# data[].attributes.headline
Resistance by not letting history be erased

# data[].attributes.subject
Resistance by not letting history be erased

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Hidden History: Native American Boarding Schools

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Beginning in 1869 and for the century that followed, hundreds of thousands of Native American children were placed in boarding schools. Removed from their homes and families, these children were forced to assimilate to American culture, with severe punishment for speaking their native languages or engaging in any activity or behavior reflective of their native culture.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How a Native American Resistance Held Alcatraz for 18 Months (Published 2019)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In 1969, the Indians of All Tribes group laid claim to the surplus federal land that was once a federal penitentiary.

# data[].attributes.headline
Analysis of Number of Native Mascots for Sports Teams

# data[].attributes.subject
Analysis of Number of Native Mascots for Sports Teams

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When Samuel Henry was a kid growing up in D.C. in the late 1950s, he and his friends were devoted Washington Redskins fans - they had the jerseys and knew the lore. And as the lore had it, the "reddish-brown tint" of paint on the team's downtown D.C. headquarters came from the blood of Native Americans. "When I was a kid, me and my friends, we really thought that they had captured and killed Native Americans and pasted them all over the building," Henry said. "We were just kids, we didn't know any better. But we really, honestly believed that."

Now, almost 60 years later, the Redskins are enmeshed in a debate about whether their name is a racist epithet and should be changed. Advocates for keeping the name reference its origins: In 1937, owner George Preston Marshall changed the team name from the Braves to the Redskins. Marshall said the change was in honor of the head coach at the time, William Henry Dietz, who claimed to be part Sioux (although that claim is suspect). Critics including Henry say its origins are irrelevant and that the name is racist and demeaning. "I'd love to see a boycott of all things Redskins," he said.

Dan Snyder, the current owner, purchased the team in 1999, when it was fighting its first legal battle over the name. The lawsuits have continued, and earlier this year, the Trademark Trials and Appeal Board canceled the franchise trademark because "a substantial composite of Native Americans found the term Redskins to be disparaging." Snyder has faced mounting pressure to change the name, even from President Obama and George Preston Marshall's granddaughter. But Snyder plans to appeal the trademark decision and says he will "NEVER" change the name. Polling suggests Snyder has the backing to ignore the calls; most NFL fans (and Redskins fans in particular) oppose a name change.

What's considered an outrage in the NFL is embraced or at least tolerated all over the country. While we've been consumed by the debate about the Washington Redskins, we've overlooked thousands of team names and mascots depicting Native Americans, often stereotypically. These teams are not feeling the kind of pressure that Snyder is. To understand the Washington Redskins, we have to understand the Estelline Redmen, the Natick Redmen, and the Molalla Indians, too.

Terry Borning, the proprietor of MascotDB, has kept a database of the nation's mascots since 2006. He gathers his data from a variety of sources, including state high school athletic associations, websites and local newspapers. Borning's database doesn't have every high school, college and pro team in the country, but it does have 42,624 of them. Looking at MascotDB is as close as we can get to understanding how prevalent Native American team names and mascots are across the country.

"There were a lot of interesting mascots where I lived growing up," Borning said. "But those have mostly fallen by the wayside. Some of those things of the past were definitely offensive, but also more interesting than the generic mascots we have now."

I searched the database and found 2,129 sports teams that reference Braves, Chiefs, Indians, Orangemen, Raiders, Redmen, Reds, Redskins, Savages, Squaws, Tribe and Warriors, as well as tribe names such as Apaches, Arapahoe, Aztecs, Cherokees, Chickasaws, Chinooks, Chippewas, Choctaws, Comanches, Eskimos, Mohawks, Mohicans, Seminoles, Sioux and Utes. (Not all teams with the names "Raiders" and "Warriors" are referencing Native Americans, but we spot-checked 20 schools with each name and a majority of each did.)

Some 92 percent of those 2,129 team names belong to high schools (the rest were college, semi-pro, pro and amateur league teams). Of all the active high schools in the database, 8.2 percent have Native American team names.

