The Voices of Occupation Alcatraz

Alcatraz Occupation

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA 18261

In 1969 a Native American Activist group called The Indians of All Tribes took Alcatraz and held the Rock in the pursuit of political justice for 19 months. Though we tell stories of what we know and understand from this time. Here you can listen to the occupation story told from the people who lived it, and truly experience this era of American history by listening to those who made this happen.

American Indian Occupation

The Red Power Movement

"We Hold the Rock"

 

Alcatraz Proved a Point

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA 35283

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"And I'm happy to be a part of the history of Alcatraz, to be able to say a few words and hopefully someday, that our country will be genuine in terms of being a democracy for all people that it doesn't stand for today." - Dr. LaNada Boyer War Jack

 

• Dr. LaNada Boyer War Jack

  
  

  An interview about Native American life in America with Dr. LaNada Boyer War jack. as well as her role as one of the organizers of the Alcatraz Indian Occupation in 1969.

  Date created:

  01/18/2024

  Audio Transcript

  Schaaf:	This is Park Ranger Libby Schaaf on Alcatraz, talking with LaNada Boyer. We're at Alcatraz in the cell house basement, and today is Saturday, September 28th, 1996. It's about 2:40 PM.
  [00:00:30]	We're talking about the Indian Occupation and LaNada's experiences here on Alcatraz. Just for the record, this is an interview for parks staff and public research, and after this becomes part of the public domain. Is that okay with you?
  LaNada:	That's fine.
  Schaaf:	Okay. Let's start out a little bit in the early days, talking about your childhood, just your family life or education and where you were raised. Could you tell me a little bit about that?
  [00:01:00] LaNada: [00:01:30]	Yes. I'm from the Shoshone- Bannock Fort Hall Reservation in Idaho. I was raised there as a child and I attended public schools. I went to boarding schools in South Dakota, Nevada, Idaho, Oklahoma. Then I started college, Idaho State University, in '63.
  [00:02:00] [00:02:30]	I came from a family on the reservation where my father was chairman of the tribe, and I pretty well got involved with the problems and situations he was confronting on the reservation with the federal government, when they were trying to take the water, impose jurisdiction. Poverty was prevalent on the reservation, and just trying to understand why this was going on and why this was happening. The neighboring towns of the reservation were racist. There were “Indians are dogs” signs around. After a while they were removed, but the feeling was still there.
  [00:03:00]	I pretty well grew up in the public school system where I was accepted as long as I dressed my part. Then in junior high, we had a dress standard and only the Indian girls could wear Levi's. I identified with the Indian girls by wearing Levi's, and suddenly I didn't have any friends, and the teachers didn't like me because of who I identified with. It was upsetting.
  [00:03:30]	When I went to the Indian boarding schools, I thought I would be accepted. I was accepted, except that they still imposed another way of life, I guess to continue the assimilation process, where we would become carbon copies of the non-Indian system.
  [00:04:00]	I became aware of the fact that the outside public was not very tolerant of Native American people. They didn't like them, they resented us, but I was never ashamed of it. I was never ashamed of it because when I was five years old and when I was ready to start school, my father told me, he says, "Well, you going to start school now, and I just wanted to let you know that you're an Indian person. Indian. I want you to be proud of it because this whole country belongs to us."
  [00:04:30]	So, I always was proud of who I was, even though not everyone knew who I was. I didn't sit in the back of the classroom and become a good artist like everyone else. I sat in the front of the classroom because I didn't have the language barrier that they had because they only spoke the Shoshone dialect. They were regarded as dumb and stupid and ignorant, and they were denied their education.
  [00:05:00]	By the time we were in the sixth grade, they were already destroyed socially, psychologically, and in other ways. They had no self-esteem. But I was able to still keep going.
  [00:05:30]	When I ran into the system after that, I was able to get through. I knew where to draw the line. I knew how to play my role if I wanted to, but it made me very resentful. I became very rebellious because I knew I was just as smart, if not smarter than the next. I didn't like the treatment.
  [00:06:00]	Then after working with my father, realizing everything that was happening there, it made me even more resentful. Even though I went to all those schools, I was expelled from every one of them. It wasn't necessarily because I did anything bad, it was just because I spoke up, because I would say things out of turn, I guess. They pretty well regarded me as not knowing my place.
  [00:06:30]	That's why I decided I wanted to go to college because everywhere I went, they just kept on kicking me out of the system. So I took my GED and I passed it, and I started college because I didn't want to get behind. I always knew I didn't want to get behind.
  [00:07:00] [00:07:30] [00:08:00]	But then my father was going through an investigation. They were trying to get rid of him out of the council. He was elected into the council and he was denied his position in the council. I saw how the government put in their so-called flunkies or puppets. They only wanted people there that would go along with what they wanted. If you resisted them, if you spoke up, then you were no good. You were bad. The only good Indian is a dead Indian type attitude. They didn't like my father and they put him in an investigation. He refused to go along with the Shoshonean Nation land claims where they opened up the entire West because the Shoshonean Nation extended from California to Canada. That was our entire nation, and then all the bands and groups and tribes that made up the Nation, the Bannock, the Paiute, all the different bands of Shoshones were part of the nation, but they divided us. Maybe because we were so large, we were easier to divide, but they divided us and blacklisted him from any work and kept him out of the tribal council, denied him a seat. Then we were raised in an environment where if I went to school, everyone else had access to free lunches. The federal government paid for the Indians' free lunch program, but we were denied that. We didn't get free lunches. We didn't get health services. Our family was picked out and denied, and it was because my dad resisted.
  [00:08:30] [00:09:00]	So when I was in college, they had an FBI investigation on him because we're coming out of the McCarthy Era and he was regarded as communist because he bucked against the government, which was our natural role, because we had always been on the other side of the fence. We were still Indians, we were wards of the government. They still needed to control us economically, politically, and every other way, our day-to-day existence.
  Schaaf:	You started college in Idaho?
  LaNada: [00:09:30]	I started college in Idaho, but then that was in '63 when they were removing him from office and they were investigating him. They had an FBI investigation on him, the family, and I didn't have any money or the kind of support that I needed, so I didn't make it.
  [00:10:00]	I went to the Bay Area as part of the relocation program and I just left the reservation. Just go somewhere else because you can't get a job. There's no jobs. There's just no life, no way of living to take care of yourself. My reservation was going through such extreme poverty at that time that I thought it would help just to have to me go out and leave and try to do something else.
  [00:10:30] [00:11:00]	I went on the Bureau of Indian Affairs Relocation Program, to San Francisco in January of '65, and I became a part of the urban group here and joined organizations and formed organizations. We protested against the relocation program for just dropping us off in the cities that we needed to maintain that federal relationship, because suddenly they would not recognize us as Indian people anymore just because of where we lived. When we didn't have those imaginary boundary lines in our head, this is still our country, it didn't matter to us where we lived. We're still who we are. We're Indian people. This is our native continent.
  	We had federal treaties and federal laws where they were supposed to provide for our education, our general welfare, our health, and they did not want to honor that because we were in the cities.
  [00:11:30]	We staged a few demonstrations and they ended the relocation program, but I was able to get into the University of California [Berkeley]. I was the first Native American student in, through to help of the San Francisco mission district. I was on probation my first semester and I kept my grades up, so they took me off probation and then I became a regular student.
  [00:12:00] [00:12:30]	Finally, we networked with the other groups on campus and we decided to set up our own ethnic studies program at the University of California. Because the system was so euro-centric, ethnocentric, we thought the only way to really fight racism and discrimination was to have our own program so that they can understand our culture and our background and our history from our view, from our perspective, that there wasn't just one view, one perspective, so that we could try to erase those lines of barriers that existed where people don't know you and they're distrustful and they're paranoid. We wanted to try to unify ourselves by having ourselves as part of the university system.
  [00:13:00]	We wound up in the Third World Strike at Berkeley, which was one of the biggest strikes on the Berkeley campus during the 60s. It was the last. It was the most expensive. They pepper gassed our campus. They called the National Guard and they came on campus with unshielded bayonets.
  [00:13:30] [00:14:00]	But in the end, we did get our Native American Studies and Ethnic Studies Department. I graduated from Berkeley the same year that they took Alcatraz back. After we set up our Native American Studies program and we worked with the other students in the Bay Area, and that's when we decided to come out and take Alcatraz because they were going to set up Alcatraz Island for this millionaire, [Lamar] Hunt. He was going to set up a casino on it, and we didn't want him to do that because we had a prior claim.
  [00:14:30]	In 1964, a group of Native American Lakotas came out to the Island and they want the Island to revert back to the Indian tribes, consistent with federal law, consistent with the Lakota treaty. We thought that we should go out there and reinforce that idea.
  	At the time, the Indian Center of San Francisco broke down, so we decided to go ahead and try to get the government to recognize that they need to recognize and honor the treaties they have with us.
  [00:15:00]	We had no idea what it would turn out like. We didn't know whether we would be killed. We didn't know whether we would be victorious. We had no idea what would happen, but we stayed unified. The students then came out and took the island in 1969.
  Schaaf:	And you were one of those first students that came out?
  LaNada: [00:15:30]	Yeah, I was the chairman of the Native American student group at Berkeley, and Richard Oakes was the chairman of the student group at San Francisco State. We pretty well worked together. They had all the guys at San Francisco State and we had all the gals. We always had our meetings together, and then we had a bigger student organization with Bay Area students.
  [00:16:00]	Then Richard called me up and he said that they were going to ride around the Island on a boat symbolically, in spirit of the Island going back to the Indians. I guess it was just a big publicity stunt that Adam Nordwall staged. We didn't particularly want to be involved, but we thought it would be a nice boat ride on a Sunday afternoon, so we went.
  [00:16:30]	We went around the island, and then some of the guys jumped off and tried to swim to the Island. Boats picked them up and took them back to the mainland. Then after that, we decided to really go out there and do that. We got the students together and came out to the Island. That was November the 14th.
  [00:17:00]	But then Richard Oakes... As soon as the press arrived, Richard Oakes had to claim himself as the leader and gave us up if we all went peacefully, and that wasn't what we agreed on. We agreed to come out and hide out until the very end. Next thing you know, they were hollering my name [laughing]. Then I went back without a fight and the students got mad at us for coming back. We said, "Ask Richard, he's the one that gave us up and made a deal that we would go back if they didn't arrest us."
  [00:17:30]	They got mad at Richard and planned to come back out again. We decided to come out on November 20th because it was the first day of the National Indian Education Association Convention in Minneapolis, and they didn't even invite us. Our big Indian leaders were invited, who had nothing to do with Native American studies. We did that all ourselves. They invited Adam Nordwall and Lee Brighton, so we figured, well, good, they'll be out of town that day, so we'll go take the island the day that that opens, for two reasons. One, they're out of town. Two, in protest to NIEA having a meeting without us.
  Schaaf:	They had the meeting without any students involved?
  [00:18:00] LaNada:	Right, and we were the ones that... We thought we were... Because we set up the first Native American Studies program nationwide in the country at Berkeley.
  Schaaf:	And they didn't invite you.
  LaNada: [00:18:30]	No. We were a little ticked about that. We were just ticked about everything, the status of our people, the way we've been treated for years and years. It just all merged on us at the same point, and we went out and took the island. We didn't get taken off like we thought we would. Well, we had to come back after that first time when we came out and Richard gave us up. Then we decided to come back on the 20th, and we came back with more of the students from around the state of California. Our natural allies were the students.
  [00:19:00]	We didn't work with the community that much then. We were pretty much student oriented.
  Schaaf:	And did you bring supplies and things out with you when you came there that time?
  LaNada: [00:19:30]	Yeah. The second time, we brought everybody. We brought our families, we brought supplies, we brought everything. We didn't know what was going to happen, we didn't know if we're going to get killed, we didn't know if they would leave us alone, we didn't know what was going to happen. We didn't know what to expect. But we just knew we were going to be united and we would try to make a stand for our people.
  [00:20:00]	And nothing happened. They just let us die on the vine. They wouldn't honor our treaties. They wouldn't honor anything that we wanted: to establish a cultural center, a university museum, a place for people to come who wanted this to be the symbol of peace, the Island.
  [00:20:30] [00:21:00]	We wanted to have the Western symbol of peace on the West coast, like the Statue of Liberty in the East. We wanted this to be the symbol of peace and liberty on this side, by recognizing Native American people, because we've been separated. We don't have political equality, economic equality, social equality. Free market capitalist democracy has been at our expense. We've been denied all of that. Everyone has enjoyed those freedoms at our expense. We're still on reservations. The Bill of Rights doesn't apply to us as individuals. We still don't have freedom of religion. We have no political status within the system. We have no representatives. Our traditional governments are not recognized. We lost our Supreme Court case, religious sites, in the Supreme Court.
  [00:21:30]	We were tacked on the end of the Civil Rights Movement in 1964 with the blacks. 1968, we got the Indian Civil Rights Act. It lived 10 years before dying in the Supreme Court in 1978. There was no teeth in the legislation to enforce our civil liberties as individuals, and nothing has changed to this day. As a matter of fact, it's worse.
  Schaaf:	Worse than when you were a student?
  [00:22:00] LaNada: [00:22:30] [00:23:00]	Mm-hmm (affirmative). People have become disoriented. We're controlled. Our economics are controlled. Our legislation is controlled. The way we live. We have no representation. If corporations want to come on the reservation... Fort Hall had the hugest phosphate deposit in the world. FMC [Corporation] and J.R. Simplot, they came in with the federal government to lease it and take that phosphate out. Now, all we have is great big holes in the earth. J.R. Simplot and FMC [Corporation] are super rich conglomerate corporations, international corporations, and our people are still in poverty. They did a lot of politics.
  [00:23:30]	The money that came in through the federal government that was controlled was only for those people that went along with it. They've used the people for years and years, for 30 years now, at Fort Hall. Just for those people that want to be able to live on the reservation and raise their family decently, to have employment, a way to survive, and only those people that go along with what the puppet tribal council wants are the ones that get the jobs and that can live. Those that don't go along, they're frozen out.
  [00:24:00]	They played such games with our lives out there. There's so much dysfunctional living. People are becoming so assimilated at such a rapid pace with every social institution pushing assimilation: the media, the government, the education, the religion. We're becoming so dysfunctional, we don't have anything left of our native culture. Just very little left.
  [00:24:30] Schaaf:	How did you find the living conditions here on Alcatraz for you? And you had your son here?
  LaNada: [00:25:00]	We became conditioned to the elements. Living out here wasn't so much different than living on the reservation. No water, no electricity, poverty. There wasn't that big of a difference.
  Schaaf:	Were you still going to school then?
  LaNada:	Yes. I retained my relationship with the University. Hitchhiked off the Island, catch a sailboat, go to the mainland, check into all my classes, shower up. Then we'd come back out to the Island.
  Schaaf:	There weren't even showers here on the Island for you?
  [00:25:30] LaNada:	Oh, no. They took away the water. They moved the water barge that we had. They took that, tried to make our living conditions worse, but it just made us that more adamant that we wanted to stay. It made it stronger. We improvised in whatever way we could.
  [00:26:00] Schaaf:	Do you remember any kind of unique things about being here on the Island? Any sights or sounds or smells or things that you experienced while you were here?
  LaNada: [00:26:30] [00:27:00]	I know we worked to get the lighthouse going and we tried to keep that going as much as possible. I know they had the incident where some tankers spilled oil in the Bay Area. Of course, they blamed it on us, but then there's been tankers that have spilled everywhere when they didn't have an Alcatraz without a light. So [laughing] I don't think they can blame us for that, but they just blamed us for everything. They tried to set us up with guns, to say that we had guns, when we were a non-violent group on the Island. Of course, that scared me because I knew what they did to the Black Panthers. I knew that they were all killed when they took up arms, so I wanted to make sure that they didn't set us up, so that they could come out and kill us.
  [00:27:30]	I called a press conference on the Island, had the kids line up and throw all their toy guns away, and told the press that if the Coast Guard saw any guns on the island, it had to be toys. The kids got rid of their guns and all we have left is one arrow. We don't have any weapons. We're unarmed. Don't come in and kill us. [Laughing]
  [00:28:00] Schaaf:	What did the kids do out here? Playing? And they had a school set up on the Island for the children?
  LaNada:	We had a school at first, until everyone started leaving. A lot of conflicts came up and people started fighting. Some people stayed, some people left. I stayed.
  [00:28:30]	I didn't get caught up in that too much because I pretty well had to do my studies, and I had my son out here. He was two and a half. They just ran around, played with the rest of the kids wherever they played. Gave him free reign. We were not aware of all the dangerous possibilities. Just pray that they'll be okay.
  Schaaf:	How long did you spend here on Alcatraz?
  [00:29:00] LaNada:	I was here for a year and a half, throughout the entire Occupation.
  Schaaf:	Just leaving to go back to Berkeley to go to school and then coming back?
  LaNada: [00:29:30] [00:30:00]	Spent Christmas and every holiday, whatever that was. It was nice out here. I enjoyed it. I really liked it. I liked to feel the wind on my face, the damp air, the moisture. It never was cold, even though it was through the winter. Anytime, I just got so conditioned to the elements. I loved it. No electricity, I loved that too. It was too glaring. Took me a while to get used to electricity after I went back to the mainland. I used to have candlelight because electricity was just too harsh, but we got used to it. We liked it.
  Schaaf:	Can you tell me more about the holidays that you spent out here?
  LaNada: [00:30:30]	Well, we really didn't notice what was going on, on the mainland. We didn't notice the holidays so much, but we did have that first Thanksgiving out here. It was pretty nice. We felt a real unity with the people in the Bay Area. They gave a lot of food. A lot of people came out, and everybody was real positive, and we enjoyed our Thanksgiving together, and that was really nice.
  Schaaf:	How many people were here for that Thanksgiving?
  LaNada:	Oh, geez. I don't know. 500, 1000 people? There was a lot of people.
  [00:31:00] Schaaf:	Can you tell me a little bit more about the Oakes family?
  LaNada:	It was really tragic, what happened to Richard and his daughter. It was sad. We don't know what happened, how it happened. We just know that she died.
  Schaaf: [00:00:30]	This is part two of an interview on Saturday, September 28, done by Park Ranger, Libby Schaaf on Alcatraz with LaNada Boyer and... LaNada. I'm sorry. We're continuing talking a little bit about the Indian Occupation and also about what's going on now, and how you feel about being back on Alcatraz.
  LaNada: [00:01:00] [00:01:30] [00:02:00]	I think it's really good to come back. It feels like coming back home, feel the air and breeze on my face. I love the feeling out here. Pray for the spirits out here. Those that were harmed, pray for our ancestors, all the people that sacrificed, not only here as a prison, but throughout the Occupation, the people that have been here who came and contributed and gave their support in whatever way that they could. Those that have gone, all the efforts that everyone has made. The park [GGNRA] and the people employed in the park were assisting us in this project and in the history of Alcatraz and being a part of the history of Alcatraz. There's just something about the irony, the tragedy, and yet the beauty it's like those beautiful plants that are growing out of that rubble, where they've destroyed the housing, the guards’ quarters.
  [00:02:30] [00:03:00] [00:03:30]	And I looked for my house at the point of the Island. My red house was all in shambles, destroyed, but yet out of that, you could see those really beautiful plants. They look like flowers, but they're plants. They grow out of the concrete, and I see them going out of the rock. And it's just the beauty, regardless of all of the tragedy, and the suffering and hardship that has gone on on this Island. And the same is back home on the reservation in our country, the history of this country and all the suffering and the tragedy, the genocide of our people, the horrible things that have happened in this country as a result of all the racism, the money economy that's still going on to continue to destroy things that are real. It's the real, the genuine things are still able to survive amidst it all, it’s still surviving. To me, that's a wonderful sign. It's a beautiful sign and it's good to be back.
  [00:04:00] [00:04:30] [00:05:00]	And I'm happy to be a part of the history of Alcatraz, to be able to say a few words and hopefully someday, that our country will be genuine in terms of being a democracy for all people that it doesn't stand for today. And I think about when the early colonists framed the Constitution. We already had that democracy thriving here in this country through the Great Law of Peace through the Iroquois Confederation, the Onondagas and the Eastern Indian Tribes that they already had that and they worked with the early colonists to set it up here in this country for everyone and what it would have been like if they would have adopted the provisions that we had in our Constitution, the Great Law of Peace, along with the separation of powers and everything else. If they would have abolished slavery, the way that we didn't allow under the Great Law of Peace, if they would have recognized women because the women are the strongholds.
  [00:05:30] [00:06:00]	You know, only the women held the property. They selected the statesmen and the chiefs, and the early colonists did not want their women to know that. They did not want their woman to have that. But if they had, how different this country could have been without slavery, and by recognizing the women of this country, how very different this could have all been, if they would have recognized our people and worked with us. We could have helped each other, how, how good it could been, but it wasn't. It didn't happen that way. It came about in a very ugly way, but yet somehow, we're all going to be able to work together anyway, in the end.
  [00:06:30] [00:07:00]	And this is a good sign. You know, this is a good sign where the Park Service and the Indian people are working together. The American Indian Justice Center is getting some property back. It's not easy and it hasn't been easy. It's been 25 years and long overdue, and we're getting just a little bit, but even that little bit is nice and it's good. And we just hope that that continues, and hope that there continues to be other points of progress throughout the country where we can all work and learn and understand more about each other. And hopefully someday in the future we'll be what we could have been, what the Creator intended this to be a long time ago. Maybe someday we’ll reach that point... If I'm idealistic for thinking that way, then maybe I'm an idealist, but I'm hoping that someday we'll reach that.
  [00:07:30] Schaaf:	Can you tell me about any real particular highlights about being here on Alcatraz either back 26 years ago or so, or now?
  LaNada: [00:08:00] [00:08:30]	During the time that, one night they were having a fire on the Island, but I was already in bed and put my son to bed. I woke up and there was a fire in my room, and my instinct was to protect him. And I just woke up and I just threw myself on the fire and put my hands out, put the fire out with my hands. And I burned myself really severely. I carried my son because my room was over the dining hall, and I picked up my son. I took him downstairs and the guys were down there drinking coffee because they just put out another fire on the Island. I guess they suspected some kind of arson or something. So I handed my son over to the guys and then I just fell over because I was in shock.
  [00:09:00]	We didn't have any water and we didn't have a boat, so they put my hands in milk to cool it down. And then they guarded me all night until the morning when I could go over to the mainland to go to the doctor. So that morning early in the morning, I could feel myself, my spirit outside of myself. I could see myself laying there.
  [00:09:30] [00:10:00]	As soon as the first rays of dawn were coming up and I could hear our one rooster, cocka-doodling, then I got up, and I couldn't use my hands, but I got my blanket around me and I went to the end of the Island and I prayed to the Sun as it came up, the way that my mother had told me to do long time ago, that this was our practice, what we did. And I always knew about it, but I never did put it to practice. But that morning, I put it to practice and I prayed to the Sun. And I had a knowledge. I felt that knowledge deep inside me that I would be okay. So I went back and then we went to the mainland when the boat came and then they told me that I was burned clear down to my tendons, that had third degree burns and that I had to be hospitalized.
  [00:10:30]	I said, no, I don't want to go in the hospital. Just put some bandages on me, so they peeled off my charred fingers. And they were big and puffy, like great, big boiled wieners. You know how boiled wieners look when they're puffed up? They peeled it off and it was just pink skin underneath and they were all swollen. And then they put ointment on it and then they wrapped them with each individually. Both of my hands were like that.
  [00:11:00]	But I knew I was going to be okay. And they said, I should go to the hospital. I said no, take me back to the Island. I went back to the Island. I got well at six weeks with complete movement and feeling in my fingers and all that there is, is just a little edge of scarring in between my fingers. And I was able to use my hands again.
  	I had my first spiritual experience out here. Even though I knew about it, I always knew what to say. I always knew what was going on but I never did put it to practice as far as my spirituality and I found my spirituality here. So that was a highlight.
  Schaaf:	That's sure some very difficult experience.
  [00:11:30] LaNada:	Exactly. But like I said, through all the tragedy, and through all the ugliness, something really beautiful, something really good, can come out, something very positive. And that's how I see this whole thing.
  Schaaf:	Were those fires at the same time as the warden's house, or was that separate?
  [00:12:00] LaNada:	No. That was another time. The warden's house and all that, when that happened, I and John Trudell had went to the mainland to do a radio broadcast or something, and that happened the night that we were gone. When we came back, it had already happened. We never knew what happened.
  Schaaf:	And was that when there was no water on the Island?
  [00:12:30] LaNada: [00:13:00]	Yeah. There was no water on the Island. And then the second time that happened, there were three fires on the island that night. There were one in the guards’ quarters. I think there was one on the top level. And then one down in my building, in the dining hall, which was at the point. Let's see... East, West, North? Is that North?
  Schaaf:	North is somewhat that way.
  LaNada:	South.
  Schaaf:	So South.
  LaNada: [00:13:30]	Okay. At the Southern end of the Island was where that building was. That faces the city. My room was in that red building. We had it painted red.
  Schaaf:	The inside of it?
  LaNada:	No, the outside, so you could see it from the mainland [laughing]. I lived in a glass house.
  Schaaf:	Was it the whole building or just your section?
  LaNada:	No, it was the whole building [laughing]. It was a Red Power house [laughing].
  [00:14:00] Schaaf:	Did each family have their own separate house area on the island?
  LaNada:	Everybody picked their own place to stay. A lot of them lived in the guards' quarters, the buildings on the West side of Island. A few stayed in the guards’ quarters on this side, but I stayed in that house over the dining hall.
  [00:14:30] Schaaf:	Did you ever go into the Cell House or other areas around the Island?
  LaNada:	When we first came to the Island, we stayed up here. Our kitchen operated out of the dining hall, because it was Winter and it was raining, and it was dry and it protected us from the wind. And then I stayed in the Warden's house and I had a room in the warden's house.
  Schaaf:	Can you tell me about that?
  [00:15:00] LaNada: [00:15:30]	It was a nice room and it had a bathroom and it had running water then. We got the water turned on after a bit, they turned it on for us for a little while. Then they got mean and turned it off and took their water barge away [laughing]. I had a nice room there, but I liked my room over the dining hall, best of all, because I had the view of San Francisco to the South of me, and to the West of me, I had the Golden Gate. To the East of me, I had the Bay Bridge. I had a panoramic view from my bedroom windows [laughing].
  Schaaf:	Wow. That's a treat.
  LaNada: [00:16:00]	I know I loved it. I just loved it. But then I also maintained my apartment on the mainland. I had my apartment in married student housing, which was really grim and ugly compared to my bedroom [laughing].
  Schaaf:	Okay. So you felt that your bedroom here on the island was more beautiful than in town.
  LaNada: [00:16:30]	Oh yes, than my apartment in Albany Village [laughing]. This was my penthouse [laughing]. And I had two big double beds. It was a big room and I had my Pendleton blankets on those big double beds, and I scavenged my furniture. I had a dresser, a mirror, some big chairs, and my big beds. I had all my personal belongings. I had my posters and my children's pictures. Oh, and I had carpet. I was completely satisfied [laughing].
  [00:17:00] Schaaf:	Was some of this furniture already left on the Island?
  LaNada:	Yeah. They were just left here and there and I would just pick it up here and there and bring it to my room. It was real nice. I liked it.
  Schaaf:	And then you brought some other stuff with you on the boat trips back and forth?
  LaNada: [00:17:30] [00:18:00]	Just some of my personal belongings, my papers, my pictures, my posters. I did a lot of writing. I wrote the planning grant for Alcatraz. I worked with McDonald Architects in San Francisco. And I did the remodel for Alcatraz Island with the museum and the Cultural Center and the University and individual homes. I did them all in circles because that's the circle of life is all in what I considered Indian design. And then we released it on our anniversary date, after we'd been here a year.
  Schaaf:	To who did you release it?
  LaNada: [00:18:30] [00:19:00]	To the press and to the public. And of course we submitted it to the government because we thought maybe that's all, if they could only understand proposals and planning and things like that, we would do that. So we did it, but they never would recognize us. They didn't want us to be legitimate. They divided us from the rest of our people, by going back to the reservations and saying that we were young militants. We'd tell them we're not militants, we're unarmed. They said, we're urban Indians. We said, but we're reservation first. They put these labels on to divide us from our roots back on the reservation. They played the game of divide and conquer and it worked.
  Schaaf:	So was it mostly the young students that stayed here throughout the 19 months or tell me about...
  LaNada: [00:19:30]	Well, a lot of the students went back to the mainland to finish their work after a while. I stayed here throughout the whole occupation. I was the only student that stayed out here throughout the whole time.
  Schaaf:	Were there other older people that came out as well?
  LaNada: [00:20:00] [00:20:30] [00:21:00]	There were some. There were some older people, and there were some... A lot of people came who were identifying, who were not ashamed to be Indian anymore, who were wanting to be an Indian, but didn't know the least bit about it, but were trying. And there were a lot of really phony people. There were a lot of opportunists that just wanted to use the Indian to get something that they wanted, even down to panhandling down to Fisherman's Wharf. It was crazy, the kinds of people that came here. Everybody here just from so many diverse backgrounds, it was just incredible. And some really good people, too. Some really genuine people, some very spiritual people. I had Thomas Banyacya, who's the translator for the traditional Hopi Nation. He and his wife stayed with me. I had Pete Mitten who was a spiritual medicine man from back East and stayed with me for a while, he and his wife. Really good people, really bad people, everybody in between, you name it [laughing].
  Schaaf:	Just a big mix.
  LaNada:	Really the big mix.
  [00:21:30] Schaaf:	Were there major changes between the whole year and a half that you lived on the Island?
  LaNada: [00:22:00]	Well, just in terms of leadership, but I don't know. There was a lot of infighting every now and then. There were good times. There were bad times. Things could have gone better and things were worse. I know I really got criticized a lot, a lot of things I did. I wouldn't do it any other way.
  [00:22:30] Schaaf:	Is there anything else you'd like to share or add?
  LaNada: [00:23:00]	No. I just want to stay positive and hope that some good things will come of this, and that we can get the plight of our people out in the forefront so that the rest of the people understand how we have become prisoners in our own Homeland, and how we can hopefully change that in the future. I keep looking forward to that, even though we don't have it now,
  Schaaf:	Do you see that that may happen in your children's time?
  [00:23:30] LaNada: [00:24:00]	Hopefully, but as we enter into a technological era, I know that things are really getting worse, and that this country will not do anything unless they see a direct cause and effect. They don't think the sky is falling. They think it's alright to pollute the earth and destroy our environment until they see a direct cause and effect. Of course, we can see the direct cause and effect, but they can't for some reason. They think it's all right to destroy our future as long as they get what they can while they're alive. It's very selfish. They call that democracy. And I think that's taking things a little bit too far, and American people need to wake up. We all need to wake up and try to do our part. That's it. And thank you.
  [00:24:30] Schaaf:	Thank you very much LaNada. We really appreciate you being out here today, and we're so glad that you could be involved in this. It's pretty exciting for us to bring folks out here that have so much of a history of the Island that you'd be willing to share that with us. We appreciate that.
  LaNada:	Thank you.
  Schaaf:	Thank you.

