Right now everything on the island is fine. We are in good shape morally. Morale is high and we are still in the same position as far as electricity goes. We had our lighthouse burned out, we blew some bulbs a couple of nights ago when we went without a lighthouse for a night, but things are running all right again. But our biggest problem we have now is running into this deal about water. We are out of water. I think we have fifty gallons of water left and that is it. So now our biggest worry is getting water. We need water because we have children out here. We need the water for them. We need the water for ourselves.
We need it for sanitation purposes. We can’t flush toilets. Cooking, washing dishes, we need water for these things also. The government hasn’t released their hold on giving us water. They gave us 500 gallons of water a long time ago, and we haven’t heard from them since then. They gave that to us as a sign of good faith. But that’s as far as it got, a sign of good faith, one trickle of water. But we’ll find a way to get water. If nothing else, we have to haul it ourselves in one-gallon containers. We discussed it last night at our meeting, that we’re not going to back down. Water or no water, we’re still going to go all the way. But other than that, everything on the island is going just fine, other than the small water problem. Morale is high, very high. Everyone is still determined that we are going to stay, that we are going to stick around for a while. No park, that’s the number one thing. We still want the deed to Alcatraz Island so that we have control over it, that Indian people have control over it.
The fuel and food situation is still the same on the island. Bottled water is still being brought onto the island. The reaction from the people in the Bay Area has really been great as far as water, because every day we have people coming by and carrying anything from two gallon containers of water to fifty gallon drums of water. As far as electricity goes, we have a generator to supply power for the lighthouse. That’s the way it is running now, I believe. One of our Indian electricians on the island hooked that up and we have a small generator that supplies power for our mess area so that we have a TV in there and we have enough electricity in there for the people cooking. We are trying to get more generators so that we can hook up more power. ~
SOURCE: Johnson, Troy R, The Occupation of Alcatraz Island, 1996.