I reached out to about a dozen of those high schools, and most didn't want to comment on a controversy that hadn't yet arrived. But the conversations I did have suggested that the way communities regard their teams' Native American names and mascots depends on the makeup of the communities themselves.

Estelline High, home of the Redmen, is located in a small town in South Dakota, 24 miles west of the Minnesota border. South Dakota has the third-largest Native American population share in the country, but Estelline hasn't seen the kinds of protests directed at the Washington Redskins. The town has experienced little, if any, controversy over the Redmen name.

The mascot dates back to sometime between 1915 and 1920, when a local newspaper referred to the Estelline athletic team by the color of its uniforms - "the men in red." The name wasn't officially adopted, but the team soon became known by its unofficial moniker, the Redmen. According to Estelline superintendent and high school principal Patrick Kraning, the association with Native Americans didn't come until around 1930. Estelline followed with its own depiction of a "Redman" as a stereotype of a Native American chief wearing a headdress. Events such as the annual naming of a "Moon Princess" and "Big Chief" at homecoming became part of the tradition.

"There's been very little controversy over the team name," Kraning said. "In the '90s there was some discussion about changing the name for a series of schools [throughout southeastern South Dakota] that still referred to themselves as 'Redmen.' But in the end, a lot of us - Estelline included - decided to keep the name and just keep away from any Native American imagery associated with it."

Since then, the only symbol associated with the Estelline Redmen is a logo of an E with two feathers attached. Kraning believes that this change, combined with the fact that Estelline doesn't have a significant Native American population, is why there hasn't been much local debate on the topic.

"There's a community feeling that since the origin of the nickname was not a Native American reference, there's not a desire for change," he said. "If there were a discussion, most people would probably view it as going against 80 or 90 years of tradition."

Natick, Massachusetts, did go against tradition. In 2007, the school board dropped its high school mascot - also the "Redmen" - after an alumna of Native American descent came to the board and said she was offended by the activities surrounding the team she had experienced at Natick High School. The historian for the local Nipmuc tribe told me that the logo and mascot used by the school depicted a "stereotypical northern Native with a headdress," but that depiction bore no resemblance to the actual indigenous people who lived in the Natick area. Nevertheless, protest groups soon sprouted up, claiming that the Natick Redmen honored Native Americans and were an important tradition.

Soon after the change, school board meetings and a town-wide referendum turned the issue into a much broader discussion. The main critique came from the Redmen Forever Committee, a self-described grassroots effort that sought to influence the non-binding referendum. "We added a question to the referendum asking if townspeople wanted the Redmen name restored," said Erich Thalheimer, co-founder of the Redmen Forever Committee. "It won overwhelmingly, but the school committee didn't abide by the town's wishes."

"If it were decided by popular vote, we would have the name," said Anne Blanchard, a member of the Natick School Board. "But we had to take into account our nondiscrimination policy, as well as minority and majority interests."

The Redmen Forever Committee says it won't give up the fight. "We chose the name of our committee very intentionally, very purposefully," Thalheimer said. "This is our town. We're going to live here until we die. We will forever try to re-establish the Redmen name."

While the controversy in Natick stemmed from a decision that affected one school, several states have taken a grievance from a single school and used it to forbid Native American mascots. One of the more sweeping bans so far was implemented with the help of Samuel Henry, the man who grew up earnestly believing that the Washington Redskins had painted their downtown D.C. headquarters with the blood of Native Americans. Henry is currently the chair of Oregon's Board of Education, which instituted a statewide ban on Native American mascots and team names in 2012.

The story goes back to 2006, when Che Butler, a member of the Siletz tribe and a student at Taft High School, raised the issue before the board. Butler said he was offended by the stereotypical and inauthentic manner in which the mascot of a rival school, the Molalla Indians, portrayed Native Americans. He and fellow Taft student Luhui Whitebear, a member of the Coastal Band of the Chumash Tribe, made a presentation at a board meeting asking for a statewide ban on mascots that "misrepresent" Native people, who instead "should be represented with true honor and respect."

