Tekst 37: Adam Fortunate Eagle om besættelsen af Alcatraz, 1969
I november 1969 besatte en gruppe amerikanske indianere den tidligere fængselsø Alcatraz – en besættelse, der varede i 19 måneder. Aktionen skulle bringe fokus på de amerikanske indianeres forhold (sundhed, uddannelse, kultur). En af deltagerne denne november var Adam Fortunate Eagle (f. 1929) fra Minnesota, der tilbragte ti år på Pipestone Indian Boarding School og senere fem år på Haskell Indian Institute i Kansas.
Han fortæller følgende om sin oplevelse i bogen Alcatraz: The Indian Occupation of 1969-71, her gengivet fra Peter Nabokov: Native American Testimony. Penguin Books, 1999, s. 367-368.
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The weather on Sunday morning, November 9, 1969, was beautiful and calm. This was a pretty strange thing we were doing. Indian people, twentieth-century urban Indians, gathering in tribal councils, student organizations, clubs, and families, and joined by concerned individuals from all over the Bay Area, with the intention of launching an attack on a bastion of the United States government. Instead of the horses and bows and arrows of another era, we were riding in Fords and Chevys, armed only with our Proclamation but determined to bring about a change in federal policy affecting our people.
At Fisherman’s Wharf we parked and joined a growing group of Indian students. When I learned that our scheduled boat was nowhere around I suggested they stall while I looked for another. Richard Oakes went to the end of the pier to read our Proclamation, with Indians and television crews in tow, while I looked around. Then I noticed this beautiful three-masted barque that looked like it had come right out of the pages of maritime history. Its name was the Monte Cristo, and its owner, who, with tight pants and ruffled shirt looked like Errol Flynn, was Ronald Craig.
When I approached he said, “Hey, I’m curious – what’s going on over there with all those Indians?” I explained the fix we were in, pointing out the media contingent that had come to cover the landing. “I’ll take you,” he said, “on condition we get permission from the Coast Guard and that we carry no more than fifty people. The boat rides deep because of the keel, and I can’t land on the Alcatraz dock. We’ll circle a couple of times, a sort of sight-seeing tour to get your message across, OK?”
After he counted to make sure we were only fifty, he fired off the little cannon on the bow. Here were Indians sailing on an old vessel to seek a new way of life for their people. I thought of the Mayflower and its crew of Pilgrims who landed on our shores. The history books say they were seeking new freedoms for themselves and their children which were denied in their homeland. Never mind that Plymouth Rock already belonged to somebody else. What concerned them was their own fate, their own hopes. Now, 350 years later, its original citizens, to focus national attention on their struggle to regain those same basic rights, were making landfall on another rock.
