Reclaiming Alcatraz: Other Cinema marks the 40th anniversary of the Alcatraz occupation with a collection of archival amazements and a contemporary documentary feature by James Fortier. (Photo courtesy Other Cinema)
Returning to Alcatraz at ATA
By Dennis Harvey
Among the many empowerment movements that burgeoned in the 1960s was Red Power—an unprecedented wave of activist zeal among Native Americans who’d had their land, languages and cultures systematically taken away by the government. If the 19th-century Indian experience was defined by broken treaties, in the 20th it had suffered from dubiously well intentioned efforts to relocate and assimilate tribal peoples in mainstream society. This had the effect of cutting them off from their roots while dumping them in cities with minimal institutional support.
Aware of that isolation, some “urban Indians” began agitating for cultural preservation and recognition, not to mention justice for historical wrongs. The movement’s defining moment arrived in 1969, when a group of primarily local Native college students representing organization Indians of All Tribes (IAT) cited a hundred-year-old Federal treaty to reclaim the Bay Area’s recently shuttered prison island as indigenous property.
It was a symbolic protest—the activists chose Alcatraz in part because, like so many lands “given” to Indians as reservations, it is too poor in wildlife and agricultural federal resources for a human population to be self-sustaining—that nonetheless went on for nearly two years.
Marking the occupation’s 40th anniversary is an Other Cinema evening at Artists’ Television Access on Saturday, November 21. It features shorts by Ohlone filmmakers and others (including Chris Kennedy’s excellent new “Lay Claim to an Island”), slides from the protestors’ newsletter, display of vintage activist posters, words from current International Treaty Council representatives and more.
The entree in this multi-course multimedia meal will be Pacifica-based James Fortier’s 2001 documentary feature Alcatraz Is Not an Island, which skillfully uses archival footage, interviews and a soundtrack filled with Native poets and musicians (including original Alcatraz participant John Trudell) to chronicle this headline-making “awakening” of indigenous pride.
The feature begins with the mid-century status of American Indians as “forgotten people,” isolated from their traditions and one another. Reservations were being dismantled, and at one point even the Bureau of Indian Affairs was about to be shuttered—the government, incredibly, considered Natives sufficiently assimilated and its own job thus “done.”
But caught up in the myriad social-change currents of the ’60s, some younger people of tribal heritage began organizing. As one interviewee here notes, women at UC Berkeley and men at SF State—no one is quite sure why the gender chips fell that way—became particularly active, demanding academic recognition of Native studies among many other causes.
The Alcatraz occupation that began in November 1969 (there had been a very brief, much smaller such action five years earlier) was at once impromptu and carefully orchestrated—the latter at least in terms of assuring media coverage. On Thanksgiving the ranks of those on the island swelled to hundreds, with endorsements from visiting celebrities (including, natch, Jane Fonda and Marlon Brando) and infrastructural assists from other friends on the Left. The Feds eventually fought back by cutting off access to power and supplies.
By its end many months later, the protest had dwindled due to tragedy (leader Richard Oakes’ young stepdaughter died in an accidental fall), practicality (some participants had to leave or lose their academic scholarships) and travesty (they were replaced by a few too many druggy hangers-on drifting over from the Haight). But the action was nonetheless a watershed for Native peoples that triggered major positive shifts in community empowerment and government policy.
Pacifica-based Fortier, a busy freelance DP and founder of Turtle Island Productions (which specializes in broadcast/corporate videos as well as Native American projects) will be on hand to introduce Alcatraz Is Not an Island. Its ATA show is at present the last of several Bay Area revival screenings in conjunction with the events’ 40-year commemoration.
topics: activism, american indian film, archives, artists' television access, bay area, directors, diy, documentary, world cinema, youth
11.18.2009