 

Occupied Alcatraz

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA 18488

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"But that happens, I would guess almost like in any little town. That's what Alcatraz became. Just like a little community, and you're going to have people that want to do stuff." - Eloy Martinez

 

• Eloy Martinez

  
  

  An Oral history with Eloy Martinez about the Native American experience on and off of Alcatraz during the Indian Occupation

  Date created:

  01/16/2024

  Audio Transcript

  Eloy:	... That's because she was one of my sister's friend and she's always telling my sister... They used to call each other sister-in-law from the time they were little. And so, I think they had an ulterior motive from way back and that's one of my sisters. She passed away when she was 13. But she's the one that pretty much put us on that course. And then she was-
  Johnny:	She was pretty much your first girlfriend then, huh?
  Eloy:	... Yeah. Pretty much.
  Johnny:	And you got married at 17?
  [00:00:30] Eloy:	Yeah. And she had to run away from a children's home when we got married. So, it was-
  Johnny:	And she was Native American too?
  Eloy:	Yes. She was Apache, a Mescalero Apache. She's the one that pretty much got me on the island, because she was into all of the native American causes. Even back in Colorado here dealing with a lot of migrants and a lot of contractors, that migrant contractors and there's a lot of Indians in Colorado that are mixed breed. There's more there probably better than any other state outside of New Mexico.
  [00:01:00]	New Mexico has a lot too, because there's a lot of the prevalent Indians. You can't tell them apart from it, but there's just a pretty much of a mix because any place that people can get on horseback back in those days, they went to. So-
  Johnny:	So, was she involved with the termination program?
  Eloy:	... She was, yeah.
  Johnny:	And she-
  Eloy: [00:01:30]	Her grandparents were evicted also. And but most of the termination policy was happening right about that. But most of those like her grandparents, her grandfather actually used to have a horse trading thing and he would actually provide fresh horses for the Indians. They'd come by and trade him five, six horses for two good ones. So, he made out pretty good, but he was one of the main providers of horses in that whole area down there for a long time.
  [00:02:00] [00:02:30]	And then he got into the mines and stuff, running mills and almost everybody back there went from... Because at that time that was the only work that they can get was in the mining camps. And then after the mining camps, when they started shutting a lot of mining camps, then I can't remember, but I think the next big spurt of stuff came in my father's life anyway was when they started the highway programs, when they started the interstates, because all these guys like my father and almost everybody that was a veteran went and got a VA loan and got themselves a dump truck. One of the little, not real big dump trucks, but enough to make some money because they'd pay them by the load. So, all they did was for, I don't know, he must've worked five, six years, I guess on the freeway system, just hauling gravel and pavement.
  	And then there's like 15, 20. I guess it was a piecework, but they had, in fact I don't track that. He had looked just the little truck, like-
  Johnny:	[inaudible 00:02:56].
  [00:03:00] Eloy:	... But his was a dump truck, had big old spotlight on the top of the hood. I remember that. And I remember his sense of humor. He was crazy. My father was crazy [inaudible 00:03:04].
  Johnny:	How long did he live?
  Eloy:	He died at 50, 54. It's 54. But the alcohol pretty much had a big effect on him, because after he came back from the service, he drank a lot. Yeah.
  Johnny:	Now you mentioned your wife, she had Indian ancestry. Did her parents relay tradition to her growing up? Did she [crosstalk 00:03:27]?
  Eloy:	No.
  Johnny:	No?
  [00:03:30] Eloy:	Her parents are... Pretty much they scattered a lot. A lot of people scattered and a lot of people's kids were taken away from them and she was one of the kids that got taken away from them.
  Johnny:	So, she was in a boarding school?
  Eloy:	Yeah. She grew up in a boarding school. They called it the Colorado Children's Home. But it was pretty much a boarding school. That's all it was.
  Johnny:	So, what was her experience from that?
  Eloy: [00:04:00]	Pretty bad, because they mistreated them. They abused the kids and she told me later on. I didn't know at the time, but later she took me over there when they closed the children's home down. One of the caretakers that had been one of the house parents and she asked her this, "Can we go in that room and check?"
  [00:04:30]	And she said, "I'm going to show you something." And they had this wall, like this wall right here. It had all these pictures up there on a wall and she says, "Behind every one of those pictures, there's a hole in the wall." She says, somebody used to beat their head on a wall and clock them. And I said, "Really?" And she took the pictures off and you could see so, but she always had had problems. So, I believed her, but that was the treatment people got. I don't know. I guess pretty much what you had back in those institutions or those places like that was the people that wouldn't be able to get a job any place else, if they checked him out a little bit, because a lot of them were... And I think it was the meaner they were, the easier or better they were to hire or something. I don't know.
  Johnny:	Yeah. I've talked with a lot of folks that went through those boarding schools, and they didn't sound like it.
  [00:05:00] Eloy:	They want to save you from yourself and kill you in the process. It's weird.
  Johnny:	Also one of the things, wash the Indian out of them.
  Eloy: [00:05:30]	Yeah. Well, they would get mad at you. If you couldn't speak for long time, you couldn't speak your own language, anywhere you went. Even today, if you're a person that's fortunate enough to know one or two languages, people look at you and the first thing that comes into their mind because they don't understand what you're saying. You might be saying, "Man, that guy's a good looking dude. Look at him. He's the shit. He had to be in the movies and stuff." And because you're talking to in your own language, they're like, "He's talking about me. What is he saying about me?" People go through all these cycles, man. It's like it turns real quick from one to the other and in this country, to my way of thinking, it's always been about, not who's right, but who can flip food and that makes you right.
  [00:06:00] [00:06:30]	And the United States has been lying to the people from the time they got here on that boat and it hasn't quit. And today a lot of people keep party. People will, whatever, all he does, all this other stuff. If they just look at this, it's getting effected. And it's not... Everybody else on the top end's already got the poor people, Hey, they're going to survive. They're already used to being poor. Yeah. One of the girls was telling me the other day, asking me stuff about something. And I said, man, I said, " Man, when we was a kid," I said, "We used to go to the places that sell hamburgers. And we asked for extra things and they didn't have the plastic ketchup, but they would give you the things where you could feel the ketchup up. We take a few of those catch up and say, well, you would ketchup. So, we'd take it home a little bit of hot water, man. You got some tomato juice."
  [00:07:00]	She said, "Tomato juice?" I said, "Yeah. If you put two of them, you got tomato soup." They crank up saying, "Wow, man, how you guys survived stuff like that?" But cactus is another thing. People don't, they look at cactus and stuff and it's... You can eat a lot of the cactus. In my yard, I got them growing because they're good for diabetes and all this other stuff, but they go big old. But on the end of them, you cut it up and it tastes like a pomegranate. And when it's sweet. It tastes sweet, but people look at it and they say, "Oh, you eat the stickers. Don't eat the stickers. You peel the stickers."
  Johnny:	How'd you learn that? Was that passed down to you?
  Eloy: [00:07:30] [00:08:00]	That was back from my godfather when he was a youth, but he'd say, he'd go across, any day he says, "There's no water here. This is water." Cut a cactus open and is full of juice. Yeah. It's food. You make a little fire, you could toast that up. A little rabbit or squirrel or bird, Hey, you got a meal fit for a King. So, and it's low maintenance, but it's all that stuff that, and they showed you how to... A lot of the remedies, a lot of the things that cure stuff, it's installed in the ground, all the plants and stuff. I remember a lot of the plants. I don't remember the names because they used to call them different names. But I remember the plants my grandma used to use because she used to have... She was a big herbalist.
  [00:08:30]	And she did a lot of stuff for women, did all kinds of stuff. And she was the local medicine woman so to speak and people will come to her for ailments, all kinds of stuff, man. But she always had something in a jar for everything that was wrong with you. She had a jar, and she would use some weird stuff sometimes, but it worked and I don't know. Maybe it was just a prayer, the belief too, but the stuff worked.
  Johnny:	And did your wife speak her own language? Was that passed down to her?
  Eloy:	Well, actually, she went back and learned a lot of stuff.
  Johnny:	She went back where?
  Eloy: [00:09:00]	Back to the reservation and back to Arizona, White Mountain and plus, she also had a lot of friends that were on different... Because we did a lot of traveling back then. When I first came out here, I had started working in Colorado.
  [00:09:30]	I just actually worked for free for this guy for a while to learn a trade. I was working out in the onion field and a guy asked me to say, "man, you look like you're pretty strong kid." I was throwing sacks of potatoes on a truck, onion sacks. So, he said, "You look like you're pretty strong kid." So, he took me over and I actually went into the farmer's house to help him move the furniture, so I helped him move the furniture. The guy was going to lay some carpet. So, I asked him. I said, "Hey, man. You need any help?" And he said, " Nah, I got my kids doing this and I'm going to teach my kids." Well, German guy. Yeah. So, I said, "Well, see, you already needed help. I'll work for you for free, and just learn it."
  	And he said, "No. I'll think about it." Yeah. I like to think. He said, "Yeah." So, I came back, helped him move furniture. And so, he told me, he said, "Give me your number." And I said, "I don't got a number." I said, "But I live in those cabins over there, man." He said, "Okay." So, about two days later, the guy came by and he asked me if I want to go give him a hand because his son was busy, right?
  [00:10:00] [00:10:30]	So, I said, "Sure." He said, "You're going to work for free, right? And I said, "Yeah. I'll work for free." So, he took me out a couple of times, and then by the third, fourth time you gone by patina is the first time he took me out. I was just like a parrot man, everything he did, I just mimicked. I'm going to get one shot at this. I really don't know what I'm a little real quick, man. So, I was like the camera taking pictures in my mind, everything he did I just... So, but about the third time I with him, he actually gave me 10 bucks and that back then, man, if you made a dollar and a half a day, that was pretty good money in the fields, because you came and paid the contractor and all the other people.
  Johnny:	How old are you right now, at this time?
  Eloy:	Then, I was probably about 17. And we'd just got married. Yeah.
  Johnny:	You got a little jingle in your pocket and you're feeling good and you stuck it out with this guy, or what?
  Eloy: [00:11:00]	No. I learned from him what I could learn. And then, when he started dropping me off on the job with the material and just come back to collect a check, I figured I'm good enough to do it by myself, because I was doing it by myself. The only I wasn't doing any more is collecting the check. But then I got a job at a furniture store that they needed somebody to deliver furniture and could lay carpet or do stuff like that. And that was my first day and getting out of the field work, getting out of the... Because then I didn't really have any work experience. I had far more working experience on my own and other stuff. I knew how to drive the equipment.
  [00:11:30]	I knew how to drive vehicles and other stuff. So, that wasn't a problem. But during that time, it was, I don't know, a couple of... I guess I had worked at this furniture company, but maybe three or four months. And Armstrong Corporation had a program where if you wanted to learn an organ, and you were willing to pay your fare to Lancaster, Pennsylvania they would train you for three weeks.
  [00:12:00]	And so, a guy asked me. He says, "You want to go to the school to learn it?" And I said, "Yeah." So, he says, "I'll pay for two weeks." He says, "But you got to pay for one week." And I said, "Oh, okay." So, it was like, I said, "All right." But I went to the Armstrong School and I learned how to lay linoleum, down there in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. But then there was a lot of people that rode in real carriages back there.
  Johnny:	The Amish?
  Eloy:	Yeah. Almost everybody, man. There was no taxi, none of it. Everybody's on horses and little carriages. It was an interesting experience, yeah.
  [00:12:30] Johnny:	I bet. Tripped you out a little bit?
  Eloy:	Because it was like being at home, on Amish reservation.
  Johnny:	So, we're talking late fifties and then probably what, '56, '57, '58?
  Eloy:	This is '56, '57, '57, '58.
  Johnny:	So, you're on your way. You're a married man. You've got some skills now.
  Eloy:	Right. And then, so I was working at the furniture store and I was making maybe I think 150 bucks a month, something like that.
  Johnny:	And this is in Colorado?
  [00:13:00] Eloy: [00:13:30]	Yeah. This was in the late fifties. And he kept telling me, "You need to go to California." So, I came to California. When I got out here, I went to the employment office first. He says, "You can't come to the employment office. You got to go to the hiring hall." I said, "The hiring hall?" So, they sent me to the union. I went down to the union. There's local 1290. The guy's name was McIntyre, big old Irish dude, big old red nose. I found later the red nose was from the whiskey, I guess. But he was like, he told me, first thing out of his mouth, he says, "We don't hire no Indians, no Mexicans. Nobody in his goddamn local." He says, "This is a closed local. My kids learn in Australia. So, we don't take no outsiders."
  [00:14:00]	And I said, "What?" But I was already used to that anyway from back then. Rejection was first on the list. I knew I was going to get rejected. So, I just looked at him and told him, I said, "Hey man. I got two toolboxes. I said, this one does carpet and this one does linoleum." I told him, "I'm going to find work." Yeah. He said, "Not in my jurisdiction. You are not." I got in my little truck. I had my Volkswagen bus already. Googled it looks like the bus up to Richmond. I'd seen this guy wanted a roll carpenter. I said, " Hey. You guys need any help?" And he said, "Talk to my boss." And the guy said, "You in the union?"
  	And I said, "Yep." So, he gave me a job. At about six weeks later, the guy came out and tells me, "Hey, man. I got to let you go home." And he says, " They're on my ass. They're going to shut my shit down if I don't-
  Johnny:	The union?
  [00:14:30] Eloy:	... The union, yeah. Because what they did was they took the health and welfare benefits, and sent them to union and they said, "Hey, this guy." "What do you mean this guy?" So, anyway, went out there and he chased me off the job. They ran me off of a few jobs. so, I got pretty much known to the business agents. And I came to San Francisco and I hid out in these high rises for a while, when they were building all the buildings downtown. I see the business agents show up downstairs. I just locked the gate, lock the doors. They check everybody unit and I just lock it up.
  [00:15:00] [00:15:30]	And I'd wait for them to leave. It look down and we gone, I'd open up again. But I did that for a few years. And then they had Apostle of the Sea place over there in West Oakland, right on the cross from where they got all the cargo containers now. They had just built this building and what it was for all the sea men coming in on the boats, they would have, they had a place for showers and they would sleep. Did they get to sleep? It was a Catholic organization. I don't know. I don't think they charged them in general. I can't remember. But, anyway, they had called for a bunch of people to come in and help out and donate some labor and stuff. So, they had seen me laying some linoleum. They said, "Come on. You can do this."
  [00:16:00]	And I said, "yes." So, I went over there and I met this young stranger. And he was telling me about he was in a union, but none of the journeymen wanted to teach them how to do stuff. Instead, they just wanted him to pack tools and stuff. I tell them, "I'll teach you. What do you want to learn?" So, he needed to lay some linoleum. I told him, "I'll teach you also." So, we started laying the linoleum, the kitchens and bathrooms, all that other stuff over there. And we got through with the job. The Armstrong had donated a bunch of seconds and remnants stuff for the job. There's a bunch of rolls left over. So, he told me, he said "I need [inaudible 00:16:08]. And you probably got to do some stairs and some stuff." And my wife, in the meantime, we had come out here.
  [00:16:30]	She got involved with the Tribal Friendship House in Oakland. And she had told me, "Oh man, that place is a mess and needs some stuff done to it." So, I went over there. Anyway, they gave me the material and I told the dude, I said, "You really in?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "All right. I'll get the material here. I'll show you how to do it." So, we went over the tribal center and we did the backstairs all the way from your back going all the way up at and on both sides, because they gave me all the metal and that's how I got hooked up with the Tribal Friendship House.
  Johnny: [00:17:00]	That is so cool. And [crosstalk 00:16:43] They're giving me the sign that the tapes... We've got to change tape, but hold that thought and we'll pick it up on the next tape here. Okay. All right. So, Eli we're here. Now we've moved over to A-Block field, army cell block. These are the army doors. And we'll talk a little bit more about your times in Alcatraz and the A-Block. Maybe we'll get down to the dungeon to here, but to pick it up, you were at the Apostle of the Sea.
  Eloy: [00:17:30]	Yeah. We were working there. Winter guys from different unions had volunteered to do some labor. Apostle of the Sea pretty much just how sea men are coming in from all over the world, place to shower and stay. And anyway, one of the youngsters that I had been avoiding the union for a couple of years, because they wouldn't let me in the union for what the... And then I had a bunch of fines that they want to pay. So, this youngster wanted to learn how to do this. So, I took him with me after we did the job with Apostle of the Sea, they gave me a bunch of extra leftover material and we took it over to Intertribal Friendship Houses. They needed some stuff done. They were asking for volunteers and they had just moved into the pretty much moved into the building spot. Maybe seven years back then course located on East 14th in Oakland, on Fifth Avenue. And I took him over there and showed him how to lay linoleum on the stairs.
  [00:18:00]	So, anyways, those are done in the early seventies, I think, or early, late... I think it was in the seventies, early '60. No.
  Johnny:	That was early sixties.
  Eloy:	This is about '68, '67, '68 I think. It might've even been the last end of '66 when we did that. Yeah. I think it was brought in '66.
  Johnny:	And this was due to your wife wanting to reconnect with the Indian folk in the area?
  [00:18:30] Eloy: [00:19:00]	Yeah, with the Indian, because that's where all of the Indians. They actually had power walls there and they still had dances and they had a ceremony. People, and that was a place to reconnect with all the Indian people in the Bay Area. But that was my first connection in the Bay Area. And anyway, from that meeting that young man helping me over there at the Tribal Friendship House and getting reconnected there at the Tribal Friendship House. In a couple of years, he became a business agent for that local and he's seen me somewhere and he told me, he says, "Are you still running from?" And I said, "I am not going to pay nobody." He says, "Hey." So, he took me into the local made me a union member and forgave all the back dues.
  [00:19:30]	And that's how I got into the union in the Bay Area, from that youngster just learning how to lay linoleum. And he would actually help me at the Tribal Friendship House. So, I went back and forth to the Tribal Friendship House, but there was a good connecting point because back then at that time too, there was a lot of meetings that were being held with the Tribal Friendship House, in '67, '68, there was a lot of stuff going Banick and Kim, a whole bunch of various organizations were holding meetings and talking stuff there. And Richard and actually some of the people went down to Tribal Friendship House and had strategy meetings there also.
  Johnny:	You talk to Richard Oakes?
  Eloy:	Yeah. This was during the occupation. So, we had something in common.
  Johnny:	Is that where you first connected with Richard Oakes, Was at the Friendship House?
  [00:20:00] Eloy: [00:20:30]	I had connected with Richard at a antiwar demonstration, anti Vietnam war demonstration over in San Francisco and because my son and a couple of his kids were playing together, my wife, she was always that way, would always pack a huge picnic lunch. And so, he came over, my son came over, he said, "Mom, give me a sandwich." And she said, "What about these guys?" And he says, "Yeah. Give them one too." So, anyway, that's how we met up. I seen Richard and Anna were sitting over by then. I says, "Okay. The kids have a settlement." He says, "Yeah, sure." So, that's how we met up right there, over a bologna sandwich-
  Johnny:	Shared a little bologna?
  Eloy:	... Shared a little bologna sandwich, yeah. And we got to talking and that's when Richard asked me. We talked, exchanged stuff, and he told me he was a iron worker from New York region.
  [00:21:00]	I think it was the same region. I can't remember. I know where to swim. But he told me, we just exchanged stories and stuff. And then, then he asked me pretty much point blank. He says, when are the... Because I was pretty much involved with the Chicano movement at that time. And the Chicanos we were doing a lot of stuff at that time. At that particular time we I was at UC Berkeley. We'd also started at Chicana school in Berkeley, the first of its kind in the nation. And that's because the Chicanos were getting pushed aside and didn't talk. So, we actually started a school and it was pretty much about the time of Black Panthers and a lot of other stuff that's going on too. So, there's a lot of little splinter organizations. And I originally had came... When we came out of Colorado, we had been involved with the Crusade for Justice.
  [00:21:30] [00:22:00]	We just call it the Gonzalez organization. And so, we had, and I came out here, we got involved with Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta and the farm workers. So, we were pretty much active all the way around, from way back from the time we got here. But at the Tribal Friendship House, a lot of the things came out, met and Richard asked me. He says, "Hey, when are the Chicanos going to realize that they're Indians?" And this is maybe, but at the same time, the Indians realized that we are too, and there was always, it was always a conflict, even on the reservations back when I was a kid. I had had twofold problem. I didn't look enough Indian and then I had curly hair. So, it was all like all the guys wanted to fight me and all the girls wanted to run their fingers through my hair. So, I had it both ways. I had to fight them. When we're done, I was going to have to fight them. But that was the way it was back in those days.
  Johnny:	So, you and Richard struck up a friendship then through that bologna sandwich and then?
  [00:22:30] Eloy:	And we got to talking and that's when they were talking about doing something here in Alcatraz then. That's about when the time when, just prior to that, they were having all that big talk about The Hunt Brothers coming in here and taking over the Island, doing all this other stuff. And we had met with Belva and a few other people that had been out here earlier and they had... They talked about saying, "Let's do it again." Yeah.
  [00:23:00] Johnny:	Did Richard talk about that first time in '64, when they came out and tried to take the Island?
  Eloy:	He talked about it yet, but he wasn't here then in '64. Richard got here for '68, later part of '67, '68. I can't remember. I remember he had a red Mustang. Nice little car.
