Life on Alcatraz: The People Behind the Occupation

When Native Americans with the group Indians of All Tribes (IAT) began their occupation of Alcatraz they had no clue of the widespread social impact that their movement and ideas would bring. There are two distinct periods in the struggle for native civil liberties: these can be most clearly understood as the reservation period and the time in which Natives were afforded rights and land but were considered independent of the unitary body of the United States of America, and the period during and after the Native Civil Rights Movement of the late 1960s and 1970s wherein Naitves were granted limited freedoms and rights. 

Life among the residents of the prison on Alcatraz during the occupation was more difficult than their normal daily routine, but far more comfortable than the conditions that prisoners endured in the same prison only a few years earlier. Natives went aboutt heir daily lives and even seemed to embody a carefree attitude to their illegal presence on government property. Images depict defiant native Americans throughout the Alcatraz complex challenging the strict and confined nature of the space. Children can be seen in many period images, demonstrating the non-violent and freespirited nature of the Natives mission. The Thanksgiving celebration image also contributes to the notion that the occupant Natives were not attempting a violent or terroristic attack on American values or civil liberties, but rather a peaceful protest against the numerous property injustices undertaken against Native Americans throughout the history of the United States.