Reflections of Alcatraz
Abstract
It was 5 January 1965 when I left on the Greyhound bus from my home reservation of the Shoshone and Bannock tribes to go to San Francisco. I was a participant in the Bureau of Indian Affairs Relocation Program, which sent tribal members from their reservations into the major cities of the nation to get work or learn a trade. There were no jobs on the reservation, and the “No Indians or Dogs Allowed” signs had barely been taken down in my home town of Blackfoot, Idaho. Poverty, hardship, and despair had grown to be the way of life on the reservation. As a result of governmental rule, our reservation and people were suffering. I was raised from childhood in an environment of tribal politics. My father was the tribal chairman for a number of years. His resistance to the government’s attempts to steal our water and lands through the Shoshone Nation Land Claims put our whole family in jeopardy. I would help my father write letters to officials to get assistance for our reservation, and it was in this way that I began to understand about the continuing war against our people. It was a very hard time for us all; the 1960s did not bring change. When the BIA offered relocation to the city, I took the opportunity, along with many others who left their reservations. We were not aware that the federal government’s plan to “drop us off” in the cities was another insidious method of depriving us of our reservation lands and membership in our tribes. Some of us knew that non-Indians were exerting intense political pressures to gain more of our lands for their economic benefit.