  	Yeah. Full of Indians all the time.
  Johnny:	So, you guys started talking about Alcatraz and maybe a potential to do something out here?
  [00:23:30] Eloy: [00:24:00]	Yeah. Right. It was like watching all of the other groups and organizations that were doing something. It was like, "Hey, it is time. Maybe we should be doing something too," and it was, but you had a lot of intelligent people that were... The first people that came out here, all of the college students their idea of, it wasn't so much just occupying. I think it was the idea in a creating a spark, getting your imagination working and just see, "Hey, well, you could do this, you could do that and stuff." Most of the ones that I remember when we came out here, we didn't expect we'd be out here too long before the pheasants came around and shot everybody.
  [00:24:30]	That's just what they were doing back in those days. That's when they were burning up the Black Panthers and all these other people are in houses and stuff. So, it's like, I don't think anybody really expected to stay here that long, but the thing was that after the initial occupation, I think when everybody was talking about all the good stufF, I call that the good stuff that was going on. Then later on, then you got a lot of people that just wanted to look up for a crash, hang out spot. And I think that's when a lot of the stuff that got lost in a little bit of the translation or something. You got a lot of bad publicity and stuff, but the original idea that was that everybody had wanted to do.
  [00:25:00] [00:25:30]	I think a lot of that's come to pass, even with all the other stuff that's happened, because right now, here I'm doing something that probably wouldn't have been possible before. And so, in a sense Richard's cultural center is still being happening because people are getting educated and as long as people that can do that, I think that's going to be, it's always going to be for the benefit of it. And nothing's really changed for a lot of the Indians. If you go to a lot of their reservations and stuff, there's still bad shape. Their mortality rate is high, their alcoholism rate is high, the kids are sniffing on paint.
  [00:26:00]	You get out of the Bay Area. It's not really a rosy picture when you get to some of the... Especially the tribes have no recognition or have no money. The ones that have no money, they're pretty much, their suicide is way up high, and kids are just lost. It's just a shame to see that, especially with, I don't know, just so much money out there that could be, and so much money that's legally theirs that could be springed out there and spread out.
  Johnny:	But back in 1969 when you guys were looking at Alcatraz, you were hopeful for using Alcatraz for what?
  Eloy: [00:26:30]	Well, basically what we wanted to do is just use it as a learning center, and just take over a new Indian university, just make it something for the Indians. It's like a really small piece of land. It's not like we're claiming the whole United States or something and it's just Little Rock. No, but nobody, just the pigeons out here at that time. John Hart.
  Johnny:	Yeah. Right. So, were you here in November when the occupation started?
  Eloy:	Yeah. I got here with 80 guys on the boat.
  Johnny:	You were one of the 80 on the boat?
  Eloy:	Yeah.
  Johnny:	So, take us back to that. And where did you meet?
  Eloy: [00:27:00]	We met in Sausalito, because everybody was expecting it to come from San Francisco from this end of the Coast Guard. Everybody is all lined up on this side. On that side where they call it the back door, there was nobody back there.
  Johnny:	So, you faked them out. You met out in Sausalito. Who were these people?
  Eloy:	That was Mary and Peter.
  Johnny:	Peter Bowen?
  Eloy:	Uh-huh (affirmative). Peter Bowen. Mary. I can't remember. There's three people. I think they call themselves the Sausalito Navy. I can't remember, but they were... Without them, none of that would've happened, because they was just instrumental in getting people here.
  [00:27:30] Johnny:	There's another guy I remember I've interviewed, Brooks Townes?
  Eloy:	Yeah. Brooks Townes.
  Johnny:	I think he was the-
  Eloy:	Yeah. He's the third one.
  Johnny:	... Yeah. He was a photographer.
  Eloy:	Right. He got a lot of photos.
  Johnny:	He does have a lot of photos. I think after this, I'm going to give him a call and see if we could talk with him. But he is still around. Peter Bowen passed away in Mexico. I believe cancer got him, but Mary is still over in Tiburon. But you guys met at the No Name Bar?
  Eloy:	Yeah. In Sausalito. Right.
  [00:28:00] Johnny:	And you came out to Alcatraz and what happened? Take us away. Take us back to that time.
  Eloy:	We landed on the docks and people scrambled up, and-
  Johnny:	Who was on the dock?
  Eloy:	... Nobody.
  Johnny:	Nobody?
  Eloy:	Don Hart was the night before. Well, the old nightwatchman was checking stuff up, but that's pretty much how we knew how to get up there because he was right around where the stuff was at, right? But was water bars and all that.
  Johnny:	So, what did he say when you guys showed up, 80 Indians?
  Eloy:	He said, "What the hell is going on?" And then he started hauling "Mayday. Mayday" I don't know.
  [00:28:30] Johnny:	Really? You remember him saying that? Huh? Mayday. Mayday
  Eloy:	He talking on a two way phone. I think he even sold that phone to Joe Morris. If I can't remember. I think he sold him a couple of walkie talkies. They never worked. I don't know. But he sold them to Indian Joe Morris and ended up with that walkie talkie that he asked.
  Johnny:	What did you guys say to him though? What was the plan?
  Eloy:	Nothing. We just told him we were taken over to Island. And he says, "The what?" And he says, "We're forecasting all the way the Indians are being treated and stuff. This red dot."
  Johnny:	And he was cool with that?
  [00:29:00] Eloy:	Yeah. He said, "It's yours. Whatever you want. You got the manpower." Yeah. So, it was pretty cool.
  Johnny:	So, the first night you stayed where, in the cell house?
  Eloy:	Yeah. We got into cell house down, ironically, the cookout cook spot, is that the biggest areas because everybody is afraid to split up. We just wanted safety and numbers, figured if we have better chance if people have started bum rushing or something.
  Johnny:	Because you thought the feds were going to move in?
  [00:29:30] Eloy:	Yep. We thought the Coast Guard and everybody was going to come in real quick, as soon as they found out. Yeah. And then it changed plans and a lot of people weren't ready for no more than the cold weather. A lot of people had sleeping bags and stuff like that. A lot of them have been here before, but some people didn't have a lot of stuff. So, I ended up sharing a lot of... So, you pretty much had to gather for the heat too, so-
  Johnny:	Did you come prepared a little bit, yourself?
  Eloy: [00:30:00]	Yeah. Because I had been here when the other guys came up, when Witchey B, when John and or what do they call it, original 14. It's actually regional 16. Two guys got left out, Jerry Hatch and another guy got left out of the feathers.
  Johnny:	And that was what year was that?
  Eloy: [00:30:30]	That was the same year. That was on the night before. That was a night or two nights. It might've been, can't remember exactly when it was, buT that was the name of that boat was Witchey B, then that's when the original guys came out and then we stayed in it just overnight and left the next day. And then that's when that's when everybody got mad at Richard, because they had pulled out and just said, "Hey man, we didn't have a contingency plan." Nobody had nothing. And it was cold out here, but I was the only reason I did come on Island because then I was Indian taxi. I was taking people back and forth. Yeah, and-
  Johnny:	But the second wave you were here.
  Eloy:	... But the second wave I was here.
  Johnny:	And then more people came the next day?
  Eloy: [00:31:00]	As soon as we landed, as soon as people started hearing it on KPFA radio actually, and that we were on an Island and people just started coming. People were running into Coast Guard. There was people on little speed boats and...
  	(NOTE: speaker names may be different in each section)
  Eloy:	Running the coast guard. There was people in little speed boats and three, four or five at a time. Other people that are on the bathtub, the bathtub two and bathtub three or bathtub one. I can't remember. Both of those were running and they had a couple of other.
  [00:31:30]	I remember there was a black captain that ran stuff to the island for a long time too, until they try to, I don't know what they did to him, but some, I guess somebody tried to get into his castle at night when he's asleep and he got perturbed. So he left the islands. But he did a lot of stuff for a lot of people.
  	But Joe Morris did a lot of stuff too. I think without Joe Morrison and Richard, a lot of that stuff wouldn't have happened because Joe Morris coordinated a lot of the stuff coming in. Donations.
  Johnny:	He had the contacts on the wharf, right?
  Eloy: [00:32:00]	Yeah. And he had all the longshore people. They actually got ... I can't remember, but I think that they actually got the occupation and Indians on Alcatraz sanctioned by the union. I mean, they got ... When nobody else had ever done that for any other group, they did it for them. I think they did it for them, and they might've did it for the farm workers.
  	I know they didn't do for the farm workers, but they did it for the American Indians on Alcatraz. So that's a lot of stuff that the ILWU has done over a long course of the years.
  Johnny:	So how long were you here from those early ... ? From the-
  Eloy:	I was here-
  Johnny:	... Was your wife here with you?
  Eloy: [00:32:30]	Yeah, my wife was here longer than I was. My wife and my son were here longer than I was. I was back and forth because at that time I was still going to school at UC Berkeley, but I was also running donations and picking up supplies and picking up people and stuff. But most of the time ... I spent probably about a month here.
  Johnny:	So the first ... You're saying the first month of occupation was, you were on the island?
  Eloy:	Yeah, I was here through ... Actually, I left the same time Richard did. So when all that stuff happened, I didn't want to be any ... 'Cause it ... When the politics stuff started, a lot of stuff changed.
  Johnny:	Yeah.
  [00:33:00] Eloy:	and I didn't after ... I knew that he wasn't comfortable in any way here, no way shape or form after Yvonne passed. So it was a lot of people say that he was asked to leave. I think it was a combination of a lot of stuff that happened.
  Johnny:	Yeah.
  Eloy: [00:33:30]	To me, if Richard hadn't done what he did, when on that first crossing, when he jumped into water and started swimming, if he hadn't done that ... That was a spark. If he hadn't really literally just jumped out and then, the rest of Joe, Bill and few of the other guys did, but if Richard hadn't had done that, I don't think a lot of that would've happened. And-
  Johnny:	He was the key; he was the spark.
  Eloy:	He was a spark. And not only there; every place else. He was the person that he got up and he spoke and he was a pretty good speaker. He could speak, and he knew what he was talking about.
  Johnny:	Where did that come from? I mean you were his friend. So-
  Eloy:	I think-
  Johnny:	... was it just natural?
  Eloy:	... He had gone to school. He had gone to school back East too. So-
  Johnny:	He was a MODOK, wasn't he?
  Eloy:	Mohawk.
  Johnny:	Mohawk. I'm sorry.
  [00:34:00] Eloy:	Yeah. Yeah. He was one of the iron workers. All of his whole family is the steel workers. He showed me fields and walking them big old beams coming across the roof, just like ...
  Johnny:	No fear.
  Eloy:	No fear, no fear. He had no fear. Richard had no fear. It was ... That's just the way he was. He was willing to confront people on opinions and stuff. He just wasn't going to be ... And he was big enough person that not too many people are going to talk too much about him anyway or say too much stuff to him, anybody, especially if you knew his facts.
  [00:34:30]	It was really a privilege for me just to know the guy and it was, to me, he was like Chief Richard. He was ... I don't know what you want to might want to call it, but I would say he was the first urban chief, urban Indian chief that I think really deserved that title because he did stuff that nobody else has done. A lot of people talk about stuff, but he did the ultimate. I mean he paid for whatever.
  [00:35:00] Johnny:	He walked the walk and talked the talk.
  Eloy:	Yeah, he did.
  Johnny: [00:35:30]	Hey. We got to go in here. 'Cause I brought you up here. There's some graffiti in here. Come on inside here. So Isla, we're in this cell here and this definitely has some graffiti from the occupation, Indian power, of course, 69 to 71. Custer was white; the classic Custer had it coming. Even the Hell's Angels evidently made it out here. Here's a death head on the wall there. So take us back to the first Thanksgiving out here on Alcatraz. What was that like? Who, how many people were here by that point? Would you estimate.
  Eloy:	Finally at Thanksgiving time, I would imagine it was probably upward of 400 people, maybe 500 people.
  Johnny:	Really? Wow!
  Eloy: [00:36:00]	Yeah. Because the coast guard, they weren't stopping anybody from coming in. And people that had boats were just coming in as fast as they could drop people off, they were going back out.
  Johnny:	Well, we've been told that it was just Indian people that were allowed unless maybe the press was coming out. Or what do you remember?
  Eloy:	Nah, there was a lot of other people out here then too.
  Johnny:	Even in the beginning?
  Eloy: [00:36:30]	Yeah, even in the beginning. Because there wasn't ... At that time, there was a lot of actually there was a lot of Indian people that were married to white people too that were out here. And then I think later down the road, when they got all Indian, they said only Indians allowed. I think a lot of that broke a lot of people up. I don't know. They kind of went the other way. Some went, but I think at that first Powwow they let everybody come out. There was people from all over.
  Johnny:	What was the vibe like when you were here?
  Eloy: [00:37:00]	It was charged like something new. Pride, I think was out there, 'cause people came out, had their regalias and people actually danced. I think even Fortune ... I can remember Fortunate Eagle danced. I think he might have danced and his son danced, and a couple of people from inter-tribal friendship house. 'Cause they've always had dance troupe with inner tribal friendship house.
  Johnny:	Did you know Adam from the tribal friendship house or?
  Eloy:	No, I actually knew Adam from his pink Cadillac. 'Cause he used to drive a pink Cadillac and he used to park over by Strauss all the time, because I used to park in that lot sometimes too.
  Johnny:	What? You liked his car or what?
  Eloy:	I just-
  Johnny:	You remembered that? Great.
  [00:37:30] Eloy:	I could never quite associate this big Indian that driving a pink Cadillac. This kind of looked like, driving off, what do you call it? A farm horse instead of a Pinto?
  Johnny:	Right.
  Eloy: [00:38:00]	I don't know, but no he's ... I remember him doing a lot of stuff. He was a pretty good PR guy. I mean he knew how to work the angles with him and Finley and some of the other guys that he was, he had it in with them kind of. So that helped a lot. 'Cause they were responsible for a lot of donations and a lot of ... they actually got a lot of cooperation from different folks. So I think there's the ones that say, "I don't like him, I don't like her." You know? I mean, without ... I think that you can't say that about any of them, because without all of them, none of them would have happened.
  	'Cause they all were all part of that wheel, and it's all part of the big ol' cog. So I think people just got to leave some of that old stuff behind and just get on about doing what they need to get doing.
  Johnny:	Yeah.
  [00:38:30] Eloy:	But that happens, I would guess almost like in any little town. That's what Alcatraz became. Just like a little community, and you're going to have people that want to do stuff.
  Johnny:	You guys had a school out here too, right?
  Eloy: [00:39:00]	Yeah. The Little Rock School. Shirley, the security guard said, Shirley Guevara Garcia. Now I actually ran to school out here, and actually still involved in school. She got Indian school over there in Oakland yet. She's still teaching. So, it's going; it hasn't stopped. And probably everybody pretty much that was here, I think went on under different ... Wilma Mankiller; another one. She went on to had her own tribe.
  Johnny:	She just passed away last year.
  Eloy:	Yep. Yeah. Lost another one. Not a means, warrior.
  Johnny:	Were they all here on that first Thanksgiving?
  Eloy: [00:39:30]	Yeah. Pretty much a lot of them were here. Yeah. It was charged. That year it was really charged. It was something to be here. 'Cause it was like I guess it was, it would be almost akin to being totally free kind of, for the first time in your life especially off of a reservation or off ... Or even urban land, 'cause most places you still couldn't do a lot of the stuff that you could do here. Right?
  Johnny:	Yeah.
  Eloy:	But out here it was California, but it's totally different in a way. And in a way it ain't, 'cause you still got a lot of tribes right here in California that are not recognized. The Ohlones for example.
  [00:40:00] Johnny:	Do you remember the Ohlones or the MODOK coming, being on the Island during that?
  Eloy:	Yep. A lot of the Ohlones won't come on the Island for some reason. They said the dog people are here or something. So I don't know.
  Johnny:	I've heard those stories.
  Eloy:	I don't know.
  Johnny:	Where the dry or burial grounds or the dog people. The wolf people live.
  Eloy: [00:40:30]	Yeah. So I don't know. They might be something to it, 'cause they ... I know a lot of them that won't come out here because of that reason. But there were some that had been out here and I've seen a lot the ... Of course the Pomos have been here for almost since I first ... Actually I think the Pomos, they were dancing here. 'Cause I remember Didier people from up at the entire reservation dance the first year, and then the Verb people from the big head dancers.
  Johnny:	Where were the dances held for that thanksgiving?
  [00:41:00] Eloy:	They were pretty much done in down where the big apartments used to be, where all that rubble used to be on the side where they knocked all them big apartments [crosstalk 00:10:03]-
  Johnny:	The parade, the big open space where the sunrise service ends?
  Eloy:	Yeah.
  Johnny:	Okay.
  Eloy:	Yep. Nope.
  Johnny:	And you had a bunch of food donated from San Francisco restaurants?
  Eloy: [00:41:30]	Yeah. The Rathskeller came over the boat. And people donated a lot of different stuff. Even different ... Even stuff that people didn't use out here. They even donated that black and white thing, black and white gown thing that they hold every year.
  Johnny:	Right.
  Eloy:	They get some of these gowns that are leftover, and these people ain't going to use them again. They didn't.
  Johnny:	Right.
  Eloy: [00:42:00]	So they donated all that stuff out here. Me and Richard and, I can't remember ... it might've been John Tridell, we're sitting up on the trail over there, and we were watching the kids come up singing. There was like four little kids, four young guys with top hats on, they had the little black top hats on and the little vest things on, and they're walking, and the girls coming behind them. And they had these all [inaudible 00:41:59] things, all these jewel things that I don't know, probably cosmetic stuff. But they were walking up and every once in a while, you would see this number. All the way. What's going on? Right? 'Cause-
  Johnny:	Yeah.
  Eloy:	So they got up to the top and we finally seen what they was. They only have two sets of shoes. The girls would share; one had the right and one had left. [inaudible 00:11:21]. They was coming up to bury a cat.
  [00:42:30]	That was one of the coolest stories about that. That's the only time I see him use that clothes.
  Johnny:	Yeah. I remember coming out here early on as a kid and seeing piles of shoes that were left behind and they were high heel shoes and things that really wouldn't have helped people out here. And I do remember living in San Francisco, San Francisco supporting it and my parents pointing to the islands, saying, "Johnny there's Indians out there. We're going get some food to those Indians on Alcatraz."
  	So San Francisco did support it in the early months, at least.
  Eloy:	Yep. Yep.
  [00:43:00] Johnny:	You do remember. And there's also talk of the money coming in. There was money being funneled out to the Island. And how did that work? Were you involved with that at all?
  Eloy:	No, I wasn't involved in none. I'd never have liked the money part of none of that stuff. I was kind of like Joe Morris, I just, I don't want it. Joe Morris had a good system though, because everything that came in is in that book, he's got it. He had a book. I don't know what the books is [funniest 00:00:43:26]. You might have the book.
  Johnny:	I have a copy of it. Yeah.
  [00:43:30] Eloy:	But everything that came in is in that book. Legitimate.
  Johnny:	And I remember him saying that there were people that were maybe [crosstalk 00:12:34]-
  Eloy:	Oh, yeah. But there was a lot of people that so-called spokespeople taking airplane trips and you know what I mean, live top of the mark.
  Johnny:	Right.
  Eloy:	Kind of stuff. You know? So I think a lot of that money just, but there again, it's like any other organization, if there's no balances and checks you just don't know what's going to get done with it.
  [00:44:00] Johnny:	So, but Richard was in charge in the early month or two. Right?
  Eloy:	Yeah, Richard pretty much was a spokesperson. I don't think he ever handled any money. I know that. I know you hear a lot of rumors, but you know about him this and all this and this. And I never seen him that to be true because all the time that I ever seen Richard, he was always pretty much always broke.
  Johnny:	Yeah.
  Eloy: [00:44:30]	'Cause I was lucky because at that time I was still working and I was still drawing a check and I was getting paid to go to school. I still have always had gas money and I had a vehicle. So I was able to do all of that stuff that they wouldn't have been able to do otherwise.
  Johnny:	But you were here in the early weeks at least, or the first year.
  Eloy:	Yeah. I was here for the first month.
  Johnny:	And so, and then your wife and child stayed out. You just had one child out here?
  Eloy:	Uh huh.
  Johnny:	And so they were out here-
  Eloy:	They were here too.
  Johnny:	What was the normal day like out here?
  Eloy: [00:45:00]	Well, pretty much is that was a lot of times it was like, when Stella Leach was here, she pretty much ... Stella had good tight reign on a lot of stuff. Her and her crew, they handle security. And there was a lot of the stuff that wasn't good about that also. But they, but she had a ... She had a pretty good ... She was a good spokesperson. Stella was.
  Johnny:	So there were people coming to the Island and being escorted around?
  Eloy:	Yeah.
  Johnny:	Do you remember that?
  Eloy:	Yeah.
  Johnny:	Or who were these people?
  Eloy: [00:45:30]	They had a lot of movie stars. People came over here. It was a lot of public figures came over. People promised donations and different other stuff. A lot of it never came into play. It was a lot of just ... kind of just get your picture taken. You know?
  Johnny:	Who do you remember celebrity-wise coming out here?
  Eloy:	Jane Fonda; I remember she gave some generators. Anthony Quinn was supposed to give some stuff. I don't know that he ever gave anything.
  Johnny:	He's part Native American, I think. Wasn't he?
  Eloy: [00:46:00]	Yeah. I think he was supposed to. I think he might be in one of those books, but he was supposed to give us some teepees or something. See, they were making some kind of Indian movies, was going to give everybody a bunch of teepees. Never came through.
  	I remember Joe DeMaurice just laughing, say he was just one of those guys that promised us stuff. Promise in the wind.
  Johnny:	What about Jonathan Winters?
  Eloy:	Yeah. Jonathan Winters was out here and there's a couple of other people out here. I didn't see all of them that were here. Some I saw. Some I actually picked up in a Volkswagen bus.
  Johnny:	No kidding! But people were just kind of exploring on the Island?
  [00:46:30] Eloy:	Yeah, they were looking. At a lot of people were just, most people were just kind of, I think pretty much amazed. They were like, the first thing that most of them would say would be like, what the hell you guys wrong with this? I mean, there's nothing out here.
  [00:47:00]	But it wasn't about we were going to stay. It was just about the idea of getting it turned in people's head that this is what we needed to do. But everybody looked and then it was like, Hey, have you ever been to a reservation? You know? I mean, if you go there, even if you go there today, this is like, this is luxury. Even a room like this. You know it's not going to leak because you got two floors, at least above you take a while to get wet.
