Luis S. Kemnitzer
San Francisco State University
For “Red Power: 30 Years of American Indian Resistance in the San Francisco Bay Area”
19 November 1999

[At first I thought that the epigraph for this essay would be a paraphrase of Dick Gregory’s comment about his participation in civil rights struggles in the Fifties, that he had sat in for 6 weeks in Woolworth’s waiting to get served, and when they finally served him there wasn’t anything on the menu that he wanted. Then I remembered that for so many Indians, they didn’t want to go into Woolworth’s in the first place.]

Today it’s appropriate that we celebrate thirty years of modern Indian activism by paying attention to Student Activism, the Indian Community, and the occupation of Alcatraz. Those of you who saw “Alcatraz is Not an Island” at the American Indian Film Festival last week will hear a lot of duplication here, because the film makers did such a good job of putting these ideas together. But I want to put just a little different emphasis on a few events and processes that I had some knowledge of, and I hope make a little contribution to this celebration and commitment.

First off, I’m sure that the organizers of this conference didn’t mean to forget the people who were activists more than 30 years ago: Rupert Costo and Jeanette Henry, who were trying to draw attention to the mistreatment of Indian history and culture in scholarship and education; Walter Lasley, who in his own quiet way helped make Intertribal Friendship House a real Indian center, even as it was ultimately a product of the American Friends Service Committee; Cy Williams, who was teaching traditional dancing and music and values; Juanita Jackson, Belva Cottier, the Indian AA groups, the people who organized to put together support and structure for the American Indian Center on 16th Street when the Society of St Vincent de Paul decided to close it; more will be mentioned in the panel on the Indian Community, I’m sure. The list goes on and on, of people who worked hard during the twenties and thirties, when California Indians were sent to the Bay Area on “outings”, through the Fifties and early Sixties, organizing formal and informal self-help groups in response to the latest two-pronged attack on Indian culture and society - the Congressional Resolution enabling and encouraging termination of Trust relationship, on the one hand, and the Relocation and Occupational Training Acts, encouraging and (minimally) supporting movement of people to selected cities with the aim of assimilating and disappearing tribal people into the great mixed-up and nameless urban underclass. The Pioneers into the Bay Area modeled and taught and supported the activists and activism we’re celebrating here today, and I would like to note their hard work and contributions that I know everybody here appreciates.

Second, I want to point out that the American Indian Studies Department, and the School of Ethnic Studies, would not be here without the determination of those students, faculty and staff who participated in the Strike of 1968-69. We should remember that these institutions were won against the same apathy, misunderstandings, and hostility that they face today. The formation of the School of Ethnic Studies was a result of solidarity among the different groups of students and faculty and staff.

Now, my wife said that I should say a few words about the Third World Liberation Front Strike, just in case there are some of you who haven’t heard about it. Well, in the early Sixties, students were independently organizing classes around community activities - for instance, a tutoring manual written by students at San Francisco State College made it back to Philadelphia for students to use. In the 1967-1968 academic year, partly as a result of this experience, and noting gross deficiencies in their treatment in the traditional departments, African-American, La Raza, Asian, and Filipino students started raising questions about the formation of departments oriented toward their history and experiences. These questions and suggestions were met with what I can only characterize as arrogance, hostility, and fear, on the part of the Administration and some of the faculty. Early in the Fall 1968 semester, frustrated by negative responses to negotiations, the Third World Liberation Front called a student strike, this time with a list of demands, concerning the formation of the School of Ethnic Studies, and revocation of disciplinary measures taken toward some of the leaders. About a third of the faculty supported the strike, inviting representatives into their classes in the early days of the strike in order to open discussions with the rest of the students, then moving their classes off campus to avoid the swelling picket lines and still provide the education that the students wanted, some closing down their classes all together. Meanwhile the Administration’s response became more and more violent. The small teachers union held off officially striking until they could come up with a plan that other unions and the Central Labor Council could understand - the disinformation campaign was loud and pervasive, and we had to pass through a lot of propaganda hurdles - for instance, my sister in Oregon read in the paper that the students were striking for the right to carry guns on campus. Finally, shortly after the start of the Spring 1969 semester, the Administration and the State agreed to most of the student demands and some of he teachers Union demands, and we found out how the Administration thinks of education: Nothing went ahead for the faculty until grade sheets for the previous semester were filled out and turned in.

By the time that the Indian aspirants decided to work seriously toward the goals of self-determination in education, the University and the Third World Liberation front had started negotiations, and there was limited room for movement or expansion. The La Raza section agreed to represent them in negotiations, and there was close collaboration between representatives of La Raza and the future Native American Studies students.