According to Henry, the board agreed that "having Native American mascots did not seem like a good idea," but decided to defer the decision.

The grievance was taken up again six years later, when the director of public instruction decided to put it back on the board's agenda. This time around, after some member turnover, the board agreed to ask its chief attorney to draft a proposal for a ban on the use of Native American mascots in public schools. The only dissenting vote came from a woman who claimed that it was too selective, and that devils and saints should be banned as well.

As in Natick, one of the major arguments against the ban came from people who said that the mascots didn't disparage Native Americans, but honored them. Many of these opponents knew little of Native American culture, Henry said. "I asked one of the students who made that argument what the name of the local Native American tribe was, and she didn't know," he said. "To me, that indicated that her reliance on saying that they were honoring Native Americans - that the support for that argument was pretty thin at best."

For high schools, a statewide ban is about as sweeping as it gets. Graduate to the next level, though, and schools have broader authorities to answer to. In 2005, the NCAA implemented its own de facto ban on Native American mascots for all NCAA colleges. The ban focused on a specific list of schools whose mascots were deemed "hostile or abusive," and precluded them from participating in postseason play if those nicknames or mascots appeared on any team uniforms or clothing.

The NCAA had already taken a stand on a similar issue: the use of Confederate flags. In 2001, the organization banned arenas in South Carolina and Mississippi from hosting postseason championships because the Confederate flag flew proudly on their statehouse grounds. After that decision, the president of St. Cloud State University in Minnesota asked the NCAA to impose a ban on Native American mascots.

The NCAA called on 18 schools (out of 1,046 total member schools at the time, or 1.7 percent) to drop their mascots.

Not all of the targeted schools felt that their nicknames or mascots were "hostile or abusive," and the ban was followed by a surge of criticism.

"I must have gotten 2,000 emails from people just complaining about it," the NCAA's executive committee chairperson at the time, Walter Harrison, said. Even almost 10 years later, he still remembers one persistent caller. "He, or she, I don't know if it was a man or a woman, would call my office phone at four in the morning and just play their school's chant until the answering machine cut off," he said.

But the more serious backlash came in the form of appeals. One came from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and its Fighting Illini. The Fighting Illini were portrayed at halftime performances by a student dressed in full Lakota regalia, including face paint and a headdress. He went by the name "Chief Illiniwek," and became the focus of the university's fight against the ban.

Controversy surrounding Chief Illiniwek predated the NCAA's ruling by decades. The university's board of trustees had been quietly in the process of considering a potential mascot change since 2001, and the publicity surrounding the nationwide ban reignited already-existing tension among students and alumni. Lawrence Eppley, who was the chair of the university's board of trustees at the time, said he received hundreds of comments from foundations and alumni organizations threatening to withhold donations. He and the rest of the board figured the only option was to strike a compromise to keep both sides - passionate students and alumni and the NCAA - happy.

Through its appeal, the school was allowed to keep its team name, but not its mascot. Chief Illiniwek portrayers, who had been a part of an official student organization called the Council of Chiefs, could continue the tradition as long as the group no longer had any official affiliation with the university. "One of the things that made it tough to retire it was making sure the fans knew that, if you loved the chief, that was nothing to feel guilty about," Eppley said. "It's just that times change, and there's not much we can do about that."

Ivan Dozier, who currently portrays Chief Illiniwek, said that officially retiring the mascot was the wrong way for the university to respond. He believes that Native American mascots are a way to reach and educate an audience that wouldn't normally be knowledgeable about Native American culture or history. "What concerns me is if you eliminate all references to Native American culture, people aren't asking questions anymore," he said. "Sports fans here are the vocal majority. They're the ones who need this information the most, and now they have no way to go about getting it."

Eight of the schools on the NCAA's list secured vocal support from local Native American tribes to successfully appeal and retain their team names and mascots. Eight others have changed their names and one dropped the use of a mascot entirely. Carthage College changed its team name from the Redmen to the Red Men and dropped all Native American imagery, which satisfied the NCAA's requirements.