  	But this is actually better than most reservations where most people came from, and still yeah, probably still is.
  	But I think the whole idea back then was not so much ... It was just idea. I don't think they envisioned keeping the prison here. I think their vision may be getting enough funds to really make something, which would have been nice too.
  [00:47:30]	But I just don't think everybody really, at that point ... Nobody had any idea that ... Who would stay as long as we did and accomplished as much as we did.
  Johnny:	Yeah.
  Eloy: [00:48:00]	But I think when people started seeing the change, 'cause people everywhere started taking over things, it wasn't just here. [Gequeu 00:47:51] was created, which is kind of Indian university and Davis. Pitt river was taken over, or PG and E and a lot of different, BIA bureaus all over everywhere. And I think it gave rise to the Indian movement.
  Johnny:	Well, I was going to say AIM started. I've met Dennis Banks and Russell Means over the years; they've been back to the Island, and I know that they were involved in '68 with American Indian movement. And they did visit, but they weren't really here.
  [00:48:30] Eloy:	Well, I think what AIM goes back to, I think they laid claim pretty much. 'Cause I think some of the Means, I can't remember were here on the original takeover with Alva. So they laid their claim to be in on Alcatraz back to that time too. But I think at that ... In '69 that gave rise to the AIM movement, because before that it wasn't that many people were involved, and that really gave rise to it.
  Johnny:	So you do remember those guys visiting?
  [00:49:00] Eloy:	Oh yeah. 'Cause they had a lot of ... At that time after '67, '68, they had a lot of AIM houses all over the Bay area. There was what they call Dame houses.
  Johnny:	But I've heard people say that this Alcatraz occupation got the media attention that AIM needed.
  Eloy: [00:49:30]	That AIM needed. Yeah. That's why they took off. After Alcatraz, a lot of the Indian organizations took off. Before that there was nobody paying attention. And after that people found out. And I think a lot of people ... Not only was that a focal or turning point, but also when Richard was killed.
  	I think when Richard was killed that added more fuel to the fire. And I think people took it more serious then because they could, then they knew that, Hey, they don't really care about you anyway.
  	The thing that was bad about Richard, it's like, even with all the media attention, he got all the other stuff. When you passed away, it was a bad situation just to get him buried. So-
  [00:50:00] Johnny:	Well I want to go back to that, but when Richard was out here and he was on camera, how did people feel about that?
  Eloy:	When he was here, actually all of the people that were on the Island originally, they actually voted him to be the spokesperson.
  Johnny:	Ah. So you were at those meetings and saw that go down?
  Eloy: [00:50:30]	Yeah. Yep. And that was with all of the other people that were here. That was what Lenada, Wilma, Joe Bill, Bill Means.
  Johnny:	Why did they choose him?
  Eloy:	I don't know. Maybe because he had already been speaking, and he's the one that focused the attention on the group from the beginning. So it was pretty much trying to just let the natural transition for him to keep on. 'Cause he pretty much said what they wanted him to say. Yeah.
  Johnny:	Would you guys meet before, say a TV camera was coming out to talk? Or how often did you have meetings?
  Eloy:	Pretty much every day.
  [00:51:00] Johnny:	Really?
  Eloy:	Yeah. There was always some kind of strategy going, I mean something to, "what if? What if kind of thing.
  Johnny:	Right.
  Eloy:	You deal with that situation. But it was pretty much left to one person, that way a lot of stuff didn't get confused. You didn't get more than one opinion out there. It was a consensus.
  [00:51:30]	But Richard pretty much handled that pretty good, I thought. And I thought he was probably ... But then, see like, there's a lot of just a lot of different things that happened on the Island that probably shouldn't have happened if people would have been a bit stronger. And I wonder sometimes if Richard would've just kept on, what greatness could he have reached.
  Johnny:	Yeah. What, what do you remember? Were you here when Yvonne fell?
  Eloy: [00:52:00]	No, I was pretty much ... I wasn't here when it happened. My wife was here and my son was here, but I wasn't here on the Island. After the fact I was pretty much running around doing everything I could do to ... But I was just like pretty much the gopher person for a long time. I was a person nobody ever seen or they'd see me once in a while. And I was just kind of like ... I think there might just be one or two pictures of me on the Island. The only picture I've seen is I'm carrying up a box like this. And the only reason I know it was me, it was 'cause the box broke right after the picture was taken. Right?
  Johnny:	Yeah.
  Eloy:	But other than that, I didn't ... There wasn't ... I never got too many photos around here and stuff. I just kind of stayed pretty much away from all the politics.
  [00:52:30] Johnny:	Yeah. But you heard the stories. I mean, what did you hear? What happened to Yvonne?
  Eloy: [00:53:00]	There's a couple of stories. Some say she was, they were just running around, she slipped and fell and others say that she was pushed. So it just depends on who you want to believe, but I kind of think that there was a lot of sabotaging going on back in that time. So I don't know. I kind of tend to think that maybe something might have been a little on the other side of the foul play kind of line. But I don't know. Never could prove nothing. But I heard different stories.
  Johnny:	That must've tore the Island up. The energy.
  Eloy:	Yeah.
  Johnny:	It was not a good energy at that point.
  Eloy:	Nope. There's a lot of stuff happening. And that's pretty much when one group took over from another group.
  Johnny:	Because Richard left.
  Eloy:	Yep.
  [00:53:30] Johnny:	He took the whole family off the Island. There were a lot of kids still from her previous marriage, I guess. She had some children.
  Eloy:	Yeah. She had five children from her ... When her and Richard got together she had five children of her own already, and Fawn, Little Fawn and young Richard are from Richard.
  Johnny:	So he took the whole family off the Island. And what happened? Did you continue working with the occupation?
  [00:54:00] Eloy:	I kept bringing stuff over here, but I didn't. I pretty much went with Richard. I just went with a different group. I didn't want to be on ...
  Johnny:	What did he do? What did you guys do afterwards? You were more involved on the mainland?
  Eloy:	He went to Pitt river. Took over Fiji station over there, got arrested there.
  Johnny:	What year was that? Pitt river.
  Eloy:	That was in '69 also.
  Johnny:	Oh, okay.
  Eloy:	'70. No, '70, '71. '70, '71. '71, I think.
  Johnny:	Okay.
  Eloy: [00:54:30]	Might have been '71. And then when he got hurt, then I pretty much took all ... took half the kids with us. 'Cause he-
  Johnny:	You took his family?
  Eloy:	Yeah, I took half of his family. They lived here in Oakland. I actually went to school in Oakland for about a year when he was injured. And then I take him back and forth to the reservation because they were all living at the Shi'a reservation at Stroke point by Fort Bragg.
  Johnny:	Oh, okay.
  Eloy: [00:55:00]	And his folks lived there. So that's where they were staying because they had two little houses over there. I'd take them back and forth. And then that's actually, that's where he ended up getting killed right there on that reservation right there at Stroke Point by MCA at a camp there. And Richard had already, I mean he was, he couldn't hardly get around and he had to walk on a crutch, kind of lurched. His whole side was messed up.
  Johnny:	Was that due to the previous fight? Didn't he get into a fight in San Francisco in a pool room?
  Eloy:	Yeah. Yeah. That was from that in San Francisco.
  Johnny:	Down in the Mission, right?
  Eloy:	Right. Yeah.
  Johnny:	And that kind of messed him up. I've talked ... I think you told me that.
  [00:55:30] Eloy:	Yeah. That messed him up really bad. But he was still strong in his heart. He still was doing, even then he went and bought a big ol' yellow school bus and he was going to go around the country, just, talking about different things. And he could still speak a little bit, you know what I mean? Not as clear or coherent, but he could still ... he was still strong. But none of that happened.
  Johnny:	What year did he pass away?
  [00:56:00] Eloy:	'72. '72. He had a YMCA camp; they had a bunch of horses at the corral down there. The Indian kids would go down and ride them. One of the guards down there was a special service officer, ex-green beret. And his name was Michael Morgan. I forget his name.
  [00:56:30]	Him and Richard had a confrontation. One of the kids that he was actually a Mohawk kid that was staying on the reservation with him. I think it was Richard's cousin from New York. Him and a couple of other kids had been riding the horses. So they got ... said, Hey man, you can't be doing that. You know? And says, Hey, okay. You know? So they had a discussion the day before and I guess they kind of left it half unsettled or half undone.
  [00:57:00]	Anyway, it happened again the next day. And they held the kids long. Richard walked down there. And anyway, they got in another confrontation. The guy's sitting on horseback and then just shot him right there on the spot. Said Richard had lunged at him, and emptied the nine millimeter on him and left him laying in the road there for hours, for the coroner to come up there. Just left him ready.
  	I actually drove from here up to there, and he called me and told me what had happened because I had the kids here. I got there before the coroner was there. So that's how long he was in the street. Right there, just down from the reservation. They would let nobody go down there. Wouldn't let Andy or nobody go down there.
  [00:57:30] Johnny:	And so you actually saw him still in the street.
  Eloy:	Yeah. I was there when the coroner picked him up. Was there all through the whole process. They had to go through with getting him buried.
  	Because everybody talk about money this, money that. Richard never had no money. I never seen no money. I've had people tell me, "Oh, they had a mansion." And I said, "I never saw a mansion."
  [00:58:00]	"They had a big car." I says, "I never saw a big car." "They had clothes." I never saw that.
  Johnny:	Yeah.
  Eloy:	Food: never saw a lot of that. You know? So I don't know who, where, when he was supposed to come from, but none of that was available for him. 'Cause when they had, when Annie wanted to bury him, she said, Richard always wanted to just a brown leather coat. And I never could get it for him.
  [00:58:30]	So I went down there and got him a brown leather coat that he wanted, and that's what we put on him. And she put his little teeny ... some of the pictures that you guys got. That's what he went with. That and the leather coat. And took him to the mortuary and mortuary put him in a thing in there. And there was no money. People were supposed to kick in and do all this. There's no money coming in. Nothing. Mortuary didn't want to cut him loose. They left him in there. They didn't even embalm him.
  [00:59:00]	They left him there, couldn't get him out. And finally, when getting ready to get him out, they said, no, you got to pay money. And this and that. I said, didn't have no money. No, no nobody's coming through and under. And there was like 2000 people sitting up on the rez waiting for him, the body to show up.
  [00:59:30]	And the only reason they let him go was for some white people called and complained about the smell in the funeral partner. And they let him go. They finally released the body. And back then those days it was two rows. You head up to the reservation, you go around the front room, highway 101. Like going up to Fort Bragg. You can go backside, and backside cut off your time by about an hour. At least an hour. Anyway, they said they couldn't go the back way, 'cause the road was too narrow. So they took the long way getting over there. They got over there and finally got the body out of the thing.
  [01:00:00]	And then the mortuary and the cars went on the short way. I'm ready to pick and go down, why can't it come up? But that was the stuff that they were running into. And it was bad. But if I was kind of disappointed, a lot of the people that should have been stepping up, they didn't step up. I didn't think they stepped up enough for somebody like Richard that deserved more than that.
  Johnny:	That's a very sad ending.
  Eloy: [01:00:30]	I remember being there when we got there, when the body finally got there and stuff. They were going to put him inside their Annie's father's house for put the casket in there. Couldn't go through the door because the doors were real skinny, little doors. Reservation doors. So we had to take out a window. Anyway, I took out a window and fit the casket in through the window.
  [01:01:00]	And Madbury Anderson was there, Peter Mitten. And I can remember some other, somebody else. Anyway, they had this big, old piece of, I want to say obsidian, but it looked like obsidian or something like that. It was a big, big stone, like a spike and a Blackberry had this mallet and he taught me, hold this. So he whacked it and I can't do it like that. Now he says my hands are hurting. He says, you do it. So I say what I got to do? And he says, you got to put a hole in the casket.
  [01:01:30]	A hole in the casket? And he said, yeah! So he gave me the mallet and I held it like that, and I punched a hole in the casket. He was like, man, all the hair on my arms and my neck, everything just stood up. And it was like ... 'Cause it was letting his spirit escape, but I don't know, that was like the spookiest thing that ever happened to me in my whole life because I never felt nothing like that.
  	All over, wherever I had hair, the sucker just stood out just like that. It was, but that's how a Richard's spirit got out. Yeah.
  Johnny:	And he was buried in a local cemetery though?
  Eloy: [01:02:00]	He was buried right there on the reservation. Right there at Cachiot. and that was another interesting story. 'Cause me and all of Annie's brothers dug the grave. Me and Chick and Moss and Say, and they're all gone. Anyway, when the last one passed away not too long ago, Say, and-
  	(NOTE: speaker names may be different in each section)
  Eloy:	When the last one passed away not too long ago, say... And you met Elijah.
  Johnny:	Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  Eloy: [01:02:30]	His grandson. And we were at the funeral. Yvonne called me up, says, "You know. I got... You know." So I went up there with them and we were at the funeral and Elijah's wearing some short pants. And this bee got under and bit him on the nut. And he's "Ow." And so the lady's giving him first aid and stuff and doing all this other stuff. "Well, you've got to get him to the hospital." And Yvonne says "We're going to take him to emergencies." I said, "Okay.". So, we take him to emergencies. He's crying and making all these noises. And I've got my hand like this. I had my hand on the table and he looked at my finger and he said, "What happened to you there? You don't..." And I said, "A bee bit me and they cut it off." He said, "Whoa. Whoa. Let's go. I'm feeling fine." And he got up and the nurse said, "Are you okay?" "Yeah. I'm good."
  [01:03:00]	That was his grandson and great grandson. But he just sat down over there, he wagging in the mud and I'm out of here. You know? That was the last of Annie's brothers that passed away.
  Johnny:	And you've kept in touch with his family all these years. You came back to the island with Annie and told me the story earlier that she didn't want to come back. That was just recently. What? A couple of years ago was it?
  [01:03:30] Eloy:	Yeah. It's been about two years.
  Johnny:	And she'd never been back to the island since?
  Eloy:	Since they left?
  Johnny:	Yvonne's death?
  Eloy: [01:04:00]	No. And all of her children... At one time or other, some of them have been here. But not all of them together. But when she came, they all came to make sure that she was coming, because they was like, "Hey." Because I had called her and told her that she needed to come out here; because her kids had been telling me she needs to get closure over that. You need to come out and go. So I went over and talked to her a couple of times and she promised me one time. And I waited out here and she didn't show. So I said, "Okay." So the next time I went out, so I just said, "I want to go over there." And I went over and I spent the night. And I told her, "Come on, you got to get your coat ready. You got to get your purse ready. Got to have the coffee ready for the morning. So all you got to do is..." She said, "Okay. Okay."
  [01:04:30]	She got all that ready and in the morning I get up, she's got the coffee ready and she says, "I'm not going." I said, "What do you mean you're not going? You said you was going." "No. I'm not going. I'm not going. I don't care what you say. I'm not going." I said, "Annie, you need to come. You need to come." So, it took me two cups of coffee to talk her into getting ready. So, she came. Once we got her in the car and all, the kids blocked her in so she couldn't get out, like it's too late. Yeah. That's when she came out here.
  Johnny:	And what was that like when she made it out here?
  Eloy:	It was pretty interest- [crosstalk 01:04:45].
  Johnny:	Pretty powerful stuff?
  Eloy:	Yeah. Pretty powerful, because she started showing all the kids, all the grandkids and all the rest of them, because none of them had been here. Some of them hadn't... They knew about the island buy they had never been here.
  Johnny:	So she got to relay some of her stories to the kids?
  [01:05:00] Eloy:	To the kids. Yeah. And they all... Because two or three of Annie's kids aren't here anymore either, that were here. Rocky's another one that passed away tragically. He was one of the older kids that were here. I think you've got photos of him standing next to one of the old trucks. Him and some of the kids. He looked a lot like Yvonne.
  Johnny:	What about your kids now? You said you had a boy out here?
  Eloy:	I got one son.
  [01:05:30] Johnny:	One son out here?
  Eloy:	Yeah.
  Johnny:	Has he been back to the island?
  Eloy:	Yeah. He comes out every couple of two, three years. Brings his family out.
  Johnny:	For the sunrise service? He's been out?
  Eloy:	Yeah.
  Johnny:	But he doesn't remember much? I guess he was just a little boy? Or how old was he when...?
  Eloy:	He remembers all of Richard's kids.
  Johnny:	Oh. Really?
  Eloy:	They all grew up together.
  Johnny:	Okay.
  Eloy: [01:06:00] [01:06:30]	He remembers all of that. And that was another interesting story. Because when we got little Richard, he was just like a year old. He wasn't even a year old. Yeah, he might've been a year old because he was barely walking. But I remember we couldn't afford diapers, so my wife went out and bought a bunch of cotton diapers and washed the diapers every night. I said, "This shit's got to stop." So, we told the kids, I said, "Hey man." Just told them, "Take him to the bathroom. Every time he pees it's a nickel. Every time he goes and poops it's a dime." So man, Richard was the most bathroomed kid in the whole block, because every time they wanted some candy, "Come on, Richard. You got to go to the bathroom." So it worked out pretty good for a couple of times. But once he figured out that his stuff was worth money, he wanted to get paid. But that's how he got potty trained. Nickel and dime. Nickel and a dime.
  	So, he's talking about doing his kid, and I told him that story and he cracked up laughing. He says, "You guys really did that?" And bother Joseph says, "Hell yeah, we did it." He says, "And sometimes we'd do the stuff and say it was yours." To get that nickel and dime.
  [01:07:00] Johnny:	Hey, there's graffiti in here. Now, I've been told that you've seen your graffiti down in the dungeon. I think we should go down there and look for that Eloy on the ceiling. What do you say?
  Eloy:	All right. Yeah.
  Johnny:	Let's go down there.
  Eloy:	I haven't been down there for a long time. Yeah.
  Johnny:	All right.
  	Eloy, maybe you want to tell us a little bit about what happened down here when you guys were on the island? You mentioned, as we came down, the kids...
  Eloy: [01:07:30] [01:08:00]	This is where all the kids used to come down here. It was kind of like a spook house. Scare each other. And they had the whole area to cover. I remember one time they had a... There was one time I can remember, exactly when it happened, but they had a dead body. Somebody jumped off the Golden Gate bridge and the body washed up down here in the bottom. And I remembered them telling John Whitefox that there was a body down there and John Whitefox says, "Hey man. You guys had better not be lying to me." "No. There's a body down there." He went all the way down there. Sure enough, there was a body down there. It was all bloated up. Ready to call up the Coast Guard and the people. And they just laughed, and they said that's the only time they said the island belonged to us, because of course the Coast Guard station... "It's your island. You take care of it."
  Johnny:	So they didn't respond?
  Eloy:	No, they came and got it later. But that's the only time they said the island was ours. "This is your island. You take care of it." I don't know. I think it had to be a jumper from the Golden Gate or somebody [crosstalk 01:08:21] Florida. There was a body down there.
  Johnny: [01:08:30]	The currents went back and forth. We've seen it happen since I've been out here. So, the Coast Guard, they gave up in blockading the island?
  Eloy:	Yeah.
  Johnny:	And...
  Eloy:	I think they very much called them off. I don't think they wanted to give up on their own. I think it was just called off, off higher authority.
  Johnny:	Yeah. Would you remember the negotiations with the government? Were you involved in any of that?
  Eloy: [01:09:00]	No. But I remember them being out here on the island. I remembered them talking about stuff. You know? When Poole... I think it was Poole... Stanley Poole or somebody came out here, and he pretty much said that they weren't going to do nothing about it. I remember that. And everybody being like, "Wow. Really?" And everybody's saying, "No. No, man. It's sort of a sneak attack. They're coming in the middle of the night."
  Johnny:	And that was early on? They were talking that way?
  Eloy:	Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. That's pretty much when they called the Coast Guard off, I think. Right about that time is when they started letting people come out here freely.
  Johnny:	I mean, I've heard stories of sailboats going by and arrows flying.
  Eloy:	Yeah. That only happened one time, I think.
  Johnny:	Tour boat?
  [01:09:30] Eloy:	Yeah. And somebody fired. It didn't hit nothing, but they made a big media thing. Ships under attack. Indians attack ship, with an arrow clinking off the side of a bow 50 foot high. Clink. But it made pretty good publicity for them. For the...
  [01:10:00]	But all in all, I think that the occupation pretty much accomplished what it was meant to accomplish, because there's just a lot of positives, a lot of stuff that people don't like to talk about. But there's a lot of positive stuff that people need to talk more about too; because a lot of stuff came out of that occupation.
  [01:10:30]	And I think, probably now more than ever, because a lot of that stuff is still happening on the reservations. Nothing's really changed, and a lot of the monies that are getting... Right now I think one of the tribes won a big award, and they're trying to get individual people to sign checks. What they do by that was they can piecemeal the reservations again. Just take a piece at a time, because that's what they're doing there. Most of the property, like in Navajos and the Pueblo Laguna, all their property's held in common and nobody can own stuff. You can live there, you can do what you need to do but, if you move on, it stays with the tribe. It doesn't...
  [01:11:00] [01:11:30]	And what they're trying to do now is circumvent that, by giving people individual monies for individual partials of their piece, their portion of the land. But nothing's really changed. Anytime there's any kind of resource or something. There's developers now. It's like we were talking about the Ohlone's. Right over here, on the other side of the Bay right here, you can see it from here, the holy shell mounds, where Ikea and all that's sitting on top of probably the biggest Ohlone burial ground in the state of California. And they got a little shell mound over there says Shell Mound Street and that's it.
  	Well, what's interesting there was some of the people that were picketing there, before they built that, some of the people that actually were working there, they found out about it, were wondering why they were getting sick and they quit working after they found out. Because they were actually getting sick from it. So, maybe it was bad medicine. I don't know.
