Indian Land Radio Alcatraz live report from Alcatraz by John Trudell. Trudell briefly mentions the meeting with Bay Area Indian people where it was decided that they were going to support the Alcatraz movement.
Good evening and welcome to Indian Land Radio Alcatraz. This is John. Today I welcome you on behalf of the Indians of All Tribes. We haven’t been broadcasting for about the last two weeks because I had a small illness that I had to take care of. And so after tomorrow night, which, when we won’t be on, we will be back on our regular broadcast schedule.
There hasn’t been too many developments since our last broadcast. Although one of the very important major developments is that we had a meeting a week ago Saturday with Bay Area Indian people and it was decided that we’re going to meet. They are going to back the Alcatraz movement. They are going to back us one-hundred percent. So it’s a good sign as far things are going. Things are starting to work out very well for us here.
I have a copy of the American Indian, which is a newspaper published by the American Indian Center here in San Francisco. I was going to talk about our newsletter. We put one out now on Alcatraz. It’s the Indians of All Tribes newsletter, and we call it Rock Talk. And we just got it all put together. Mr. Peter Blue Cloud worked very hard and put in a lot of hours on this.
I’d like to have Peter [Blue Cloud] here Wednesday night if possible. He couldn’t be here this evening because he’s working on our next edition of the newsletter. We hope to put one out twice a month and it’ll be a donation price for subscriptions, but we hope to be able to print enough up and work it out enough so that we can send these to anyone that cares to subscribe to them. We have a price here in the letter, but I don’t want to quote it because I think the price is subject to change. The plans are that after the first two issues of the newsletter we are hoping to be able to present a twice monthly newsletter with photographs, illustrations, poems and other work submitted by Indians from across our land. All Indian artists are invited to send in any art or written works that may be used in our paper. Articles and reports on all subjects concerning our Indian people are needed. And so we need Indian people out there to be reporters.
Indians of All Tribes must be a means of communicating information and ideas between all of our people. We plan on announcing all Powwows, meetings, elections, etc., which are brought to our attention, as well as letters to the editor and a question and answer column. And another part of our plan already being carried out is printing of special reports to be sent free to all of our subscribers.
Our first such report deals with the first conference held here on Alcatraz. This, the one in December, is a summary of the roundtable discussions which drew so many participants. The special report will be sent to all supporters of our peaceful occupation, and extra copies are available for a donation of fifty cents per copy.
Please write and give us any other ideas you may have for our newsletter, or just write to let us know that this is the kind of newsletter you want. The paper has reports that were submitted by various organizations on the island. We have a poster, well, I envision it being a great poster, but it’s a page. It’s from a woodcut and it was made by Alvin Willey. He’s a 14 year old Paiute, and it has a picture of the San Francisco city skyline, a picture of Alcatraz Island and then an outline of the continental United States. A cross over the San Francisco skyline says, this land is my land. And then around the continental United States, it says, all of it. This is a 14 year old boy who did this. I think that’s really an out of sight page. If anyone is interested in sending for this newsletter you can write to Mr. Peter Blue Cloud care of the Alcatraz Main Office at 4339 California Street in San Francisco. But I’ll try and have Pete on Monday, Friday or Wednesday evening so that we can get into this a little deeper. He’s on mainland tonight.
Alright, now the other paper I have here is the American Indian, which is published by the American Indian Center. And there’s one here about Indians from the Puget Sound area region and Aboriginal American oratory is the title of the article here. But I think that you’ll enjoy this. Among the most peaceful Indian peoples of the Pacific Northwest was the Duwamish tribe, a small body of the Salish group, occupants of the Puget Sound region.
There they had dwelled for generations in comparative isolation, satisfied with their provisions of nature. But as with their an enviable climate, together with the white man’s greed for gold proved to be their undoing. By 1855, the year of the Port Elliot Treaty with the United States, the lands of the Duwamish peoples were at stake, demanded by the white, and when Seattle touched in which inked the terms of this treaty, his people were doomed to reservation confinement, an act which gave birth to one of the best known Indian orations on record.
Yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion upon my people for centuries untold, and which to us appears changeless and eternal, may change. Today is fair. Tomorrow it may be overcast with clouds. My words are like the stars that never change. Whatever Seattle says, the great chief at Washington can rely upon with as much certainty as he can upon the return of the sun or the seasons. The white chief says that Big Chief at Washington sends us greetings of friendship and goodwill. This is kind of him for we know he has little need of our friendship in return. His people are many. They are like the grass that covers vast prairies. My people are few. They resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain. There was a time when our people covered the whole earth as the waves of the wind ruffled sea cover, its shell paved the floor. But that time has long since passed away with the greatness of tribes. Now almost forgot. I will not mourn over our untimely decay, nor reproach my paleface brothers with hastening it. Your religion has written on tablets of stone by the iron finger of your God, lest you forget it. The red man could never remember it or comprehend it. Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors, the dreams of our old men given them by the Great Spirit and the visions and is and it is written in the hearts of our people. Every part of this country is sacred to my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove has been hallowed by some fond memory or some sad experience of my tribe. Even the rocks which seem to lie dumb as they swelter in the sun, thrill with memories of of past events connected with the fate of my people, the braves, fond mothers, glad hearted maidens, and even little children who lived here still love the solitudes. Their deep fastness at eventide grows shadowy with the presence of dusty spirits. When the last red man shall have perished from the earth, and his memory among the white men shall have become a myth. These shores will swarm with the invisible net of my tribe at night, when the streets of your cities and villages shall be quiet and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning host that once filled and still love this beautiful land. The white man will never be alone. Let him be just and deal kindly with my people. For the dead are not altogether powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change of world?
I think that’s really a pretty heavy piece of material there. This was by Seattle, who was a Duwamish from the enormous tribe in the Puget Sound area. I hope to be able to get that for you sometime in the very near future.
A copy of Joseph speech is right after. His people were conquered by general Miles, I believe it was, that was pursuing Joseph up to Canada. I read it a long time ago and it’s really heavy information. Very moving. But Joseph told what he felt.
And then they have Civilizing the White Man, a tribute to Indian culture. This was taken from Our Brother’s Keeper.
You will forgive me if I tell you that my people were Americans for thousands of years before your people were. The question is not how you can Americanize us, but how we can Americanize you. We have been working at that for a long time. Sometimes we are discouraged at the result, but we will keep trying. And the first thing we want to teach you is that in the American way of life, each man has respect for his brother’s vision because each of us respected his brother’s dream. We enjoyed freedom here in America. Well, your people were busy killing and enslaving each other across the water. The relatives you left behind are still trying to kill each other because they have not learned there. That freedom is built on my respect for my brother’s vision and his respect for mine. We have had a hard trail ahead. We have a hard trail ahead of us in trying to Americanize you and your white brothers, but we are not afraid of hard trail.
It was taken from Our Brother’s Keeper. I don’t know who wrote that particular paragraph there, but I believe it was someone from the southwest. One who I believe was from the Navajo people. And it’s right-on reading. They have an article here. Residents had better reawaken. This is concerning the Blackfoot Indian Reservation. I don’t have enough time to get into it.
But this paper, the American Indian, is a monthly paper and well, I’ve been coming into a lot of different papers here and there are a lot of Indian newsletters and newspapers that I wasn’t aware of until about the last month or so. I’m coming into contact with more and more of them and I think if anyone is interested and they want the information on where they can buy these papers or subscribe to them, just drop a line to me here and I’ll relay the information back to you.
Depends on which tribe you would like to have the information on. Like if you would like a newspaper or whatever. I’ll get the information for you as to where you can subscribe to one. Same with Navajo or some of the Native American newspapers from Alaska, the Dakotas, West coast, East coast. It shouldn’t be too hard to find these.
Another picture here, it shows a Thanksgiving picture, but it shows all the people sitting around with the turkey on the table. The man got his head bowed in prayer. And then right under the floor of the house are all these dead Indian bones.
Some pretty heavy material comes out in these books, and it’s time for me to go. So on behalf of the people of Indian Land Alcatraz, I’d like to wish you good evening.
SOURCE: https://californiarevealed.org/do/2b983339-25d3-44ad-ba78-685c9f03d39b
SOURCE: https://archive.org/details/cueth_000366