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- Title
Poetic Resistances and the Indian Occupation of Alcatraz.
- Authors
Hickey, Alanna
- Abstract
This essay examines the literary writings produced by Native activists during the 1969–71 Indian Occupation of Alcatraz. Analyzing the contentious historiography of the Occupation, I argue that the activists on the island (who collectively called themselves the Indians of All Tribes) deftly invested in media forms that could contest false narrative accounts reported from the mainland. I follow the circulation of poetry written on the island through its print life in the Indians of All Tribes Newsletter, a literary and informational bulletin composed on Alcatraz, in which activists articulated plans to expand Native-controlled literary and art markets as a financial basis for self-determination. Reading through two archival collections from the Indians of All Tribes in relation to ongoing Native community-building in the Bay Area, I argue that, then and now, the Bay Area Native community has strategically and suspiciously engaged with a consumer base marked by a seemingly bottomless appetite for Native media and a disregard for Native sovereignty.
- Subjects
NATIVE American occupation of Alcatraz Island, Calif. 1969-1971; NATIVE American poetry; POLITICS &; literature; NATIVE Americans -- Sovereignty; COMMUNITIES; 20TH century United States history
- Publication
American Literary History, 2020, Vol 32, Issue 2, p273
- ISSN
0896-7148
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/alh/ajaa003