[Indigenous People’s Thanksgiving Sunrise Ceremony, held on the
traditional lands of the Ohlone people, the gathering is a call for
remembrance and for future action for Indigenous people and their
allies. ]
[[link removed]]
UNTHANKSGIVING DAY: A CELEBRATION OF INDIGENOUS RESISTANCE TO
COLONIALISM, HELD YEARLY AT ALCATRAZ
[[link removed]]
Shannon Toll
November 17, 2023
The Conversation
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]
_ Indigenous People’s Thanksgiving Sunrise Ceremony, held on the
traditional lands of the Ohlone people, the gathering is a call for
remembrance and for future action for Indigenous people and their
allies. _
The Teo Kali, an Aztec cultural group, participates in a sunrise
“Unthanksgiving Day” ceremony with Native Americans on Nov. 24,
2005, on Alcatraz Island. , Kara Andrade/AFP via Getty Images
Each year on the fourth Thursday of November, when many people start
to take stock of the marathon day of cooking ahead, Indigenous people
from diverse tribes and nations gather at sunrise in San Francisco Bay
[[link removed]].
Their gathering is meant to mark a different occasion – the
Indigenous People’s Thanksgiving Sunrise Ceremony, an annual
celebration that spotlights 500 years of Native resistance to
colonialism in what was dubbed the “New World.” Held on the
traditional lands of the Ohlone people
[[link removed]], the
gathering is a call for remembrance and for future action for
Indigenous people and their allies.
As a scholar of Indigenous literary and cultural studies
[[link removed]],
I introduce my students to the long and enduring history of Indigenous
peoples’ pushback against settler violence. The origins of this
sunrise event are a particularly compelling example that stem from a
pivotal moment of Indigenous activism: the Native American occupation
of Alcatraz Island
[[link removed]],
a 19-month-long takeover that began in 1969.
Reclaiming of Alcatraz Island
On Nov. 20, 1969, led by Indigenous organizers Richard Oakes (Mohawk)
and LaNada War Jack (Shoshone Bannock), roughly 100 activists who
called themselves “Indians of All Tribes,” or IAT
[[link removed]],
traveled by charter boat across San Francisco Bay to reclaim the
island for Native peoples. Multiple groups had done smaller
demonstrations on Alcatraz in previous years, but this group planned
to stay, and it maintained its presence there until June 1971.
Before this occupation, Alcatraz Island had served as a military
prison and then a federal penitentiary. U.S. Prison Alcatraz was
decommissioned in 1963
[[link removed]] because of the high
cost of its upkeep, and it was essentially left abandoned. In November
1969, after a fire destroyed the American Indian Center in San
Francisco, local Indigenous activists were looking for a new place
where urban Natives could gather and access resources, such as legal
assistance and educational opportunities
[[link removed]], and Alcatraz Island fit
the bill.
Citing a federal law that stated that “unused or retired federal
lands will be returned to Native American tribes
[[link removed]],” Oakes’ group
settled in to live on “The Rock.” They elected a council and
established a school, a medical center and other necessary
infrastructure
[[link removed]].
They even had a pirate radio show called “Radio Free Alcatraz
[[link removed]],”
hosted by Santee Dakota poet John Trudell.
The IAT did offer – albeit satirically – to purchase the island
back, proposing in the 1969 proclamation “twenty-four dollars
(US$24) in glass beads
[[link removed]]
and red cloth, a precedent set by the white man’s purchase of a
similar island about 300 years ago,” referring to the purchase of
Manhattan Island by the Dutch in 1626.
On behalf of IAT, Oakes sent the following message
[[link removed]]
to the regional office San Francisco office of the Department of the
Interior shortly after they arrived:
“The choice now lies with the leaders of the American government –
to use violence upon us as before to remove us from our Great
Spirit’s land, or to institute a real change in its dealing with the
American Indian … We and all other oppressed peoples would welcome
spectacle of proof before the world of your title by genocide.
Nevertheless, we seek peace.”
After 19 months, the occupation ultimately succumbed to internal and
external pressures. Oakes left the island after a family tragedy, and
many members of the original group returned to school, leaving a gap
in leadership. Moreover, the government cut off water and electricity
to the island, and a mysterious fire destroyed several buildings, with
the Indigenous occupiers and government officials pointing the blame
at one another
[[link removed]].
By June 1971, President Richard Nixon was ready to intervene and
ordered federal agents to remove the few remaining occupiers
[[link removed]].
The occupation was over, but it helped spark an Indigenous political
revitalization that continues today. It also pushed Nixon to put an
official end to the “termination era
[[link removed]],”
a legislative effort geared toward ending the federal government’s
responsibility to Native nations, as articulated in treaties and
formal agreements.
Solidarity at sunrise
In 1975, “Unthanksgiving Day” was established to both mark the
occupation and advocate for Indigenous self-determination. For many
participants, Unthanksgiving Day was also a reiteration of the
original declaration released by IAT, which called on the U.S. to
acknowledge the impacts of 500 years
[[link removed]] of genocide
against Indigenous people.
These days, the event is conducted by the International Indian Treaty
Council and is largely referred to as the Indigenous Peoples
Thanksgiving Sunrise Gathering.
Participants meet on Pier 33 in San Francisco before dawn and board
boats to Alcatraz Island, bringing Native peoples and allies together
in the place that symbolizes a key moment in the long history of
Indigenous resistance
[[link removed]].
At dawn, in the courtyard of what was once a federal penitentiary,
sunrise ceremonies are conducted to “give thanks for our lives, for
the beatings of our heart
[[link removed]],”
said Andrea Carmen, a member of Yaqui Nation and executive director of
the International Indian Treaty Council, at the 2018 gathering.
Songs and dances from various tribal nations are performed in prayer
and as acts of collective solidarity. At the same gathering, Lakota
Harden, who is a Minnecoujou/ Yankton Lakota and HoChunk community
leader and organizer, emphasized that
[[link removed]]
“those voices and the medicine in those songs are centuries old and
our ancestors come and they appreciate being acknowledged when the sun
comes up.” Through the sharing of song and dance, they enact
culturally resonant resistance against the erasure of Native peoples
from these lands.
The Indigenous Peoples Thanksgiving Sunrise Gathering also gives
people the chance to bring greater community awareness to current
struggles facing Indigenous people across the globe. These include the
intensifying impacts of climate change, the widespread violence
against Native women, children and two-spirit
[[link removed]]
individuals, and ongoing threats to the integrity of their ancestral
homelands
[[link removed]].
Resistance beyond The Rock
Indigenous Peoples Thanksgiving Sunrise Gathering lands near the end
of Native American Heritage Month, which is dedicated to celebrating
the vast and diverse Indigenous nations and tribes that exist in the
United States. Professor Jamie Folsom, who is Choctaw, describes this
month
[[link removed]]
as a chance to “present who we are today … (and) to present our
issues in our own voices and to tell our own stories.”
The people who will meet on Pier 33 on the fourth Thursday of November
continue this story of Indigenous political action on the Rock and, by
extension, in North America. The more than 50-year history of this
gathering is a testament to the endurance of the original message from
Oakes and Indians of All Tribes. It is also part of a larger network
of resistance movements being led by Native peoples, particularly
young people.
As Harden says
[[link removed]],
the next generation is asking for change. “They’re standing up and
saying we’ve had enough. And our future generations will make sure
that things change.”
===
Support The Conversation [[link removed]]
* Occupation of Alcatraz; Indigenous Activism; Thanksgiving;
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]
INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT
Submit via web
[[link removed]]
Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]
Twitter [[link removed]]
Facebook [[link removed]]
[link removed]
To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]