  [01:12:00] Johnny:	Do you remember talking with Richard after the occupation was over? And did you guys debrief a little bit and go, "Wow. Look at that. We got an apology from president Nixon for genocide against the American Indian." And restoring tribal lands, preserving the reservation.
  Eloy: [01:12:30]	I think that was the biggest part of... The satisfaction was from sitting and listening to him talk about stuff like that, because you could see tangibles. It wasn't just a promise. You could see stuff happening. Before it was in the wind and nothing ever happened. But this stuff you could see; it was happening. I don't know. I think he just gave a lot of hope to a lot of people, and inspired people to make something of themselves; to do something. I don't know. Why would he say that? Leave a mark somewhere. But I think he was a little disappointed in some stuff but I think, all in all, I think he knew what he had done.
  Johnny:	And what about you? You must take pride in what you...?
  [01:13:00] Eloy:	Well, me, I didn't really want to come back out to Alcatraz, but I had a couple of friends that used to come all the time and they told me, "Man, you know, they don't even mention Richard no more." And that's the only reason I came back.
  Johnny:	You're talking about the sunrise services? So what year was that? That you came back? You started coming back?
  Eloy:	Late seventies. Right after they started them up. I just started coming back because of that. And so, every time they had the ceremony, I made sure I went over and told whoever was M.C. I said, "You mention Richard Oakes."
  [01:13:30] Johnny: [01:14:00]	Well, we got a little graffiti here, Eloy. Sioux Indian, South Dakota. Cola man or woman. And so there's a lot of tagging down here. We looked around, we couldn't find the Eloy. I'm sure it's down here somewhere, your name. But, as you said, this was a playground for the kids. The kids that kind of thought it was a haunted house down here; down in the dungeon. And I asked you just a minute ago about what you thought about... If you and Richard had talked about what you guys had accomplished out here by taking the island. And when you come back for the sunrise, you and I have worked together building a fire, driving up and bringing the wood up to the parade ground there. And I have been working for years out here. Does it surprise you to see what this place has turned into?
  [01:14:30] Eloy:	Yeah, because it's pretty much turned into what they wanted it to turn into. It's partly a cultural center. People are learning and you guys keep it out there in the forefront. So, people are pretty much alerted to what's going on. And...
  Johnny: [01:15:00]	People ask us. "Why do you have that graffiti on an Indian land? What's that all about? Custer had it coming. Why? And my response is it's historic. It's a tool to relay the story of the Indian occupation to the public. So, there's been talk of actually having an Indian artist come back and redo- [crosstalk 01:15:05]
  Eloy:	Redo it.
  Johnny:	That graffiti, so that it doesn't disappear. You can't have a G man go out there and paint it, but a native American to come back. And the sunrise services are, to me, very powerful.
  Eloy: [01:15:30]	Yeah. Yeah. I like them because they're pretty much a lot of diversity there and I think there's a lot of spirituality going on there and people that attend feel it.
  Johnny:	Yeah.
  Eloy:	You know? And, for me, it's that time of year just for inner peace. Right our souls.
  Johnny:	Right. Well, you mentioned that you came back to the island because people had forgotten about Richard Oakes and his involvement.
  Eloy: [01:16:00] [01:16:30]	Yeah. Seemed to be they weren't mentioning his name anymore. And I just thought that they needed... Just something that needed to be done. And there's a lot of things that came out of what Richard did, and I don't think there's too many places in the Bay area that were giving him any kind of recognition. You know? So, few years back when I was at Intertribal Friendship House, I was leading that. And that's the oldest Indian center in the United States, outside of the one in New York. But when I was there, I pretty much got the board to go along with the plan. And we had a first annual Richard Memorial we came for. And that's actually the first time that Annie came out. I got her down to that one. Derek and I had to go up and pick her up, because she wouldn't come. But I brought her and her whole family down there.
  [01:17:00]	And I think Craig went down there and some of the other people and took some photos down there. But Intertribal Friendship had, over the years, it fell into a bad state of disrepair. And a lot of people were stepping up and doing what they needed to do also. But money's always been kind of scarce in the Indian community, so... My wife told me the last time we were down there, because she used to hold functions there all the time, to make fundraisers for the organization. And she told me last time we were there, "Boy, this place is really getting bad and you need to do something." And I kept putting it off, because to me it sounded like, "Oh man. When they say I need to do something, that's like a lot of labor."
  [01:17:30] [01:18:00]	But anyway. So, after she passed away, I went back down there. I started going back down to tribal friendship house and got it all back together. We put new floors in; new plumbing and just fixed it up pretty... Went back to fixing it up. After it was all... I had one of the local artists from up at Jackson Rancheria, Don Anderson, he's a muralist. He painted a nice Californian mural on the wall. On one of the walls down there. So, we had a grand opening. Put new floors on the floor. And that was another little story there because, when they put the floor in, the Rebuilding Together outfit came in and helped us up, right? So, they got donations and stuff and one of the guys had gone up and they gave him about 10 different colors of tile.
  [01:18:30]	They didn't have any one color. So, they gave him all these bunches of tile and the guy says, well, "We got this and this." We said, "We'll make it work and we'll do something with it." But they've sent us enough that we made some Indian designs and stuff and it worked out perfect. The border, the whole bit and turned out beautiful. Matter of fact, he put it in their book. But me and my son did the job and had a couple other people help us out doing it. We got all back together and had Don do the mural. And then we opened up the house. That's when Richard Oaktree did the memorial for him.
  [01:19:00]	And shortly after that they did the San Francisco one. And so other stuff started. They started bringing his name back up to the forefront, which is what needed to be done. But that worked out pretty good, because they had good food and you had the magician and you had clowns in there. Got a whole bunch of different people... People that are local Indian artists and stuff. They donated stuff and it was a nice turnout. But that was the first time Annie had came out and it was nice to see her smiling and cracking up; see the whole family have a good time.
  Johnny: [01:19:30]	Annie never made it back for the sunrise, but I know a lot of the veterans, and you're one of those veterans, that are always brought to the front of the circle at the fire there. And the mic has been passed around and people have talked. And Joe Morris was somebody that would play the trumpet. You know?
  Eloy:	Mm-hmm (affirmative). Play Taps.
  Johnny:	And he would say Taps and to remember all the warriors that have gone on. And that circle is getting smaller and smaller now. The veterans from Alcatraz... How many do you think are still alive that were here, originally, in the first month? From the occupation?
  [01:20:00] Eloy: [01:20:30]	Well, see, Wilma's gone. So LeNada's still here. Annie's gone. Richard's gone. John Whitefox has gone. Ed Castillo's still here. Ed unfortunately, he wasn't one of the 14. He was here, but he wasn't one of the guys who was original on there. I mean, he was instrumental, I think. Coyote's still around. Elaine's still around. There might be, of the original, there might be probably 35 or 40 left. Yeah. Of the original 14, probably less than that. Less than 50%. Because every year somebody else has gone.
  Johnny:	Robert Free, he's the...
  Eloy:	He's here. He's here, Robert Free.
  Johnny: [01:21:00]	You have the... I don't know if we can get a shot of the tee shirt there. But there's a great visual there with San Francisco in the foreground and that teepee there on Alcatraz. Do you remember that teepee being and set up?
  Eloy:	Yeah. I actually spent some time in it. I didn't spend a whole night, but I spent some time in it.
  Johnny:	A little kid?
  Eloy:	Yeah. Yeah. But I remember him. Isn't he trying to do something?
  Johnny:	Yes, he is. He is. The Park Service has been negotiating with him. I think one of the problems is that the birds are nesting where that teepee was.
  Eloy:	Oh.
  Johnny:	So, you know...
  Eloy:	Time to move the teepee.
  [01:21:30] Johnny:	We won't go there. And then also, since we're panning in on your tee shirt here now, can you tell the story about the medallion here? The bead work? The Alcatraz- [crosstalk 01:21:38]
  Eloy: [01:22:00]	Yeah. This was made by an Apache warrior named Coco and he's from White Mountain in Arizona. But he made three of them. Myself and Richard and Joe Bill had one. I don't know. I haven't seen neither one of those in a long time. And this one was pretty much kind of kept... I don't take it out too often. Once in a while I bring it out at different ceremonies. In fact, I got this on in that calendar. They were doing it that day they gave me the bike. They were doing a ceremony and I had my regalia on. That's the only reason I had it on. But I couldn't pass up getting on that bike.
  Johnny:	Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm honored that you wore it today here. I mean, that is a beautiful piece.
  Eloy:	But I'm going to give this to young Richard, because I think he should have it.
  Johnny:	Richard Oakes' son?
  Eloy:	Yeah.
  Johnny:	Yeah. That's beautiful, man.
  [01:22:30] Eloy:	I think he'll take better care of it.
  Johnny: [01:23:00]	The sunrise... Back to the service... That seems to be getting larger and larger. It seems like more people are coming out and there's a lot of non-Indian people, but I like the gathering of the tribes. You've got African tribes, you've got Tibetan monks coming. I know we mentioned the Islanders coming out. Tribes of the world coming and gathering. I remember a few years back, there was an Israeli and a Palestinian, came out into the circle and embraced each other as brothers. So, this is a real powerful thing that is still going on on Alcatraz.
  Eloy:	Yeah. I can- [crosstalk 01:23:12].
  Johnny:	Go ahead.
  Eloy: [01:23:30]	I think that ceremonies, it does a lot for people. And I think it's a source of pride for Indian people too, because it's like a stage, and you don't get a stage like that too often. So, I think people are able to get their opinions, and what's going on in their countries, across the other people; because you share a lot of similarities. I mean, the struggle over there is probably no different than it is here. It's just different languages and stuff. So, I think it's a good unity builder.
  [01:24:00] Johnny: [01:24:30]	Definitely. Definitely. I remember the first time... I've told this story maybe to you... But I started 20 years ago out here and I worked the sunrise; and of course I got the uniform and the badge and I'm representing the government. A native American Indian came up to me and said, "Ranger, you ought to thank me for your job." And I looked at them and I said, "Sir, what do you mean?" And he said, "Well, think about it. If my people and I hadn't taken this island over, you couldn't afford to come here on your government salary." And I looked at him and I put my hand out and I shook his hand. I said, "Right on brother. Thank you very much. You're absolutely right." Because this was going to be a big gambling casino. And it was going to be a $1000 a night hotel out in the middle of the Bay. It wasn't going to be a national park.
  	And so, that man had a point there. And I always think of that at the sunrise; that the occupation did- [crosstalk 01:24:50]
  Eloy:	It was pretty close. Yeah.
  Johnny: [01:25:00]	It opened it up to become a national park site for people to learn about the island's history. And now you're part of that history, man. Does that blow you away a little bit? To think, you know...?
  Eloy:	Yeah. Yeah. Because you never expect to be... I mean, things happen. Me, I just kind of been lucky. I just seem like I've been in the right places at the right time sometimes. Sure, bad things happen, I mean, what the hell? If you're not living, you get no experience of this bad things happened to you. That's what experience is. That's what they tell me. I don't know.
  Johnny:	No. I'm into that.
  [01:25:30] Eloy:	But that's how life is. You know? And I think by being able to come back here and do this... Even just this interview and stuff... It's like you're reaching people; and that was the whole goal.
  Johnny:	Yeah.
  Eloy:	You know? To reach people and to say, "Hey. There's still Indians out there. They're not just on that Buffalo nickel." And, by the way, that Buffalo nickel now, if you want to get it, it'll cost you about 50 bucks. They made it a $50 gold piece or something.
  Johnny:	Oh? No kidding? Okay.
  Eloy:	They upgraded the nickel, man. It's now got to cost you more money to get.
  [01:26:00] Johnny:	Well, in that documentary we were talking about, I think it's Shirley Guevara that says this. So, maybe it was LeNada, but she said the occupation... The Indian people in this country... It was like a flame that was just ready to go out. And that this occupation brought that flame back to be a powerful. And it rippled across...
  Eloy: [01:26:30]	Yeah. It's just like starting that fire in the morning. And you just look at that little flame and all of a sudden that wind hits it. You got a fire.
  Johnny:	You are the fire meister. I've seen you start that fire out there without hardly any kindling or anything. I hope we can continue making fires together for many more years to come out here.
  Eloy:	Yeah. Me too.
  Johnny:	Well, I thank you, Sir, for this interview.
  Eloy:	Thank you.
  Johnny:	It's been a real pleasure and knowing you has definitely being historic.
  Eloy:	Remember, you will give me that trip for this interview, right?
  [01:27:00] Johnny:	Oh, that's right. Good job, man. Good job.
  	So Eloy, we're in front of this old prison building here and there's a little bit of graffiti up above on it; the eagle there. You remember some of this graffiti going up?
  [01:27:30] Eloy:	Yeah. I remember a lot of that going up. That's says free right up there. It's pretty hard to see now, but it was pretty clear back in those days. Yeah. I think a lot of that paint was part of the Golden Gate bridge paint.
  Johnny:	Yeah. Okay.
  Eloy:	Couple of 50 gallon buckets. And so you see a lot of red paint around here. That's pretty much where the red paint came from.
  Johnny:	Lighthouse was painted red for a while.
  Eloy:	Yeah.
  Johnny:	There's a red fist just up on the beam there, as you come in, for Red Power.
  Eloy: [01:28:00]	Red Power. Yeah. It was appropriate, I think, that they left all that red paint here, because of Red Power. I mean, everything was perfect for that.
  Johnny:	Definitely. Definitely. Well, it helps us tell the story of the Indian occupation and I'd love to go inside and maybe settle a little bit with you and walk around, take a look at the old prison and catch your stories about the Indian occupation.
  Eloy:	All right.
  Johnny:	All right.
  Eloy:	Okay.
  Johnny: [01:28:30]	Let's head in. Well Eloy we're on Broadway here, in the cell house. And this was the main thoroughfare for the convicts going through to the mess hall down at the end there. What do you remember about Broadway here at the cell house? Do you remember people living in here?
  Eloy: [01:29:00]	Yeah. I remember a lot of people were... A lot of them wanted to be up the top floors because it's like being top dog. It was a lot of activities. There was a lot of pretty much people fighting for the corner. Nobody wanted to be in the middle, but they wanted the end units. There was a lot of... I used to hear a lot of the kitchen noises behind in the background yet today. There was a lot of activity and this was kind of like a new found toy when you came out here. It was like a giant playground for the kids. And mostly for adults too, because a lot of them never been inside of a prison or a jail, you know?
  Johnny:	And you guys had free reign of this place.
  Eloy: [01:29:30]	Yeah. Everything was wide open. So, kids everywhere; Adults everywhere. People picking spots; people hiding out and land claim. You know? A lot of them had their cells marked right away. Names went up and don't come in. This is [inaudible 00:27:34].
  Johnny:	Right. How many people would you say were actually staying in the cell house?
  Eloy: [01:30:00]	At first it was pretty much most of them. For the first couple of days, till people started out and started looking out at different places, and picking different spots for themselves. And the ones that decided they were staying longer, went to different places. And families, pretty much according to need. But a lot of people picked what you call strategic places, where they kind of keep an eye on. You couldn't pretty much sneak up on nobody, because somebody is always looking out. Some of the people live right down closer to the dock, because they overlooked the Bay.
  [01:30:30]	In fact, Richard lived right in a... As you look up to the top line, the first window there. Last time we were here, Annie was pretty much pointing everything out where they had gone. From here, to here, to here, to here. It was interesting. And it was interesting to have Annie come back to the island, because she hadn't been here in a long time. But...
  Johnny:	That is a good thing that she made it back, pretty much just before she passed away. Right?
  Eloy:	Yeah. Yeah. I think she needed it, because we had a couple of conversations thereafter and I think she got a little bit of closure on Yvonne. You know?
  Johnny:	Yeah.
  [01:31:00] Eloy: [01:31:30]	That was one reason she hadn't wanted to come back for a long time. But it was interesting, because I literally had to go up to her house and spend the night. And most of the night we were just talking and the kids were asking questions. All of Richard's grandkids were there and his daughters and granddaughters. There was a house full of people and we all spent the night and she said, "Okay, I'm coming. Okay, I'm coming." And I said, "Pack your stuff up." So she said, "No."
  	I said, "Come on. You got to pack it up. It's just for tonight. And get your coat on. Get your coat and get everything ready to go out the door." So, everything was ready to go and the next morning I get up early and she was making coffee. She says, "I'm not going." And I said, "What do you mean you're not going, Annie? You're going." She says, "I'm not going. I'm not going. I'm not going. You can't make me go." And I says, "No. You need to go." So, we got her in the vehicle and she actually came out.
  Johnny:	You talked her into it?
  [01:32:00] Eloy:	Yeah. She actually came out that day. And I don't know, I think there's about 30 of Richard and her family that came out that day. The whole family came out and it was kind of nice.
  Johnny:	I missed that. But Craig was with you, wasn't he?
  Eloy:	Yeah. Yeah.
  Johnny:	So, you got a chance to hang with them.
  Eloy:	So, that was good, because she got to come back out here at least one more time and just get closure, I think. She felt good about it after. She had mixed feelings about coming out, but she was glad she did afterwards. But she says, "Don't ask me to go again." So it's a...
  [01:32:30] Johnny:	I've heard that from a few folks over the years. So, you stayed in the prison? You remember staying here for- [crosstalk 01:32:36]
  Eloy:	Yeah. We stayed down on the other end. Down there by the middle. My wife and my son. I didn't stay here that long. I stayed here about a month total. My wife stayed here almost two months. But I was mostly on the back and forth, because I had a vehicle. I had a Volkswagen bus that was like an Indian bus. It looked like an Indian bus. It had five or six different colors of lacquer and patch on it. And extra fenders and...
  Johnny:	Indian taxi.
  [01:33:00] Eloy:	Yeah. And that's what it was used for on Alcatraz, because I ran.
  	(NOTE: speaker names may be different in each section)
  Eloy: [01:33:30]	... and it was pretty much... That's what it was used for on Alcatraz, because I ran back, I was going to UC Berkeley at the time on a leadership training program. At the same time I was in the Building Trades Union over on the other side. So I got to meet a lot of people that were active in the unions, because that program that I was going to was a total of like 65 Bay Area unions, from communication workers to SEIU, automobile work. Pretty much one in every union that was in the Bay Area at that time. So I got to meet a lot of people. I got to meet a lot of the people that were going to the Indian school, learning welding and different stuff like that. And I met Richard, actually, met him at one of Vietnam demonstrations, right about the time that they were starting to kick things up over there.
  Johnny: [01:34:00]	I was going to say, so you were in Berkeley, going to school there when all the protests against the Vietnam war and people hitting the streets?
  Eloy:	Right.
  Johnny:	So you were right in the middle. What year would that have been?
  Eloy:	That was 1969. '67, '68, '69, all that was happening back in there. There was a lot of stuff, the-
  Johnny:	That was a hot time.
  Eloy:	Black Panthers was going on, Eldridge Cleaver, a lot of that other stuff, George Jackson, there's a whole bunch of stuff that was going on all through all the years.
  Johnny:	Did they ever involved with the occupation, Black Panthers?
  [01:34:30] Eloy:	Actually, I think the Black Panthers, they had a lot of donations coming to the island. Actually, I think the biggest part of the people that donated money to the people that were on the island was black people, African American people.
  Johnny:	Really?
  Eloy: [01:35:00]	Because the churches gave stuff and individuals gave money. And I think they could identify probably with the Indian situation from way back in the day, because a lot of people don't realize that when we had slavery back then, there was Indians that were slaves also. Nobody ever mentions that, because, I guess colonization, they just invent the wheel of a lot of different people and the Indians and the black people were pretty much the defenseless people at that time. So, it's kind of pretty much been... Now, they're doing it to everybody. So it's a circle going around.
  Johnny:	Well, in the African American community, it was intermarriage with American Indians too.
  [01:35:30] Eloy: [01:36:00]	Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of them, West Virginia, Florida, all over. Now, it's probably even more so because the urban Indians are all mixed. You go up the coast, Pomo Land, there's a lot of Hawaiian. There's a lot of people that, because they were driven on the end of the ocean. Boats came, and a lot of... Just a couple of years ago, I think right here in San Francisco, these guys came over in them long boats all the way from Australia or somewhere. And big, big guys, these guys were like 6'8", 6'9", and then they'd throw their eyes and their tongue out at you and make that scary noise. They're some big Indians.
  Johnny:	Well, at the Circle last year, or the past a couple of Sunrises, there was a gentleman that did the native dance, and he did tongue thing that you're talking about.
  Eloy: [01:36:30]	Well, these guys came over, they came over to Sunrise right over there. And I was over there because they had an Indian group from East Bay over there to meet them in Sunrise, early in the morning. And they came across and they had a motorboat, one of them little kind of escort boats coming across and these guys out pedaled that thing, they was going hoof, hoof, hoof and they was going with long strokes, hoo, hoo, hoo, and that thing just went hoo...
  Johnny:	Nice.
  Eloy:	Then, they got out and they did their landing thing, they did the landing ceremony. They all danced and stuff. But these guys were like 6'6", 6'7". And I don't think none of them was under 400 pounds.
  Johnny:	Wow.
  [01:37:00] Eloy: [01:37:30]	They were big, big dudes. They were muscular dudes. They were just big guys, man. And they did that dance, and at the end of the dance, they rolled their eyes and threw their tongue out and they were tattooed on their tongue. These guys were, "Woo." And so everybody jumped. But it was a nice ceremony, and it was interesting to watch a group that could go that far the way these guys... I mean, just say, "Hey, let's head out." That's a part of the native tradition, I guess, when you think about it, they just set it out.
  Johnny:	It's nice to see them involved in the Sunrise service now, too coming around, it very cool. Hey, it's getting kind of loud here. I say we go up to the theater and maybe get a quiet space there.
