Alcatraz Island is a small island 1.25 miles (2.01 km) offshore from San Francisco, California, United States. The island was developed in the mid-19th century with facilities for a lighthouse, a military fortification, and a military prison. In 1934, the island was converted into a federal prison, Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. The strong currents around the island and cold water temperatures made escape nearly impossible, and the prison became one of the most notorious in American history. The prison closed in 1963, and the island is now a major tourist attraction.
Maria Louise Cruz, better known as Sacheen Littlefeather, was an American actress and activist for Native American civil rights who, after her death, was accused by family members and journalists of being a pretendian, falsely claiming Native American heritage.
John Trudell was a Native American author, poet, actor, musician, and political activist. He was the spokesperson for the Indians of All Tribes' takeover of Alcatraz beginning in 1969, broadcasting as Radio Free Alcatraz. During most of the 1970s, he served as the chairman of the American Indian Movement, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Sherman Joseph Alexie Jr. is a Native American novelist, short story writer, poet, screenwriter, and filmmaker. His writings draw on his experiences as an Indigenous American with ancestry from several tribes. He grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation and now lives in Seattle, Washington.
Vine Victor Deloria Jr. was an author, theologian, historian, and activist for Native American rights. He was widely known for his book Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (1969), which helped attract national attention to Native American issues in the same year as the Alcatraz-Red Power Movement. From 1964 to 1967, he served as executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, increasing its membership of tribes from 19 to 156. Beginning in 1977, he was a board member of the National Museum of the American Indian, which now has buildings in both New York City and in Washington, DC, on the Mall.
War bonnets are feathered headgear traditionally worn by male leaders of the American Plains Indians Nations who have earned a place of great respect in their tribe. Originally they were sometimes worn into battle, but they are now primarily used for ceremonial occasions. In the Native American and First Nations communities that traditionally have these items of regalia, they are seen as items of great spiritual and political importance, only to be worn by those who have earned the right and honour through formal recognition by their people.
How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life is a young adult novel by Kaavya Viswanathan, written just after she graduated from high school. Its 2006 debut was highly publicized while she was enrolled at Harvard University, but the book was withdrawn after it was discovered that portions had been plagiarized from several sources, including the works of Salman Rushdie and Meg Cabot. Viswanathan immediately apologized and stated that similarities were "completely unintentional and unconscious." All shelf copies of Opal Mehta were ultimately recalled and destroyed by the publisher, and Viswanathan's contract for a second book was canceled.
The Red Power movement was a social movement led by Native American youth to demand self-determination for Native Americans in the United States. Organizations that were part of the Red Power Movement include the American Indian Movement (AIM) and the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC). This movement sought the rights for Native Americans to make policies and programs for themselves while maintaining and controlling their own land and resources. The Red Power movement took a confrontational and civil disobedience approach to inciting change in United States to Native American affairs compared to using negotiations and settlements, which national Native American groups such as National Congress of American Indians had before. Red Power centered around mass action, militant action, and unified action.
North America's Forgotten Past is a series of historical fiction novels published by Tor and written by husband and wife co-authors W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear. The series, which began with 1990's People of the Wolf, explores various civilizations and cultures in prehistoric North America. It is somewhat comparable to Jean M. Auel's Earth's Children series, which is set in prehistoric Europe, but each of its books focuses on a different time period, location, and set of characters. The first four novels form a coherent, more or less linear narrative, from the initial migration of Siberian peoples into what is now Canada and Alaska through the florescence of the Mississippian semi-urban mound-building culture, considered the "high-water mark" of North American pre-Columbian civilization, around 1000 AD. The remaining novels cover a wide variety of times and settings, most standalone stories in no particular order, ranging from tropical Florida in the 6th millennium BC to the Chaco Empire of the Southwest in the 13th century AD. The novels take into account new developments in North American archaeology such as the discovery of Kennewick Man and the development of the coastal-route model as a possible alternative or supplement to overland migration across Beringia.
The Occupation of Alcatraz was a 19-month long protest when 89 Native Americans and their supporters occupied Alcatraz Island. The protest was led by Richard Oakes, LaNada Means, and others, while John Trudell served as spokesman. The group lived on the island together until the protest was forcibly ended by the U.S. government.
The Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes are a united, federally recognized tribe of Southern Arapaho and Southern Cheyenne people in western Oklahoma.
Unthanksgiving Day, also known as The Indigenous Peoples Sunrise Ceremony, is an event held on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay to honor the indigenous peoples of the Americas and promote their rights. It coincides with the National Day of Mourning held in Massachusetts. The Alcatraz ceremony has been held annually since 1975 to commemorate the protest event of 1969, where the Alcatraz-Red Power Movement (ARPM) occupied the island. It is organized by the International Indian Treaty Council and American Indian Contemporary Arts.
Flap is a 1970 American Western film directed by Carol Reed and starring Anthony Quinn, Claude Akins and Shelley Winters. Set in a modern Native American reservation, it is an adaptation of the novel Nobody Loves a Drunken Indian by Clair Huffaker.
Native American literature is literature, both oral and written, produced by Native Americans in what is now the United States, from pre-Columbian times through to today. Famous authors include N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, Simon Ortiz, Louise Erdrich, Gerald Vizenor, Joy Harjo, Sherman Alexie, D'Arcy McNickle, James Welch, Charles Eastman, Mourning Dove, Zitkala-Sa, John Rollin Ridge, Lynn Riggs, Hanay Geiogamah, William Apess, Samson Occom, Gerald Vizenor, Stephen Graham Jones, et al. Importantly, it is not "a" literature, but a set of literatures, since every tribe has its own cultural traditions. Since the 1960s, it has also become a significant field of literary studies, with academic journals, departments, and conferences devoted to the subject.
Terese Marie Mailhot is a First Nation Canadian writer, journalist, memoirist, and teacher.
Tommy Orange is an American novelist and writer from Oakland, California. His first book, There There (2018), was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and received the 2019 American Book Award.
Belva Cottier was an American Rosebud Sioux activist and social worker. She proposed the idea of occupying Alcatraz Island in 1964 and was one of the activists who led the protest for return of the island to Native Americans. She planned the first Occupation of Alcatraz, and the suit to claim the property for the Sioux. Concerned for the health of urban Indians, she conducted a study for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, which resulted in her becoming the executive director of the first American Indian Health Center in the Bay area in 1972.
LaNada War Jack, also known as LaNada Boyer and LaNada Means, is an American writer and activist. She was the first Native American student admitted to the University of California at Berkeley in 1968. She led the drive to create the Native American Student Organization and became its chair. As a leader of the Third World Strike at UC Berkeley in 1969, she was arrested but succeeded in obtaining approval for the first ethnic studies courses to be included in the university's curricula. A few months later, she became one of the organizers of the Occupation of Alcatraz in 1969. After the occupation, she completed her bachelor's degree at the University of California, Berkeley and went on to study law at Antioch School of Law in Washington, D.C. While in Washington, she participated in the takeover of the Bureau of Indian Affairs office in 1972.
Stella Leach was a Colville-Oglala Lakota nurse and activist who was known for her work in establishing the first American Indian children's wellness center in the San Francisco Bay Area, setting up the health clinic during the Occupation of Alcatraz, and her activism for native American self-determination.
Julian Brave NoiseCat is a writer, filmmaker, and activist who is an enrolled member of the Canim Lake Band Tsq'secen of the Secwepemc (Shuswap) Nation in the Canadian province of British Columbia. He is a public thinker and advocate on issues of climate justice and Indigenous rights in North America.