Turning the Washington Redskins into the Red Skins is unlikely to appease the team's critics, though. Given that the name is racist by definition and no tribe has come out in support of Snyder, it probably wouldn't pass the NCAA's grounds for appeal, and it certainly doesn't pass in the court of Native American opinion.

But even if the Redskins became the Red Skins or the Red Flyers or the Red Snyders, there would still be thousands of other teams that reference Native American imagery. Whatever happens with the Redskins, there will still be the Estelline Redmen, Chief Illiniwek, and the West Texas Comanches, each upholding the questionable legacy of Native American sports names.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The 2,128 Native American Mascots People Aren't Talking About

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When Samuel Henry was a kid growing up in D.C. in the late 1950s, he and his friends were devoted Washington Redskins fans - they had the jerseys and knew the lore. And as the lore had it, the "reddish-brown tint" of paint on the team's downtown D.C.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | Primary Sources: Letter to Congress from Cherokee Chief John Ross

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In protest of the Treaty of New Echota, Cherokee Chief John Ross sent a letter to Congress in which he voiced his concerns for the nearly 15,000 Cherokees and his opposition to the U.S. government's treatment of his tribe.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | Expansion and Reform: The Indian Removal Act

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | Primary Sources: A Soldier’s Account of the Cherokee Trail of Tears

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Cherokee Trail of Tears leaves a young soldier with vivid memories throughout his years.

# data[].attributes.headline
Nonprofit encourages Native Americans to embrace running

# data[].attributes.subject
Nonprofit encourages Native Americans to embrace running

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | Nonprofit encourages young Native Americans to embrace running

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | Alaska's Native Youth Olympics inspire athletes to excel at traditional skills

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
At the NYO, Alaskan athletes put their physical and mental strength to the test by participating in events such as the Seal-Hop and high kick.

# data[].attributes.headline
African and Native American Resistance in 1800s

# data[].attributes.subject
African and Native American Resistance in 1800s

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

# data[].attributes.headline
Students are beginning to question what is taught in history textbooks

# data[].attributes.subject
Students are beginning to question what is taught in history textbooks

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | Education project aims to set the record straight on historical myths

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | "Sioux Chef" serves up indigenous foods: "It's what paleo wants to be"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | Primary Source: Cities recognize Indigenous Peoples Day

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Some communities have chosen to replace Columbus Day with a holiday that honors indigenous people.

# data[].attributes.headline
New Animated series features Native Alaskan student 

# data[].attributes.subject
New Animated series features Native Alaskan student 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | Alaska Native girl leads animated kids TV show in U.S. first

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The new animated series "Molly of Denali" is the first children's show by and about Alaska Natives

# data[].attributes.headline
More Schools Adopting Native American Cultural Programs

# data[].attributes.subject
More Schools Adopting Native American Cultural Programs

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | More schools seeing new curriculum, funding that favor Native Americans

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
State education initiatives are including Native American supports, curriculum and language like never before.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | It's app-ropos: Ancient Native American trail receives recognition

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A path that brought settlers and natives together

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | Native American Activism in the 1960s and 1970s

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Native Americans united to take control of their own future

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Every year on the morning of Thanksgiving, local Indian tribes welcome the rising sun, honor the traditions of their people and remember the Occupation of Alcatraz by Indians of All Tribes in 1969-71, where they fought to regain their land and demand better living conditions for Indians in the United States.

# data[].attributes.headline
50th Anniversary of Alcatraz  Occupation

# data[].attributes.subject
50th Anniversary of Alcatraz  Occupation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | Joyous reunion for original tribal occupiers of the Alcatraz takeover

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | Then and now: The 1969-1971 occupation of Alcatraz in photos

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
For more than a year and a half, Native Americans occupied Alcatraz Island. Although they were forcibly removed, they galvanized other activists.

# data[].attributes.headline
Celebrating Native American Heritage in photos 

# data[].attributes.subject
Celebrating Native American Heritage in photos 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | In Photos: Celebrating Native American heritage

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Celebrating the rich heritage of Native Americans

# data[].attributes.headline
Drawing Heroes using Native American Art technique - Formline

# data[].attributes.subject
Drawing Heroes using Native American Art technique - Formline

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | Museum guests can see superheroes from a Native American perspective

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A Smithsonian exhibit features works by Jeffrey Veregge, who used an art style called Formline to modify the usual way well-known comic book figures are drawn.

