In the early morning hours of November 20, 1969, 78 young Indians arrived on Alcatraz, in San Francisco Bay, and declared that the island was now Indian land. Only five years earlier, six Lakota men had taken over the abandoned federal prison on the island, similarly claiming it for their people. That protest was treated as a joke by the government, the public, and the media. By the late 1960s, however, Indian activists were not so easily dismissed. Drawing from the example of the African-American civil rights movement, they had become far more confident and determined. Reflecting the new sophistication in Indian activism, the second occupation drew a far different response than the first. For 19 months, the second group of Alcatraz protesters were able to air their many grievances to the world, as reporters, attracted by their photogenic and articulate spokespeople, flocked to cover the standoff.
The success of Alcatraz inspired Indians across the United States to organize protests to demand better treatment from the government and non-Indian society. In 1970 alone, Indians staged scores of takeovers, including the seizure of the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters in Washington, D. C., the establishment of a protest camp at the Badlands National Monument, and the symbolic occupations of Mount Rushmore and Plymouth Rock. But the most dramatic protest in the aftermath of Alcatraz occurred in 1973 at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, the site of an 1890 massacre of more than 300 Lakota at the hands of U. S. soldiers. Supported by Lakota elders, young urban activists of the American Indian Movement took over Wounded Knee, to speak out against the tribal government of South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation, which the protesters accused of systematically harassing the reservation’s traditionalist faction. News reports of the event showed hundreds of heavily armed FBI agents swarming on Wounded Knee during the two-month protest—an image that only helped to reinforce the protesters’ claims of abuses perpetrated by the FBI-supported Pine Ridge government.
By the mid-1970s, the frequency of Indian protests had declined, but their influence was increasingly felt in federal Indian policy. In part due to the public’s sympathy for the demands of Indian protesters, President Richard Nixon expressed his commitment to Indian Self-determination. Originally set forth in a special message to Congress in 1970, the new policy was intended as a complete reversal of Termination, through which the government had attempted to dismantle the reservation system in the 1950s and 1960s. Rather than trying to get out of the “Indian business,” the Bureau of Indian Affairs was now charged with administering more programs to improve Indian health care, housing, and education and to stimulate economic development in reservation communities. Integral to Self-determination was the idea that Indians should be more active participants in deciding what programs they needed and how they should be operated. As Nixon told Congress, “It is long past time that the Indian policies of the Federal government began to recognize and build upon the capacities and insights of the Indian people.”
The Self-determination policy had perhaps its most immediate effect on Indian education. In 1969, a report on Senate hearings titled Indian Education: A National Tragedy—A National Challenge revealed to the nation what had long been clear to Indian parents—that the Indian education system did not serve their children well. The report’s conclusions were put into action three years later with the passage of the Indian Education Act. In addition to provide extra funding for Indian schools, it helped reverse a 100-year legacy of paternalism by calling for Indians themselves to determine what and how their children should be taught. Another crucial improvement in education opportunities open to Indians began with the opening of the Navajo Community College (now Dine College) in 1968. With the subsequent development of the tribal community college system, Indian students for the first time were given the chance to obtain advanced degrees while still living in a Native American community.
In the 1970s, Indians also seized on the court system as another important vehicle for change. Through landmark decisions such as United States v. State of Washington (1974), courts confirmed Indian hunting, fishing, and mineral rights. Many Indian tribes also pursued lawsuits to resolve long-standing land claims disputes. For instance, in Passamaquoddy v. Morton (1975), the Passa-maquoddy and the Penobscot successfully sued the U. S. government for allowing their aboriginal lands to be overrun by whites, and in United States v. Sioux Nation (1980), the Lakota were awarded a judgment of more than $100 million in compensation for the United States’s illegal seizure of the Black Hills. Monetary awards won in court, however, were far from satisfying to many tribes seeking redress to past wrongs. The Lakota, for instance, refused the court’s award, deciding instead to continue their battle for the return of their sacred lands.
World History