  Eloy:	Sure.
  Johnny: [01:38:00]	All right. Hi. My name is John Cantwell. I'm a national park ranger on Alcatraz Island. And today is April 3rd. It's a Sunday, and we're going to do an oral history with Eloy Martinez, a former Indian occupier from Alcatraz, and we'll get Eloy's story here today on The Rock. Eloy, how are you doing today?
  Eloy:	I'm doing fine.
  Johnny:	What's your full name, Eloy?
  Eloy:	My name is Eloy Martinez and I was from Four Corners, born and raised in a mining camp close to Walsenburg, Colorado.
  Johnny:	What year were you born, Eloy?
  Eloy:	I was born in 1940, so I'm an old dog.
  [01:38:30] Johnny:	So, tell us a little bit about your family. What'd your dad do?
  Eloy: [01:39:00]	Actually, we were out here in about 1941, 42, he was stationed at Treasure Island, he was in the Navy and then we went back to Colorado and he shipped out and then he got wounded on... I guess he's the guy who used to put the shells in the guns and stuff and messed up his hand. So they put him on disability and he went back to Colorado and it was just a progression of moving from one place to another, and alcohol came into play a lot. And-
  Johnny:	Back to your mom and dad, how did they meet? Just in Colorado?
  Eloy:	Yeah.
  Johnny:	That's where they were both from?
  [01:39:30] Eloy: [01:40:00]	They were both from Colorado. Partially, there was a lot of dairy farmers there, but there was a lot of sheep ranches and stuff like that in that area. But there was a lot of dairy, and then there was what they actually called the big four mines there. And that was in... I don't know, did they call it Tioga or some place like that, something like. But mostly they had miners from all over the world. And so there was a pretty good mix of everybody there. There was people from Yugoslavia, from Russia, Germany in almost any... Mexicans, people from Spain, almost any kind of... I think it was pretty much biracial all the way around. There was African American people there, Indian people. There was a pretty good mix in all those little towns.
  Johnny:	But what was your parents' nationalities now? You, your dad, was he American?
  Eloy: [01:40:30]	Yeah. My dad is part Yakama and Ute. In fact, he's buried in the Yakima cemetery in Washington. And my mom was Dené and Mexican. And probably, I don't know, back in that area, you probably got a few more people we don't even know about. Everybody's pretty much of a mix.
  Johnny:	Yeah. But they met in Colorado?
  Eloy: [01:41:00]	Yeah, but they both met in Colorado. Shortly after my dad... I think he was about 17. I think he might've even lied about his age to get into the Navy. I can't remember, because he wanted off the farm. They had a sheep ranch and he used to do a lot of sheep shearing and stuff like that.
  Johnny:	But they never lived on the reservation?
  Eloy: [01:41:30]	Yeah. Early on they both... Peabody Coal pretty much wiped out the reservation we were from. They came in and that was during, I guess it was termination, when the termination policies went into effect, a lot of people just had to... They were no longer tribes, I guess you could say, no longer recognized. I think it's pretty much just like it is today, whenever they want something, they pass another rule or another law. And then the mining companies move in shortly afterwards, either that or speculators.
  [01:42:00]	Whenever there's some kind of a valuable resource or anything that they can sell or make a profit from, they're going to revise some kind of way to get it. And now, they're trying to send people individual checks that on communal tribal lands so that people sell their share of the land and they say, "Well, this guy already sold it," and tribes are not accepting the checks, but a lot of individuals probably are, and that's happened throughout all the reservations. You could see different reservations all over and people that were allowed to come onto the reservations with say a little grocery store, stuff like that, right now, they own like two thirds of the reservations, because they've done the same thing. They do it through pawn, say, "Hey, well you need some credit. You need this, you need that?" Comes time to pay, you don't got the money so you lose what you got.
  [01:42:30] [01:43:00]	I don't think that's changed too much. And especially in a lot of the areas where the tribes are not recognized anymore, because not everybody got recognized again. Right here in California, the biggest tribes in California, the Ohlones are not recognized. Everybody knows, they got colleges named after them, they got the Ohlone Shell Mound, and they got all kinds of... But the tribe itself is not recognized. So they need recognition. And a lot of people don't realize too, that their recognition came as part of something that happened here on Alcatraz because Nixon returned a lot of... he ended termination policies and he returned a lot of land back. The Navajos got a lot of land, the [inaudible 00:10:09] got a lot of land, tribes all over.
  Johnny: [01:43:30]	Nixon really... Pardon me, he did really side with the American Indian during that occupation. He had an Indian coach, I think in high school, the football coach that was native American Indian. So your parents went through the termination program and they were affected by it. And you do remember that happening too as a child, going through that?
  Eloy: [01:44:00]	Yeah, because my godfather still lived on the reservation, they were right out of Ignacio on the Southern Ute part. And I remember going up to that reservation, but the other part where they took over, where Peabody Coal took over, there's nothing left there. Now mother earth's kind of reclaiming it, but you see these mountains look like mountains, but they're really coal slag [inaudible 01:43:55] shells where the cold slag has got the built up on us, growing grass and trees and stuff on it. So it's pretty much returning from slag coal, I guess.
  Johnny:	Excuse me.
  Eloy:	But the termination policies put a lot of people into different situations. And the mining camps opened up a lot of work. It was cheap work, but it was dangerous work.
  Johnny:	So your dad looked at possibly a better future with getting in the military, you think?
  Eloy: [01:44:30]	Yeah, because right around that time, I think it was not too long before he went into the service, I can't remember exactly what year, but they had the Ludlow massacre in that area. That's when they killed all the Indians with the CF and trains came on railroad tracks. I don't know if that was some... I always hear rumors, but I don't quite remember. But I remember that they said that was kind of the first armored vehicle that they had made with a turd on it and they had mounted it on a flatbed car and that's how they killed all the striking miners. It's pretty much a world famous massacre, I don't know. But that's just pretty much right outside the mining camps where I grew up.
  [01:45:00]	So there was a lot of history back there of a lot... And I remember when I got back in the forties, because I was born in the forties and I went to a couple of schools back there, and I remember my father had gone, after that he had got a job at Pueblo Ordinance Depot. That's where they used to make... because he can do desk work. He couldn't do physical work, but they said that he could do work.
  Johnny:	Was he still in the military then when he was doing that work?
  [01:45:30] Eloy: [01:46:00]	No, he had just got out. I think about 44, something like that. 45. I can't remember. I must've been four or five years old. We moved to area in Pueblo, Colorado where all the steel mills were at. I guess it was what would you call the outer limits, the ghetto kind of, I don't know. It's way back then it was part of an area, it smelled so bad, everybody called it Pew-town, where you-
  Johnny:	What?
  Eloy:	Pew-town. Pew.
  Johnny:	Pew-town.
  Eloy:	You know, like pew.
  Johnny:	Other side of the tracks? Okay.
  Eloy:	Yeah. But they actually called it Pew-town and now it's Pueblo, Colorado. And that was where all the smelting plants and all the steel mills were. All stuff drifted from there and all that sludge that went right down the river from there.
  Johnny:	So you would say that's probably your earliest memory, was dating back to that time, Pew-town?
  [01:46:30] Eloy:	Yeah, going back to that. That was first town we moved to after my father got out of the service. Grandma still lived on the farm with my uncles and my father's other relatives were all kind of, I don't know, always in conflict about stuff. So he decided to move on. And that was-
  Johnny:	Did you spend any time on the farm as a kid? Did you visit your grandmother?
  [01:47:00] Eloy:	Yeah. I learned how to ride horses. I grew up on horses actually. So I go way back on a horse. I worked in the lumber mills when I was little and that's back-
  Johnny:	When you say little, how old were you when you were working in the lumber mill?
  Eloy:	About five.
  Johnny:	Go on. Really?
  Eloy: [01:47:30]	Yeah, because what they used to do, they didn't have a big machinery back then. This was way back in the early... it was about 1945, 46 I guess, when they first got a... I might have been going on six. But they used to have horses, a team of horses. So they'd take the horses up to the top, hook them onto the logs and he pulled the logs all the way to the bottom, but they needed somebody at the bottom to unhook the horses and bring the horses back up. So that was my job. I would run behind the horses-
  Johnny:	A little kid?
  Eloy: [01:48:00]	Yeah. I would run behind the horses and the log, in case he got tangled up, somebody could pull the chain or whatever. And then you take them down to the bottom and unhook the chain and they just go down into flume or a skid thing and you go on, and I'd get on the horse and ride the horses back up and I get to run down the hill again. That's what I'd do all day long. After that we moved from there. They pretty much clear cut everything that was up there, so we moved from there to... My father, went to work at the Ordinance Depot then. And then-
  Johnny:	What did your mom do?
  Eloy:	She was pretty much a stay at home lady.
  Johnny:	Did you have siblings?
  Eloy:	Yeah. There was a total of nine of us in my family.
  [01:48:30] Johnny:	Nine kids to the family?
  Eloy:	Yeah.
  Johnny:	Wow.
  Eloy:	Yeah, there's four boys and three girls left. So there's no one to... it's the other way around. Three boys left and four girls left. Two have passed on.
  Johnny:	Where were you, in the middle somewhere or-
  Eloy:	No, I'm right at the top.
  Johnny:	You're right at the top, you're the eldest?
  Eloy:	Yeah. I'm the one that took the brunt of stuff. Got blamed for everything, even if it wasn't your fault, it was your fault, because you was the oldest, "But you should've known better."
  [01:49:00] Johnny:	Right. Now, when you're a young kid working, what about school?
  Eloy: [01:49:30]	Back then, school was lik a one room school house, and at five, I still wasn't in school. I didn't go to school, because I kind of missed that part where you're almost one year older than you're supposed to be when you go to school because you miss them by a couple of months, they don't let you enroll. So I was one of those kind of guys, but I picked up stuff. But what was good about then is back then is in this little town where we were out on the farm, that's where I started school where my grandma owned a farm, it was called Yellowstone, Colorado. It's not Yellowstone National Park. It's Yellowstone, Colorado.
  [01:50:00] [01:50:30]	And they [foreign language 00:16:41], and what it is, is just a bunch of sandstone cliffs all long, it's like a Valley up there, it comes off the top of the mountain. And they lived up there. And then it was the same old conflict. The property had belonged to different people for a lot of years. There's a lot of Indian people up in there and they lost their stuff because the Texas investors or ranchers, I guess a lot of Longhorn people came into that Valley and what they did was they bought up the land way up at the top and then they shut the water off. Because at that time, people would share the water like, "Okay, you got water on Tuesday, Wednesday I water, Thursday he water."` And that was life, but as soon as they bought the property up on top they just dammed it up, started... So they pretty much stopped every...
  	They bought the top and he bought this and it's kind of like a totem pole in reverse, they bought it, but they ended up with a whole Valley. So pretty much, the people that were left that were growing, because most of them grew their own crops. They grew beans, potatoes, and a of seasonal, dry kind of land crop stuff, corn and I don't know, a bunch of other... I can't remember everything that was growing, wheat.
  [01:51:00] Johnny:	So did you have interaction with other Indian kids, native Americans in that area?
  Eloy: [01:51:30]	Yeah. They used to have... they were like powwows, but not powwows. They were more like gatherings. You go there and you know, everybody share fried bread and the kids would race on horseback, have lay wrestling contest. And it was just kind of a get together. Actually, I guess they were maybe market days, because I remember people would take whatever they had, like whoever had chickens, they took eggs. Wherever had milk, took milk. Whoever had material. It was a barter kind of a system like, you need this and you need this and this costs you this much, you got the credit coming. And there was no money exchange. It was pretty much a-
  Johnny:	Kind of the old Indian way then.
  [01:52:00] Eloy: [01:52:30]	Yeah. And most of the people there, they had any kind of a parcel of land and stuff, like there was a lot of older people, and their kids, they grew up and they boogie. As soon as they was old enough to get out, they was gone. They never came back. They just [inaudible 01:52:14], they had enough of that. It was hard work. But a lot of those people, they would have been probably left out in the cold, but they had kind of a cooperative thing where the people would go buy and say, "Okay, it's harvest time." And they say, "It's going to cost us 10 bucks to get this big old harvester over here." They said, "So you line up your stuff, you line up your stuff, you line up..." And one day, everybody from down below to the ranch, they start at the top and one day they pretty much will call the five ranches if everybody got in together and it only cost them 10 bucks.
  Johnny:	Wow. Were you involved with that at all, as a kid?
  Eloy: [01:53:00]	Yeah, we would have to grab the sheaves of the wheat and stand it up in line so they can go blow it out, but it was all that stuff. As a kid, I don't think that there was any such thing as child labor. You was old enough to pick up your own stuff, you was picking up your own stuff.
  Johnny:	Right. And it sounds like there was a sense of community where when you grew up, you knew a little bit about your Indian ancestry. I mean, was it talked about in the family?
  Eloy: [01:53:30]	Yeah. Yeah. Well, all the grandmas, pretty much, most of them talked their own language, and they would sit around, that's when they did the blankets. Most of the people still had their own looms, and that was like winter work. And I don't remember seeing any of the elder ladies or the younger ones not doing something.
  Johnny:	Was that passed down to you, do you remember your grandmother working a loom?
  Eloy:	Yeah. Yeah. I still got some of her stuff.
  Johnny:	No kidding.
  Eloy:	Yep. Yeah, I still got something.
  [01:54:00] Johnny:	And so that history, that Indian history was passed down to you as a young boy?
  Eloy:	Yeah. I can still fix them. I never worked on it, but I used to fix hers whenever it broke, and I used to watch her thread and stuff. But all that stuff, just after a while, whenever stuff busted up people just didn't take care of a lot of stuff.
  [01:54:30] Johnny: [01:55:00]	I got to say that, there's a video that they've interviewed some of the occupiers, and this one guy in the video says that he was watching TV and he turned to his mother after watching the coverage of the Indians on Alcatraz, and he turned to his mom, and he said, "I wish I was an Indian I'd go and help them." And she turned to him and said, "Well, son you're half Comanche." He never knew that he was native American until seeing that on the TV screen. And he came to Alcatraz and learned what it was to be an Indian. But it sounds like you did have that instilled in you from early on.
  Eloy: [01:55:30]	Yeah. Well, I think that in those communities, because it was different, even 4th of July, which is kind of a... Back then they would get firecrackers. That was the only time I remember they always had firecrackers, but there was a place that was called... Kind of reminds you this place, because they always had the top of the mark. This was the top of the hill and they used to call it Tope, because it was La Veta Pass. If you were coming from Four Corners, you'd have to come down this past to get down into Walsenburg and [inaudible 01:55:42] and all the little... down Arkansas Valley, down the highway 10.
  [01:56:00]	But that place up there, they would have all the fireworks and every year people would come from everywhere and they'd come on horseback. Most of them would come on horseback. And it was just like a giant trading post and everybody had beef jerky, deer jerky. I mean, anything that... and it was there. Their handiwork, if you needed furs, rugs, whatever, it was all there.
  Johnny:	Was it almost like a powwow, kind of like the Crow nation has their big fair, Crow fair?
  Eloy: [01:56:30]	It would be like a powwow, because they would dance. I mean, they had everything. Most of them didn't have the regalia, but a lot of them did have regalia and stuff. But most of them just... If they came from the upper area where there was a lot of gear, there was a lot of leather work done. Purses and dresses, a lot of nice, beautiful looking dresses, buck skin coats and shirts. There was a lot of that because a lot of them live in areas where the deer were plentiful. There's a lot of deer up there. You never even had to use a gun to kill a deer up there. You get up early in the morning when they're sleeping, you head out there and whack them with a shovel. Boing.
  Johnny:	Wow.
  Eloy:	That's how my uncles used to hunt.
  Johnny:	No kidding.
  [01:57:00] Eloy:	He said, "Them Rangers can't hear the shovel," you know what I'm saying? Boing. When you get up early in the morning and they're laid up in the alfalfa. They ain't even probably hear you coming up on them, man.
  Johnny:	No kidding. Well, and you mentioned termination program. So it doesn't sound like the government was really laying anything on folks in your area, at least. The people were doing Indian crafts and meeting and...
  [01:57:30] Eloy:	Well, the termination, I don't think it affected the people doing the crafts, because a lot of those people kept on doing what they were doing and they're still doing it, even the ones that were here. A lot of people that were terminated that they shipped out here, never made it back to the reservations.
  Johnny: [01:58:00]	Well, that's what I was going to ask you too, because you weren't on the res, but you still had a connection with your Indian past. But a lot of people were moved off the reservations and came to the big cities across the United States, and that's why Oakland in San Francisco, in the Bay Area had a huge population of American Indian.
  Eloy:	Yeah. Well actually, San Francisco had the Friendship House, that burned down maybe not too much before the Alcatraz takeover. But Oakland is probably one of the oldest. I think it's the oldest outside of New York, the Friendship House that's over in Oakland. And they started out on, I think it was Telegraph. They moved there a couple of times. They moved to where we're at now around 1955, I think.
  Johnny:	Well, when did you come to the Bay Area?
  [01:58:30] Eloy:	I came here in the sixties, early sixties.
  Johnny:	Okay. So all before that it was in Colorado or-
  Eloy:	Yeah, pretty much in Colorado. I grew up and got married.
  Johnny:	How old were you when you got married?
  Eloy:	I was 17.
  Johnny:	17?
  Eloy:	Yeah, and my mom and dad was going through a lot of stuff. So me and my wife kind of took over the family to keep them from getting sent off, shipped out.
  Johnny:	So you had eight siblings-
  [01:59:00] Eloy:	Yeah, we were instant parents. But they all turned out pretty good. They all turned out pretty good.
  Johnny:	So we jump from six, seven years old, you're working horses. So you went basically through grammar school, up into high school?
  Eloy:	No, I made it as far as the eighth grade, and then I didn't want to go back to school, it was too much of a hassle and my mom needed help. I needed to go to work. So-
  Johnny:	So what did you do?
  Eloy:	I used to go to work in the broom fields where they make brooms.
  Johnny:	Oh, really?
  [01:59:30] Eloy:	Go pick up that broom corn and just stacks and stacks. They charge you by the weight. That stuff don't weigh much, man. But you got to work hard to make a few dollars. But they would hire you. You needed-
  Johnny:	How old were you when you were doing that?
  Eloy:	I was about 13 when I started doing that. But I already had my own car.
  Johnny:	At 13 you were driving?
  Eloy: [02:00:00]	Yeah. 14, I got kicked out of the house when my dad came back and he started back in his old ways, and I stuck up for my mom and I told him, "Man, you can't be doing that all the time." He said, "What are you going to do?" And I said, "Nothing," I said, "but you can't be hitting her no more. If you want to hit on somebody, hit on me." Anyway, it was turned down that he didn't hit me, I didn't do nothing, but my mom said, "You know you're going to have to leave." And I said, "Yeah."
  Johnny:	So you were on the road at 14?
  [02:00:30] Eloy:	Yeah. But I had been working a couple summers, I used to go work with my uncle at his farm. And he'd basically take me off the streets, is what he would do, keep me out of trouble, because would've really got in some serious trouble if he hadn't done that, because my dad was in between doing some other stuff, and it was hard. So he pretty much...
  [02:01:00]	He used to work for the County as a heavy duty grater operator, machine operator. And he'd take me down to the County and tell me, he said, "Well, you clean up all this grease and stuff, clean up around there and I'll give you a few dollars." I'd go down there and I'd clean up and then a guy that was running the shop, he had this old car in the back and I kept telling him, "What are you going to do with that old car? What are you going to do with that old car?" And he said, "One of these days I'm going to fix it. One of these days I'm going to fix it." So I worked there for about six months in the evenings and stuff, go by there all the time and a couple of summers and bought the car one day and told me, "Take it apart." He said, "I'll pay you to take it apart." So I got underneath and took the whole thing all apart.
  [02:01:30]	I was about 12 then I guess, but I was already pretty active with tools and stuff, by just learning how to ranch, you had to do everything. You had to fix everything and they actually had their own blacksmith shop where you make your own stuff with the forks and stuff, you fire up your own steel. I learned all that stuff when I was little, make horse shoes. In fact, I think I still got a couple of horse shoes I made when I was kid. So all of that stuff, you just learned it.
  [02:02:00]	So after I took all the car and then I was there to shop just watching my uncle and them, just watching them do the machine, I got to move heavy equipment around for him. I just move it, and they'd come in the yard, they say, "Gas it up, kid." So I just move it over, gas it, do whatever I had to do, fill it up, park it. And so I learned all their stuff.
  [02:02:30] [02:03:00]	I took the car apart and he sanded everything down and took all the rust off, undercoated it and then he made me put it all back together and stuff. Got it all back together. And I was about, I guess I was 13 and he tell me, he says, "You came out at eighth grade kid," and back that can in Colorado, you can get a license at 13 if you worked on a forum, they give you a farm license. You could drive on a highway if you had a 18 or somebody older to drive on a highway, but on a farm, as long as it was a County road, you can drive anywhere. You could tear up them County roads in your own car. So anyway, when I turned 13, the guy had the car all pretty much put together and he gave it to me.
  Johnny:	Nice.
  Eloy:	Yeah, it was a little 1946 Chevy, a coupe.
  Johnny:	Wow.
  Eloy:	Had defender skirts on it, sun visor, big old-
  Johnny:	Two door?
  Eloy:	Two door, the deluxe one with all the little trim on it. It was a nice little car. And what I did is I took the backseat out of it. I took the whole backseat completely out of it and I had a big old mattress, big mattress back there and took-
  Johnny:	And that was your pad.
  [02:03:30] Eloy:	That was my house.
  Johnny:	So you grew up pretty fast then, man.
  Eloy:	Yeah.
  Johnny:	You're on your own at 13. How do you meet your wife?
  Eloy:	Actually, I'd already met her before-

