New Flag Over Alcatraz

Twice during November, a small band of Indians put ashore on the island of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay. Twice, U.S. officials escorted them quickly back to the mainland. It was a different story the third time. Fourscore young Indians ferried to the Rock at night, and instead of being turned back, they were welcomed by Deputy Caretaker Glenn Dodson, who announced that he was one-eighth Indian himself. Thereupon, Dodson directed them to quarters in what had been the warden's house before the Federal Government closed the prison in 1963.

Last week the Indians, now 150 strong, made it clear that they are on Alcatraz to stay. Announcing that they considered their invasion a success, the occupiers and 183 visitors, including Eskimos, Mexican Aztecs and a representative sampling of American tribesmen, gathered to make plans for governing the newly seized territory. Meeting under the leadership of Richard Oakes, 27, a Mohawk who attends San Francisco State College, they discussed, among other things, the legality of their occupation and a center for native American studies that they intend to establish on the island. The Indians are willing to buy Alcatraz from the U.S. Their offer: "$24 in glass beads and red cloth, a precedent set by the white man's purchase of a similar island about 300 years ago."

Though the Indians' offer is ironic, their purpose is serious. The takeover of Alcatraz reflects a new militance among Indians, who seek to dramatize the injustices they have endured at the hands of white America, particularly from the Interior Department's Bureau of Indian Affairs. In a bitter parody of frequently broken U.S. treaties with defeated Indian tribes, the invaders of Alcatraz made their proposal for the few white caretakers still living there: "We will give to the inhabitants of this island a portion of that land for their own, to be held in trust by the American Indian Government--for as long as the sun shall rise and the rivers go down to the sea--to be administered by the Bureau of Caucasian Affairs. We will further guide the inhabitants in the proper way of living. We will offer them our religion, our education, our lifeways, in order to help them achieve our level of civilization and thus raise them and all their white brothers up from their savage and unhappy state."

Primitive Conditions. The Indians have won many white sympathizers in the Bay Area. Local restaurants shipped in festive meals for Christmas, and cartons of donated food arrive regularly at the San Francisco Indian Center, a social headquarters for the roughly 20,000 Indians who live in the Bay Area. Still, living conditions on the island are painfully primitive. The Indians are cooking and keeping warm with round-the-clock campfires and struggling to maintain sanitary facilities. But one Indian acidly observed: "It's still better than most reservations."

The Indians may be getting their point across. Not long after they settled in, Interior Secretary Walter Hickel took Alcatraz off the list of surplus federal property, a move Indians regard as a first step toward winning full control of the island from the U.S. Government. Last week Representative George Brown, a Los Angeles Democrat, introduced a resolution to transfer Alcatraz to the Indians for their proposed cultural center. Ten Congressmen joined him as cosponsors.

There are reports that the Government may be prepared to offer the Indians some land at Fort Miley, on the mainland near the Presidio. The Indians are amenable. "But," says one, "we want Alcatraz. We'd accept all of America back if it were possible." In the meantime, they have raised their own flag over Alcatraz: a broken peace pipe and a crimson tepee emblazoned on a field of azure.

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