It’s been kind of warm out here the last couple of days and the water has been bad in the late afternoon. Our boat is barely holding together at some times, but we make it. The situation is still the same as far as water and electricity with the government. We had a man come out and repair some of our generators, so our electrical situation isn’t as bad as it was last week. Buffy St. Marie bought us 400 gallons of water and sent it up, and we are working right now in any way possible to pick up some more, some way.
Oh yes, another bit of news here. We are going to be applying for foreign aid shortly. And I guess we are going to have to turn and ask other governments to do what the U. S. government should be doing but neglects to do. This isn’t entirely our decision. Somebody out there helped us make it. The decision was made because we came here in November, we came out here and voiced our opposition to what was going on and we had all of these people say, yeah, right on, we support you, you are doing right. Indians have been screwed, so what you people out there are doing is really wonderful, and we are behind you all the way. But we look back at what has happened since last November and somehow this support does not overly warm my heart, because we have all this support and yet the government has come in and taken away the water, the government has come in and taken away all of the electrical power. The government harasses us in the small ways. When we went to purchase our boat, they asked questions like, are Indians citizens, and they make us prove it. And I think the biggest burn is the fact that we do have women and children out here, and we’ve committed no crime, we haven’t advocated the overthrow of the U.S. government by force, or by any other way. We have simply said that there are things that must be changed. And yet, we have whole families out here and the government comes in and just rips off the water, shuts it off, and America just sits back and says, how you doing without water? Do you have enough water? Well, whether we have enough water or not, that is not the issue. The issue is that there is such a thing as right and wrong, and it is wrong to deprive people of water. We are protesting, which, according to the Constitution of the United States, the people have the right to do. We are protesting injustices that have been directed towards us and this is what we get. We are going through this period now. I read in one of the papers or magazines that right now the government is at a policy of not doing anything to upset the American people. They don’t want to rock the boat, so they’re not going to come in right now and rip us off the island, because they don’t want to rock the boat. The American people would get upset if the government would come in and arrest us. But they don’t get upset by the fact that we don’t have water out here. They don’t get upset over the fact that it is unsanitary out here without water, that we can’t keep the places as clean and healthy as they should be, and we would like it to be. We’re out here, and we’ve got things like fire hazards, there’s no water out here to put out things like fires. The water that we do get is brought in small containers, and if anything bad happens, there’s not much defense we have against it right now, but then, it’s not my conscience. ~
SOURCE: Johnson, Troy R, The Occupation of Alcatraz Island, 1996.