. We'll find out.

This is my area of interest. Okay.

Radio Free Alcatraz, which is a play on like Radio Free Asian stuff, which are CIA things. But this was an actual free radio organization, which was awesome. I think that I realized that

this was going to be longer than a day or so's political demonstration. About the third day into the occupation. This was something on a world scene

with the United States government watching and with other countries watching.

There was enormous support for this thing. We did not want to do something

stupid like use excessive force to remove the occupiers. The first

Thanksgiving on the island was special to us because they reflected the support from the Bay Area and the good feelings and the good wishes that the people had for us. I came up on Thanksgiving weekend and I met with Richard Oakes and I had a long conversation with Richard and I liked what we talked about. So I went back to Los Angeles. After

I hitchhiked up here and I hitchhiked back down to Los Angeles and got my family. And shuttles of supplies and donations were coming in from across the country. San Francisco Bay truly had become a symbol of freedom across the country. And celebrities even came to raise awareness. Jane Fonda, Anthony Quinn and Credence, Clearwater Revival all came and had an event. Okay,

I can start listening to CCR again. That's all I needed to hear. I

mean, I dig

CCR. You know what I did need to hear? I didn't need to hear Fortunate Sun one more time in my life.

Oh my God, I hate Fortunate Sun. I'm

a worse song in the universe. I mean,

I agree with

the sentiment. It's got a good hook. More the rizzles egg.

But fuck that song. Oh, that red body blue. Oh, I

know what song you're talking about now.

Yeah,

I'll be great. But they gave Alcatraz a boat. They named the people named the Clearwater.

Oh, no. Okay. But as

the rock stars came, so did the groupies. So the college students were returning and the replacements worked activists, but rather people who saw appeal to a free home. You know, they were freelance photographers that were trying to make a buck off the thing.

Or

a thing. Yeah, get a name for them. A career. Yeah.

Well,

I mean, some of them were like just paparazzi, you know, others of them. Well, I imagine. You

can sell it to

the government. You know, who

know? If I was a liberal settler journalist trying to get started in San Francisco and this was happening in my backyard, you better fucking believe I wasn't going to paddle my ass over there. You

know? And so originally you got to swim. Originally. Originally

drugs

were banned from the island to

address the large drug abuses in Indian communities and stuff. You know, they saw it as a good. Yes. These groupies and stuff, they brought drugs and stuff started to cycle around the island. So when the drug started being cycled, you know, it creates this completely different dynamic where the original activists came for the deed to the island and Nixon just didn't want to deal with them because it would do a PR atrocity. It would just destroy the image of the United States. But as soon as it's drug addicts and homeless people that are just occupying the island now, you know, now they can start thinking about ripping people off the island.

You know, I think that during that occupation there may have been close to 15,000 80 people came through that island. You know, I mean, just to have that visit. And that was a very crucial piece of support there, whether it was about material, it was about spirit. This is where we were going to live. We had a future. We had a beginning in the middle and an end to this island. We weren't just here to be here. This was it. This is where we were going to stay. We knew from the very beginning that it would garner a lot of national attention. The flaw, if I may say so, again, was in the fact that no one had really planned very much beyond what the gesture might do. Indian politics are just like everybody else's politics. And that is, of course, in the governing of the island, there were a lot of different ideas on who was going to be in charge and who's going to make the rules and who gets to be exempt from the rules. But we weren't militant. We were unarmed. It was peaceful. We were unarmed. This was body politics. Body and spirit politics is exactly what it was. We formed Indians of all tribes in the organization formally put forth a list of demands. The government's reaction to the occupation was always negative.

First it

was,

yeah, they weren't going to negotiate with us. And then, you know, and then so then we negotiate over that.

The government was never going,

never going to build a university on Alcatraz or give them $300,000 for a cultural center on Alcatraz Island or even get them titled Alcatraz. These are never our objectives. And even though they were the original Indian wishes, this was not anything we were going to do.

More and more people poured on the islands, hundreds of people poured on the island out here, some for a short time, some for the long haul.

But some of these

people were a little less idealistic than those of us who were out here originally. We had an office in San Francisco on the pier and they were able to bring donations. We had an account set up and people could send their donations right there and a fund for Alcatraz. The students went back to school. A lot of them left and went back to school, but then we had enough people, physical bodies on the island to maintain the occupations. We were the statistics. We were the unemployed and the disenfranchised and we were the ones that really just trying to survive termination and relocation. We were the statistics. We were the ones that had the problems with alcohol or we had come from divided families and we had just come out of this meat grinder that's called democracy. There were more and more challenges to Richard's leadership and the leadership of the college students. And the challenges became more and more, not only were they verbal, but they became physical.

And so, infighting began and factions of activists were beginning to form. From what I understand, it was a divide between those who only cared about the freedoms they had and those who wanted to maintain the freedoms they had gained. Unfortunately, the large influx of non-Indigenous people had diminished the idea of what was being fought for, so rather than fighting for the collective and what had been gained, they just cared about, well, I should be allowed to do what I want on this island. It's our land. It's the classic white anarchist line in my opinion where they're like, oh, no, God's no masters, you can't have any rules. It's complete anarchy and it's the

dumbest. It's the wannabe anarchist.

It's the wannabe

anarchist, exactly. It's the anarchists who ever read any theory and think anarchy means chaos.

I would almost say it's the equivalent of a meme communist.