 

Indian Land!

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA 18488

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"Alcatraz was the beginning of a statement of Indian people and it was also giving permission to everybody in Indian country that it's okay, you can stand up for your rights" -Jonny Bearcub

 

• Jonny Bearcub and Geneva Seaboy

  
  

  Jonny Bearcub and Geneva Seaboy discuss Native American Rights and lands along with their memories of time spent as original occupiers of Alcatraz during the Indian Occupation.

  Date created:

  01/16/2024

  Audio Transcript

  Jonny Bearcub: [00:00:30]	We'd like to introduce ourselves. We've been asked to come here for the hundredth anniversary of the US Park Service. They're having the 45th anniversary of the original occupiers of Indians of all tribes. And we got the invitation to come. And so we came. I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Jonny Bearcub. I'm from the Assiniboine and Sioux Nation, from the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Indian Reservation in Northeastern Montana. And this here is?
  Geneva Seaboy:	My name is Geneva Seaboy. I am Chippewa and Sioux, and I'm an enrolled member of Sisseton-Wahpeton tribe from Sisseton, South Dakota.
  Ranger John: [00:01:00] [00:01:30]	And I'm Ranger John, here to ask some questions, I guess. You're doing such a great job here. I don't even know if I need to be here. But I've really enjoyed listening to both of you ladies this evening here. We have heard some great stories and I think it's fun to be on Broadway and to see both of you guys in that historic photo, Look magazine. We picked you out and there you are right on Broadway. So here we are. What is it, about 10:30 at night? The night before the gathering. And we've got about 20 people spending a night out here. I just thought it'd be fun to come over here on Broadway. It's quiet and nice. And maybe just get a couple stories from girls and how you came out. Jonny, you told me you basically hitchhiked up here from LA or you got a ride with John Trudell? Tell me the story.
  Jonny Bearcub: [00:02:00]	It was really interesting. When I came out here, I was not a student and there's a heavy emphasis on the university students who had a major impact on how my life went in the future. But I happened to leave my reservation and go to Lynwood, California to visit a cousin of mine, Julie Lily, and she was on relocation. One weekend, we just happened to go to a party with a lot of UCLA students. And there was a young woman there who had the UCLA vans, and she was trying to get the students to go.
  [00:02:30]	Earlier the morning of the next day when everyone was still having a good party, she said she was willing to take anyone. I said, "Well, where are you going?" And she said, "We're going to San Francisco to support the Indian students up there who have overtaken Alcatraz Island." I said, "I want to go." I said, "Can I go?" She said, "Sure. I'm taking anyone who's willing to jump in and go with us." So I jumped in and I came up here and when we were getting on the boats to come across, I just happened to get into the same boat that had John Trudell and Louella, and Maury and Tara. And I rode over on the boat with them and help Lou with the kids and came to Alcatraz Island and stayed here and became one of the occupiers. And I was here for about 11 months.
  Ranger John:	Wow.
  [00:03:00] Geneva Seaboy: [00:03:30] [00:04:00]	I came out in April of 1969. I had a brother that was out here on relocation program. I started meeting people from San Francisco State and getting ready to go to college. I started to meet a lot of people from April up until the November 20th, the landing started. So I already knew people and was part of the planning and I knew this thing was going to go on. It's very interesting. I met a lot of people from all over. And the night had happened when we went to Sausalito and my friend and I, [Gail Treppa 00:03:38], we... The captain of that ship, sailboat at the time, didn't want any women or children on his boat. And so there were mattresses rolled up and so her and I snuck on, jumped in the middle of the mattresses and hid there. He was looking all over, said, "I don't want any women or children on this boat." And so we hid in the middle of those, jumped in the middle of the mattresses and laid down and he was searching all over. We could feel him kicking our mattresses but we sat tight.
  [00:04:30] [00:05:00]	Everybody was jumping off the boat and then at the last minute they said, "Clear!" So we jumped off and jumped onto the dock and the guy says, "I said no women or children!" When we got on the dock, the caretaker, I think his name was John, came running out ringing his little bell, "Mayday, mayday, mayday! You guys have landed." And he was so nice. But of course, he was the only person on the island. So I guess he had to be nice with all these Indians that were landing. But he said, "You guys can sleep over here." And felt pleased that we could sleep because previously there were two attempts at some Indians coming out, and it was a mock. I think it was just symbolic at the time. But on November 20th was the big landing of all these people. I think there was 80-some people, they say. And that's when we took it over.
  Ranger John:	So you were one of the original, first people to arrive?
  Geneva Seaboy:	Right [crosstalk 00:05:22].
  Ranger John:	And where did you meet again? You told me over in Sausalito?
  [00:05:30] Geneva Seaboy:	It was a no name bar over in Sausalito. That's where we came to the island from. So we snuck in early morning of November, 20th; was had to be about three o'clock, four o'clock in the morning.
  Ranger John:	Wow. And when you... Go ahead.
  Jonny Bearcub: [00:06:00] [00:06:30]	It was really interesting because the news spread really fast throughout the university crowd of students. And before you knew it, once they had made their landing more and more people began to come and more and more people actually stayed out here. It was really an exciting time. It was one of the times that we talk about. And Geneva and I have known each other since. Since we met here at the Island, we've known each other throughout our lives. And when we've revived our memories and we've talked about this place, it was like this was the first year that the Indians had taken over the occupation of Alcatraz; I would say were the golden years. It was just an amazing time for the cohesiveness and the care that everyone took for each other, and everyone pitched in and did a lot of work. Whatever you had to do you did. A lot of things happen there.
  [00:07:00]	It was really interesting today as we were touring the island going in different places, we'd stop and we talk about stories or things we remembered, buildings that are no longer here that were there before, people we remembered who have died since then, people that we know of who couldn't attend this reunion because they're too elderly or they're too ill. And we hope to take those stories back to them. But there was so much that happened and so many different things and so many really unique people at that time.
  [00:07:30] [00:08:00]	One of the things that I remember that we were talking about was they said, "What was some of your best memories?" I think one of the memories that really stands out in my mind is how we used to climb on top of the roof of the prison here." And today, it's really strange to see all these lights outside there, because we didn't have that many lights at that time. And we'd climb up on top of the prison when it was really dark, and we'd all sit up there on the roof and we'd sit there and look at all the lights in the bay. And it gave you a lot of time just to sit and think and to really analyze and wonder what are actions that were taken by the initial folks who came out and then those of us who came later to support them and stayed here to support them, the ramifications and the ripple effect that that would have on people, and to think about what was going on when the students would gather.
  [00:08:30]	One of the things that really impressed me a lot was when we were living here and they would have the strategy sessions would all come and the student leaders would be there. There'd be Lenita, there'd be Al and John, and just a bunch of them would be there talking, Richard, and they would strategize. Everyone had their input. And then they made a plan or they drafted papers or took minutes, did a whole bunch of different things. And those of us that were younger stood there and watched that. We really learned a lot from that.
  	And so sitting up on the roof of the prison here and looking out at the bay and all the beautiful lights and everything, you really had a chance to be digest and think about what it was that they were doing, and how much of an impact that made upon our lives.
  Ranger John:	Jon, you were what, 18?
  Jonny Bearcub: [00:09:00]	I was 18 years old when I came out here. I had my 19th birthday in February of 1970 here on the island.
  Geneva Seaboy: [00:09:30]	I was also 18 too. And it was students from the Bay Area and surrounding areas that came, Fresno. Because it was organized by students and so it was a lot of contact. We call it mocks and telegraph, where word just spread. And the day after we landed, people were already coming out to the island to support. The night we landed was scary in a sense, it was exciting. But it was also scary because we were breaking the law, the federal property and the Coast Guard was surrounding. But we were having fun but yet fearful.
  [00:10:00]	What I really saw was the students were working together very cohesively, and everybody that came took on a role in terms of making this successful in whatever way that they could and knew how. The skills that they had they put to use. They had the leadership. And so those that weren't or didn't care to be in the leadership role, they did what they had to do. People said, "Well, I'll do the cooking." And some people do this and some people did this area that they were good at.
  [00:10:30] [00:11:00]	One of the things that I thought was really neat was how these Indian guys got all of these vehicles that had been sitting there since what, 1963? And this was already '69. They had been sitting there. They got them all running and we're driving all over the island and it was just so fantastic. A lot of us say was probably the best time of our life. For me, it was; it was probably one of the best years of my life, the best event in my life. And I've never forgotten it. I've thought about this over the years. I thought about all the people that we met.
  [00:11:30]	Jonny has some documents, minutes, and a list. Gail Treppa and I made... We're at the dock, signing people in, and there's a typewritten list that Jonny has. I think there's a list of 86 on there. And all of those people that are on there, I know all of them and a lot of them are gone, have passed on, which is really sad. A lot of them were my real good friends. Like she said, a lot of them that are on that list couldn't make it. They wanted to come but illnesses. After 45 years people have aged. We're barely getting around the island as it is-
  Ranger John:	C'mon, you walked all the way around the island [crosstalk 00:11:52].
  Geneva Seaboy:	Yeah, but-
  Jonny Bearcub: [00:12:00]	Before Geneva gets too far, when we were touring today and we were coming by, I started teasing her about the bushes because her and Gail Treppa did something when they came on island that the rest of us that came later weren't a part of. But I want you to tell them the story about you and Gail and the bushes.
  Geneva Seaboy: [00:12:30] [00:13:00]	Oh, okay. We were watching the Coast Guard, so we were keeping vigil and watching. We're like security. So she and I, we camouflaged ourselves with all of these bushes and leaves and stuff and all over hair, hats. And we climbed on the side. The cliff over here was all those weeds and flowers and stuff. We were hiding in there and we thought we were really cool. The Coast Guard was coming by, shining their spotlights all over the island. We're sitting there and it never dawned on me until about the other day, I think we're sitting there talking to our friend, Johnny Robinson, who was out here on island, real nice guy. I was telling him about what Gail and I did, and I said, "You know what?" I said, "We both wore glasses and then that was those spotlights were probably reflecting off our glasses" I just thought about-
  Jonny Bearcub:	Forty five years later.
  Geneva Seaboy: [00:13:30]	... forty five years later it just dawned on me. But yeah, one of the things is that the cohesiveness and how people work together and the support we got was just fantastic. And people came from all over the world in support. We just had so much stuff here. We had a fantastic Thanksgiving, fantastic Christmas.
  Ranger John:	I was going to ask, how long did that cohesiveness last, in your opinion?
  Jonny Bearcub: [00:14:00] [00:14:30]	In my opinion, since I was here for about 11... not quite a year. For all the time that I was here, it was there. I felt it was there. We were very active and they organized us into lists of people who would go to the mainland to speak at schools, churches, different places like that. A couple of times I went with Joe Bill to go give speeches snap here and there. When we all gathered together and we decided who was able to go to Fort Lawton to help them take over the Fort Lawton when they did that up in Seattle. And then other times, when we went to Pyramid Lake and Pitt River, it seemed like there was still the cohesiveness.
  [00:15:00]	There was a lot of issues raised, I think, because we had a lot of strong women. Lenita was very articulate. She was aggressive in getting her viewpoint and everything out there. I felt at different times that the media should have recognized the women who were very vocal and very active, but they didn't. The media mostly focused on the leadership that the males gave. And we had some excellent speakers there too. That was a little bit of friction that was created over who was really going to be in leadership.
  [00:15:30]	But when it came downright to the nitty-gritty of getting things done, then I think the cohesiveness was there until later in the spring of 1970; late spring, early summer, when a lot of the students had to go back to the reservations for ceremonials, they had to go back home because school was out, they had to go find work so they could get money to go back to school again in next fall. And so a lot of the folks that held that cohesiveness together begin to go. I know I left and I don't know too much of what happened after I left except it seemed that just solely disintegrated.
  Geneva Seaboy:	All of the originals had left. Again, like you said, education was one of the main reasons a lot of the students left because that's what they were all here for it to begin with.
  Ranger John:	You were going to San Francisco State?
  [00:16:00] Geneva Seaboy:	I was getting ready to go to San Francisco State, yeah. Anyway, I think I left at the end of June of 1970. Because everybody else that was my group... I guess we all had little groups that hung together, all of them left too, so I went back to my reservation-
  Jonny Bearcub:	I think I left the first part of June of 1970, I think is when I left.
  Ranger John:	And you both met here, you didn't know each other before, right?
  [00:16:30] Geneva Seaboy:	Mm-mm (negative), no. We met here and for some reason we connected and we're adopted sisters, Indian do that. And we've been in contact ever since. I don't know, the student spirit-
  Jonny Bearcub:	Our lives have just always paralleled each other.
  Geneva Seaboy:	... paralleled each other. And just came about and contacted each other and-
  Ranger John:	And this is your first time back, right?
  Jonny Bearcub:	Right. This is my first time back since I left. Yeah.
  Ranger John:	Since 1970?
  Jonny Bearcub:	Late spring of '70.
  [00:17:00] Ranger John:	This is surprising to see all this interest in Alcatraz. Did you ever think that this would happen, the public wanting to come out to this old island?
  Jonny Bearcub: [00:17:30]	No. Over the years we've watched different documentaries and we've seen a wide variety of different things. One of the things that we said this year is because we've seen many documentaries, and a lot of the people that are in documentaries we know either came on weekends or they came after we had left because we never recognized any of them. So one of the things that we really wanted to do was to get as many of the original people that had lived here the first year of Alcatraz occupation by Indian small tribes to try to get as many of them to try to come back. But we also knew that a lot of our folks that were from a part of that group had passed away, or a lot of them were really ill and can't make it.
  [00:18:00] [00:18:30]	Like my adopted brother, Douglas Remington, he was a teacher. He taught at the school that was here on Alcatraz. And he was so excited to know that this reunion was happening and we contacted him. We tried to contact Mary Kennedy from Browning. We contacted John Robinson, who's Northern Cheyenne. He was on security and he lived out here when we were here. We tried to contact a lot of the people that we knew. That's how we found out where Joe Bill was and a lot of folks and try to get the word out because we wanted as many of the original occupiers for the first year to come out. Because you hear John's story, and we're lucky that folks have been able to get the native story. You see a few of the other folks but a lot of the other people you never see.
  Ranger John:	You mentioned Joe Morris, Indian Joe; What was he like? What was his connection with the island? Joe Morris?
  Geneva Seaboy: [00:19:00]	He wasn't the verbal or into trying to get himself in the limelight. He did a lot of public relations out there in term in terms of funding, getting organizational support. I think he's the one that got the boats for [crosstalk 00:19:10]-
  Jonny Bearcub: [00:19:30]	The boats, he got clothing and a lot of other things because a lot of folks came out with just nothing. One of the stories I like to tell about is, when you come in and you land there, that big building... A couple of the top floors where were all the donated clothes were organized. They put the clothes and they organized clothes and stuff like that. So people would go up there and go shopping. You go through there and find clothes that you fit. You found clothes and stuff that were there. So we had a lot of different donations and those were organized. That's one of the memories that I have from that.
  [00:20:00]	I also have a memory of persistence and ingenuity from some of these young women who had children. I always think of Luella Trudell, because John was always busy out and about, but Luella had Maury and Tara. And Maury used to have that long, straight, blonde hair and big, brown eyes and little, fat, chubby, red cheeks. They were toddlers and Tara was small and just learning to walk, and she had all this really curly hair. I stayed with them in that one little house there. And I lived with them for quite a while but-
  Ranger John:	Down on the playground?
  Jonny Bearcub: [00:20:30]	Yeah, but Lue came back from the mainland one day and she whipped out these cans of Sterno and she whipped out this little pot and she... We'd always eaten all together with everyone else at the dining hall or wherever they had cooked down at that house, but it was a special day for something. It was amazing what Lue Trudell could whip up with cans of Sterno as her cooking element.
  Ranger John: [00:21:00]	You know that photo that I mentioned, Art Kane, I think, took that photo, Look magazine, where you're all standing and seated here. You're wearing a cool fur coat. Did you get that fur coat out here? Was that a donation?
  Jonny Bearcub:	That was a donation because it was chilly and it was cold that time. And when we were digging around up there we're looking for something nice and warm to get. So I had this big old fur coat that some rich lady had donated and it was a real fur.
  Ranger John:	No kidding?
  Jonny Bearcub:	Yeah, no kidding. So I grabbed it and that's what I used to wear around out here and stuff. Almost all the clothes that we had on for most of the people that were in that picture were from the donations.
  [00:21:30] Geneva Seaboy:	I don't recall packing any clothes and bringing it out here let alone any bed rolls or toothpaste or toothbrush or nothing. I can't recall bringing that stuff out.