Third, it’s important to remember that the Native American Studies Department was not organized, conceptualized, or formed by students already at the University. The original plan for the School of Ethnic Studies made no mention of a Native American Studies Department, no Native Americans were in the original Third World Liberation Front, and early demands and later negotiations didn’t include Native Americans. Some of us associated with the Strike were concerned about this, but since no Indian students came forward, we couldn’t manufacture something that wasn’t there. The brains and fire behind the formation of the Department were citizens of the Mission District. A non-Indian graduate student in Social Science at San Francisco State College was tutoring young Indian children in the Mission district, and came to know a group of young Indians who also congregated at the place where the student was tutoring. These young Indians had all had some contact with college, and had come to San Francisco either on Vocational training, Relocation, or on their own, and had formed a club modeled after motorcycle clubs, wearing "colors" that identified them as "Indians and Half Breeds of San Francisco". Conversation with the student tutor led to interest in the Strike, and in exploring the possibility of participating and working toward a Native American Studies Department. Members of La Raza met with these people, and the Native American Studies Department was put together out of these negotiations and presented successfully to the Administration. Some of the prospective students may have had some college experience, but the vision came from life in the real world. Right from the start, the Founders of the Department took guidance from their Community Advisory Board, so that the structure and content of the Department reflected the visions of those people who had been activists in the community for years before, as well as the experiences of these younger men and women.

Fourth, the continuing grounding in community, tribal, and reservation experience and tradition led to a very sophisticated melding of theory and practice. By default, since no Native faculty had been hired yet, I was given the task of being the faculty of record in this time of transition for the first course in Native American Studies, N.A. 20, although the course content and curriculum had been generally worked out with Richard Oakes, Al Miller, Deanna Francis, Gerald Sam, Bob Kaniotobe, Ron Lickers, Mickey Gemmill, Joyce Rice, and Joe Bill, in consultation with, especially as I remember, Rupert Costo, Jeanette Henry, and Belva Cottier of the Community Advisory Board. We set up the class as a forum to talk about directions that the Native American Studies Department could possibly take, and as a place where Native American students could examine the various traditional academic disciplines to discover what in their content and methodology could be useful in the development of Native American Studies as a discipline. On the first day of class over a hundred students appeared. I passed out a sign-up sheet and told the students to write their name, tribal affiliation and class level on the list. Somebody asked what to write if they had no tribal affiliation, and I answered that in that case they could not take the class, since it was for Indians only. The non-Indians left and we set to work, all of us having some ideas about what would constitute a curriculum and course content, and all of us wanting to use this course time to work on these questions.

Early in the semester, White Roots of Peace came to town and performed in our class, publicly at SFSC, and at other venues in the Bay Area. The White Roots of Peace was a traveling company that originated in the Seneca, bringing its message of unity and continuity to Indian communities throughout North America. Their spoken and sung statements impressed everybody who witnessed them, and Richard Oakes, whose Mohawk heritage was in the same Confederacy, became inspired.. After their visit, he questioned the traditional university/academic structure and approach even more. Of course, he wasn’t the only one of the student group who raised these questions. The point here is that the founders of the Native American Studies Department were skeptical of academic traditions from the start, and their ties to Indian communities and traditions, including traditions about ways of teaching and learning, encouraged creative approaches to structure and content. These ties also made it possible and inevitable that their vision result in the occupation of Alcatraz.

Fifth, the student activism that led to the formation of the School of Ethnic Studies, and the Native American Studies Department, and that culminated in the occupation of Alcatraz, happened in a context of ferment and activism in general. I may be overstating the case, but I think that the White Roots of Peace, through Richard Oakes’ charisma, inspiration, and historical connection to the message, provided the hook that put this student group into the continuation of local interest in Alcatraz as a focus of concern about land, self-determination, education, and cultural survival. But we can’t leave out the excitement and energy continuing from the Strike, and the general interest in direct action in the non-Indian as well as Indian populations. Just to put all this in a context: On the same day that five Lakota homesteaders landed on Alcatraz to stake their claims in 1964, negotiators reported the end of a long sit-in at the Sheraton Palace that resulted in a non-discriminatory hiring policy, and the week before that, Bob Satiacum (Puyallup) was arrested for exercising his treaty fishing rights in Washington (San Francisco Episcopal Bishop JA Pike's aide, John J Yargan, and actor Marlon Brando were also arrested with him). The week before the 1969 occupation of Alcatraz, more than 100,000 people marched in San Francisco to end the war in Viet Nam. In fact, one of the legacies of the Indian activism of the Seventies is the growing recognition on the part of non-Indians of the crucial role of American Indian traditions and legal relationships in the protection of the environment, and another is the recognition of the embedding of the ideology of racism toward Indians in Asian foreign and domestic policy.

Old people like to tell stories and gum over the past as they remember it, whether the younger people within hearing are interested or not, and whether they have learned anything from their good fortune in surviving or not. One thing I did learn a long time ago, was that the more you find out, the less you know. But a few things have impressed me about those times and these. One, what looked to me as the most creative parts of student activism were those that had their roots in the reservation and SF Bay Area Indian communities. Next, the University, as academic society and culture, is a mixed blessing: on the one hand, it’s a place where people can learn from one another as well as from previous generations in a relatively safe environment, but on the other hand it’s definitely the voice of the dominant culture and is slow to change, and students are at risk of learning things they don’t really need or want to learn, along with the things they need. Also, some of the most profound and meaningful teachers haven’t gone to college. Third, what Indians gained, they gained as a result of making their goals and methods themselves as Indians, but with help in solidarity with other non-Indians. And last, it’s becoming increasingly evident that any gains that non-Indians make in the future will depend on recognition of Indian aims and methods, and solidarity in that context.