As far as the island, we’re holding up pretty well. We have been working pretty closely with the [Bay Area Native American Council] organization here. BANAC was formed by the Indian groups and the service organizations in the Bay Area to deal with the Alcatraz situation, and Alcatraz is a part of BANAC. BANAC has helped us to establish a refrigerator over at the depot, on Pier 40, and things can be brought there, contributions, whatever you feel that we deserve, and we will try to liberate ourselves from the federal government and gain some kind of self-determination.
Meat, things like that, and also we could use tools, things like working implements, if we are going to start remodeling the island. We are going to liberate the land now from some of these buildings here, very shortly, because there are many of these buildings that are unsafe. We need things like cutting torches, to start cutting down some of this old barbed wire, and these big fences. Not only will it make things a little safer here, but it will give us something to do here while we are waiting for our dear old uncle out there to start acting like he should, to start coming around and start dealing with us. We are asking for self-determination, and we are asking for jobs for Indian people, and that is part of the symbolism of Alcatraz. Alcatraz is all of these things you know, it is social, economic, and to an extent political self determination. We want to be free, we want the right to live like free men, as a free people. I’ve talked to different people, you know, and immediately they want to put it in the context of militancy. Militancy is just another white word like democracy is, equality too, all of these beautiful words. We don’t want words, we want self-determination. If you believe strongly in anything, you have the right to be militant. When your back is to the wall, how do you expect people to react? So everything here is cool, we’re still here and we’re still holding out and we haven’t changed any of our ideas about what we want. Someone mentioned to me not too long ago about America having an Indian problem. America doesn’t have an Indian problem. Indians have an American problem. ~
SOURCE: Johnson, Troy R, The Occupation of Alcatraz Island. 1996.