  Ranger John:	You guys didn't bring sleeping bags tonight?
  Geneva Seaboy:	No.
  Jonny Bearcub:	No.
  Ranger John:	Did you do that on purpose? Was it historically accurate?
  Geneva Seaboy:	No, somebody-
  Ranger John:	Because we had to get you some blankets.
  Geneva Seaboy:	Somebody from Park Service will get you sleeping bag, blah, blah, blah.
  Ranger John:	Oh, sorry about that. [crosstalk 00:21:55].
  Geneva Seaboy:	So didn't come through, so.
  [00:22:00] Ranger John:	But we got you some blankets tonight. But that's good. That's good.
  Geneva Seaboy:	Yeah, it's fine. It's not that cold out here. I don't recall it being really cold out here. We always had a bonfire and I thought maybe we were going to have a bonfire tonight. Somebody said we're going to have bonfire tonight too, so.
  Jonny Bearcub: [00:22:30] [00:23:00]	Talking about bonfires, one of the things I remember is when we lived out here, there were a lot of American Indians, all different tribes from all over. And one of the things that stick stuck in my mind all these years was down below there, they always had a fire going. And they had these... I don't know if they were bricks or what they were, but they always had this big old tin galvanized washed up there that had water in it. And they would fish and they would bring up crabs. And that was the first time I had ever eaten crab was when... The Indians that lived along the coast knew what was edible out of the sea. And they would do that and they would cook it in that boiling water and we would eat. They showed us how to eat crabs.
  Ranger John:	Nice.
  Jonny Bearcub:	They showed us what clams were edible and a wide variety of different seafoods. We began to love seafood from that time on.
  Ranger John:	You mentioned donations of food coming out. So did you have people delivering food daily out here? What do you remember about that?
  [00:23:30] Geneva Seaboy:	Yeah. They'd come out here. Food would be delivered out here and dry ice. There was a lot of food, mostly canned goods. Dining hall would be full of food, clothing, you name it. It was donated. When we were getting ready to come, ironically we can talk about when we landed and stuff we didn't... I don't want to recall bringing clothes or thinking about sleeping gear, nothing. Here we are packing-
  [00:24:00] Jonny Bearcub:	In our old age.
  Geneva Seaboy:	... toothpaste, toothbrush, pajamas. I don't think we even had that when we landed.
  Jonny Bearcub: [00:24:30]	But one of the interesting things, not only did we get dry goods as food and canned goods as food, but on certain holidays different restaurants from the mainland would bring food out. Like for Chinese New Year, a lot of the Chinese restaurants cooked and brought huge platters of food in that out for us. Thanksgiving, a lot of the Christmas time a lot of the restaurants brought food out there. That was really exciting and really great, because for a lot of us who'd come from the reservations that we hadn't eaten some of that type of food.
  [00:25:00]	It was a new experience. It was a new exposure, and it was really great to have that. It was wonderful. And the generosity and the kindness of the people who... I had not had much exposure to a wide variety of people, so when I came out here on the island there were several things that happened to me for me. I'm from Northeastern Montana and I thought that there were just Crees, Siouxs, Assiniboines, Crows, and Cheyennes, and Dakotas, and Chippewas, and other folks in my area of the country. I had ever heard of Iroq, I had never heard of Pomo. I didn't know very much about Navajos.
  [00:25:30]	I had never, ever seen a Southern Straight Dancer. So when we had our Paleo at Thanksgiving, we had big Paleo, all these people came up here and there were so many different tribes and dancers that had different types of regalia than we had up in our area of the country. So for me, Alcatraz was a very enlightening experience. I learned to have faith and trust in all colors of humanity, whether they're Asians or they were non-Indians or whomever. I also learned that there is more out here in Indian country than just my neighboring tribes, where I'm from.
  [00:26:00] [00:26:30]	The other thing I thought was really interesting when we were talking to Johnny Robinson just before we came... Because we spent two days with Johnny Robinson, talking with him about his memories, because he was unable to come. The thing that stuck out the most in his mind was that he was impressed at how many California tribes there were and how the California Indians were still alive, no matter what had all had happened to them. Even though they were small, they were still here, and they were very alive and very vibrant cultures. And that was interesting for us too, because I had never heard of the California tribes.
  Ranger John:	Geneva, do you have from the occupation?
  Geneva Seaboy:	I didn't take anything other than about five kids.
  Jonny Bearcub:	That's a good one.
  [00:27:00] Geneva Seaboy: [00:27:30]	I'm just kidding. The only thing that I have is just this real fond memories of this event. The takeover was a very significant event for Native American people across the country of all tribes, because they started coming from all over the place. The impact it had on the native people was, it was one of pride. It made them really very, very proud of being Native American. Whereas before I think there was a lot of shame base because of the historical trauma that our ancestors had to experience. And it was impact to individuals and it gave them that sense of, "I want to do something. I want to carry this on."
  [00:28:00] [00:28:30]	And so to me, what I did, how I felt, and a lot of others, was to get my education and continue on helping my people, Native American people, and other people too. So I became a social worker. I got my degree in social work, social behavioral sciences, and a minor in psychology. Jonny here, she went on and got her law degree. So there are many, many others that were in a leadership role, or even that were just out here pursued higher education. That was one of the things I think that was very, very significant and very powerful about this movement on this island, taking over this island. It made me very, very proud.
  Ranger John:	Did you feel that at the time that this was a historic moment?
  Geneva Seaboy:	Oh, yeah. We knew it was.
  Ranger John:	And that you were part of history?
  [00:29:00] Geneva Seaboy:	Yeah.
  Jonny Bearcub: [00:29:30]	I think we felt that at the time... I think that one of the things I came away from here with us, when we were out here, we were willing to die for our belief. And that belief of who we were and our identity really coalesced. I was one of the very, very lucky, young American Indian kids that was raised by my maternal grandparents. And so my maternal grandparents were always reinforcing that identity to me, but when you're around your grandparents all time and they tell you this stuff, you don't really listen to them. But when I came out to Alcatraz, and I listened to the LaNada and all the rest of them speak and talk, it just really jelled. It actually really made sense.
  [00:30:00] [00:30:30]	The other thing it gave me was a spirit of independence and faith. When we were in law school, we got out of law school... Bob Goff is a non-Indian fellow friend of mine. He and I had talked about working on the Crazy Horse malt liquor case. We had met down at the Albuquerque Indian Law Conference that they had, Federal Indian Law Conference. And we had a meeting with a lot of these preeminent up and coming American Indian lawyers. We outlined the case and we talked about working to establish indigenous intellectual property right. Everyone thought we were stupid and nuts because we talked about Traditional Indian Law, because Traditional Law was the indigenous unwritten law of our people. We couldn't get much help from them because I don't think they really believed in us. We took and got a good friend of ours from law school, who lives here in San Francisco, Stu Kaler, to help us and we filed the lawsuit on behalf of our clients.
  [00:31:00] [00:31:30]	We fought that case for 10 years and we got a settlement out of it, but we established the indigenous intellectual property right. And that the unwritten spoken, Traditional Tribal Law was valid in Indian country and in outside of Indian country as far as indigenous intellectual property rights was concerned. I don't think I could've been able to do that type of case and have that type of thinking and be able to look at the things that I know of an Indian country if it wasn't for the Alcatraz experience, because Alcatraz experience helped reinforce the foundation that my grandparents had established in me. It solidified it and it gave me a great foundation upon which to build my life on.
  [00:32:00]	My adopted brother, Douglas Remington, who was a teacher out here at the school, he's from Southern Ute. He's too ill to be able to come here with us today. But he was very active in gay rights and he was very active in the urban Indian community, but he was also active at Southern Ute because he started the radio station, and many other things there and that rippled out.
  [00:32:30] [00:33:00]	A lot of the people here that were among the original occupiers within the first year, many of them became attorneys. Many of them got their master's and doctorate degrees. Many of them sat on their tribal councils. I was on my tribal council. Several others were on their tribal council. Some of our people from here were tribal chairmen. We have so many of us that have really strived hard to gain that education and use education as the modern day weapons to fight the battle for Indian people and Indian rights in one way or the other. I think that is a story that has not been told about a lot of those folks, and now a lot of them are passing. They're not here to be able to tell their stories.
  Ranger John:	Well, I was going to ask you, when you saw the end of the occupation, were you disappointed? What were your thoughts? Did you think that this was going to be Indian land forever?
  Geneva Seaboy: [00:33:30] [00:34:00]	No, I knew it wasn't going to happen because I know the federal government will do whatever they want to do. We know it ended up that way because... But I admire those people that stuck around and stayed here till the end. One of the things that taught me is, I became very assertive. I'm able to stick up for myself. I'm able to stand up to people. I recognize racism. One of the things I also realized too is that, the media can make or break you. I think that was one of the things that happened here too, is somebody turned them off and they went the other way. I think that was part of the downfall too.
  Jonny Bearcub: [00:34:30]	Oh, I didn't believe that we'd really get Alcatraz either, but I think that Alcatraz was more than just possession of this island. Alcatraz was the beginning of a statement of Indian people and it was also giving permission to everybody in Indian country that it's okay, you can stand up for your rights. You have a right to stand up for your rights. You have a right to be heard. We may have lost Alcatraz, but we gained Fort Lawton.
  Geneva Seaboy:	And then other people have said it too is, if you can put something significant... Just like the Statue of Liberty. When you come in from the East Coast, you see the Statue of Liberty is significant. I would love to see a statue out here with the Native American couple, as people come in and say, “This is Native America. Native Americans are here”
  [00:35:00] Ranger John: [00:35:30]	Well, I got to tell you that when people pull up on the boat and see that Indian land on that wall there, and I get many people that will come up and ask me, “What's that about?” We've left that up there as a tool to tell that story of the American Indian. I think I told you tonight that we're going to restore that. We're going to ask the occupiers that were here to repaint that political messaging on the dock.
  Jonny Bearcub: [00:36:00]	Well, I think one of the interesting things about this island is before it ever was a Fort or before it was prison or any of that, this island was a beautiful place for the Indians that were here before white folks ever came, before anybody, settlers or anyone ever came up here. This land here has always been Indian land. But the interesting thing about this island is, as this island had different cultures moving into this area, it took on a variety of different forms and the forms were always one of oppression, like the Fort, where they held the prisoners here, and then it became the prison where they held prisoners here. I think the Indian occupation of Alcatraz was a liberating movement. It was a very refreshing type of movement because there was no violence. None of that occurred here.
  [00:36:30] [00:37:00]	It was young, brilliant, innovative students who had dreams of bright futures, who had no fear, who had a great desire to change the world and felt that education gave them the weapons and the tools they needed to be able to do that. The thing that I think helped that movement was the international press. I think the international press and the American press re-provided the impetus in the very beginning of taking that message out there. When I take a look at that picture where we're all standing here in the cellblock, almost all of the people in here are very young, except for just a handful that are older, but they were very young people who were very idealistic and very hopeful for a better future. I think that over time, we've slowly achieved that.
  [00:37:30] [00:38:00]	I think the thing that the park service should do, or the government should do is to provide a little bit more accessible education about what the Indian occupation did, and have that available as a teaching tool to a lot of the schools in reservations throughout Indian country, not only in the urban areas, but also throughout the reservations, because I think it's a part of our history that we need to remember. I think it's important for those tribes who may have forgotten that they had tribal members who were active out here and participated out here, that their tribe had members who were willing to take the risk, to be able to bring the type of freedom and the expression that we have today that may not have been there, unless we did Alcatraz, we didn't have the takeover.
  [00:38:30] Ranger John:	It is surprising, because I've met younger Native Americans that really don't know about the history.
  Jonny Bearcub:	They don't know history.
  Ranger John:	I swam from Alcatraz years ago with a group from Pine Ridge Reservation. I know a doctor that's trying to promote health and fitness. She brings 10 people out to San Francisco and they train for a weekend and we swam from the island to San Francisco. It's a really empowering thing to learn about the history. A lot of these folks don't know anything about the occupation.
  [00:39:00] Geneva Seaboy:	Well, when I got here too and I was hoping to see a museum of a more literature, more of a history of the Alcatraz takeover by the Native Americans here, and I didn't see anything like that here. I was in that exhibition area down there. There was nothing there regarding the takeover. It was just on that little flyer. They got this one little page. So-
  Ranger John:	Well, we did watch a video, though.
  [00:39:30] Geneva Seaboy:	Yeah. Well, you just showed us, but-
  Ranger John:	That's for the public. We play that for the public.
  Geneva Seaboy:	I think there was a lot of photographers that were out here, and they took lots and lots of pictures and if those pictures could be found, and placed out here like a museum. Have a part of this place be a museum, a Native American curator that could speak on that part when you give tours.
  [00:40:00] Jonny Bearcub:	I don't know where a lot of that material would be, but we had a newsletter that came out from here. There were several issues of that newsletter that were created and printed. I have a sample of it that I brought with me that belongs to Johnny Robinson, but there was a lot of really interesting things. I think that if there was a display area of things, I'd be willing to give my coat.
  [00:40:30] Ranger John:	I'm glad to hear you say that, because I was going to ask you about that too.
  Jonny Bearcub: [00:41:00]	I would be willing to give my coat up to be put in there, because that is a symbol of what a lot of us wore. It's not the army coat that several people had, but it is the green coat. And then in the newsletters and the photos you see the same photos of the same people over and over again and just the same old photos, but there are a lot of photographers that came out here, a lot of foreign photographers and a lot of photographers from the area, a lot of amateur photographers. If a request could go out, and they would be willing to give copies of their photographs, I think before a lot of the Alcatraz original occupiers before we die, or we get senile or forget what's what, if they could identify the people that were in those photos, I think that would really be great. You really need to get that information and that history quickly before all of us are gone.
  [00:41:30] Ranger John:	I agree. That's why I wanted to sit with you on Broadway here tonight, a little bit around 11:30 at night here. You guys are real troopers for doing this. I thank you and I hope that you will come back in the future.
  Jonny Bearcub:	I hope one day my grandchildren and my great grandchildren see this.
  Ranger John:	Yeah, definitely.
  Geneva Seaboy: [00:42:00]	And all the people that are here and we're the oldest ones and we're one of the first occupants and that we're here. I was sad just to look down that list that were coming here to not really know most of these people, maybe there's just maybe four or five people that I know on that list that are going to be like LaNada, Claudine, Crutcher, herself, myself, and [inaudible 00:42:13]. Those are people that came later on, but there were a lot of people here too, so.
  Ranger John:	Ed Castillo will be here.
  Geneva Seaboy:	Ed Castillo will be here. That's another one too. Yeah. We need them.
  [00:42:30] Jonny Bearcub: [00:43:00]	Like John says in that one video, thousands and thousands of people came through here. I have some cousins that came out here, visited for a day or two. But one of the things I always think of is the people who really were the occupiers that lived here every day. That stayed out here for the first year and a half. I think those are the people that really need to be highlighted and many of them are not in the documentaries or the videos that are presented. There's only a handful of people. There are people that are presented in some of the videos where we know that they never lived out here, but they only came out maybe two, three weekends. But they became famous people and they talk about the island. Yes, the island did impact them. The island did have a major impact on their lives and they leveraged as much of it as they could for their personal promotion.
  [00:43:30] Ranger John:	Thank you for being here, ladies. It's been a real honor to spend this time with you here and I hope you keep coming back.
  Jonny Bearcub:	We’ll see, we'll try.
  Geneva Seaboy: [00:44:00]	Yeah, I'm really glad I came back. I never thought I'd be able to come back again and just struck and get up and come out here. But there was a purpose here this time, and so there was a real good reason to come out here because it was a reunion of the alumni. I want to see these people again, and I hope I see some of these people again.
  Jonny Bearcub: [00:44:30]	Not only to be able to see some of these people, but our friend, Johnny Robinson, we sat and we talked with him before we came out, and we'll talk with him when we go back. I'm going to go down to Southern Ute to see my brother and show him all the pictures we took. I'm going to call him on the phone tomorrow. I called him today and let him know what was happening. I'll call him tomorrow and tell him, because they're too ill to be here with us. They can be living vicariously with us and they bring up their memories and the things that they thought and we'll try to tell parts of their story as they tell it to us. I think their stories are important.
  Ranger John:	I do too. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very, very, very much.
  Jonny Bearcub:	Thanks too.
  [00:45:00] Geneva Seaboy:	Thank you for asking us to talk. I'm just so happy to be here.

 

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