# data[].attributes.headline
New exhibit reflects the changing perception of Indigenous art

# data[].attributes.subject
New exhibit reflects the changing perception of Indigenous art

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | New exhibit reflects the changing perception of Indigenous art

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A new exhibit seeks to change the perception of Indigenous art and its place in the history of American art.

# data[].attributes.headline
Native Americans Telling their own stories

# data[].attributes.subject
Native Americans Telling their own stories

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | Native Americans take control of their story

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Native American Public Telecommunications offers truthful stories about Native Americans.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | Congresswoman Deb Haaland and her historic election victory

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Two Native American women just elected to Congress hope to leave an indelible imprint for others to follow.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Guillaume Decouflet visited the Electric Pow Wow in Ottawa and sat down with A Tribe Called Red to talk about party music, being an urban aboriginal, and upending racist stereotypes through multimedia artwork. Cluster Mag is proud to host his account of the experience; a short film-documentary assembled from his interview and from the audio-video work of Bear Witness, one of ATCR's three members. Guillaume's native language is French, so to reach out to the States, Canada, and beyond, we thought we'd include a French original, and our own English translation. Enjoy.

# data[].attributes.headline
Occupation of Alcatraz - 50 years later 

# data[].attributes.subject
Occupation of Alcatraz - 50 years later 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
It was at one of the United States's most infamous prisons, more than a mile from any shore, that Eloy Martinez found a vision of freedom.

The adrenaline surging in his veins that night felt nearly unbearable. A cold wind whipped his face, and a coastguard blockade patrolled the waters nearby. Nobody knew whether the night would end in cheers or arrest.

But when dawn broke over the abandoned federal prison on Alcatraz Island 50 years ago, on November 20, 1969, a new era of indigenous activism was born. Alcatraz had been reclaimed as indigenous land. That statement would reverberate across the US, inspiring movements and changing federal policy for decades to come.

The protest's architects were largely college students, united under the name Indians of All Tribes. For 19 months they held the island, sketching a blueprint for how the US could be.

They envisioned a centre for Native American studies, to combat colonialism's corrosive effects on their culture. An ecology centre, to reverse the destruction of their land. And a museum, to honour indigenous contributions to the world.

"There was none of the naysayers around you. There were no rules. We could make our own rules. We had the run of the island," Martinez says of that time.

A short man with a puckish grin and a grey, feathered fedora, Martinez still smirks at the irony: A cold, barren fortress, Alcatraz served as the perfect metaphor for the conditions on the reservations indigenous peoples had been forcibly moved onto.

"It's unsustainable. No running water. Nothing grows to sustain you. Doesn't have any animals on it. It was the same as a reservation," he explains.

And yet, the original occupiers saw Alcatraz Island as a beacon of hope. They painted messages of freedom across its prison walls and erected a tipi on its shores - a West Coast answer to the Statue of Liberty. "She's in the east, and we would be right here in the west, saying this is Indian land."

At night, when the coastguard beamed floodlights across the island, Martinez remembers seeing sleeping bags stretched out in all directions: Tired masses, yearning as much as anyone to be free. Martinez himself had picked a plum cell at the bottom of the prison - comfortably close to the toilet, he chuckles - to curl up in at night.

Martinez, a member of the Southern Ute Tribe, was no stranger to injustice. And yet, camping inside the crumbling remains of a prison, he glimpsed a different kind of future: "I could see what sovereignty would be like."

A first brush with discrimination

Sovereignty was never something he expected to find. He had seen coal companies tear through the reservation farmland his grandmother once called home, and his own freedom had been curtailed by stints in juvenile detention.

The trouble, he recalls, started when he was nine years old. He spent his summer working on his aunt and uncle's farm in the Four Corners region of Colorado, and one day, he accompanied his cousins to haul milk at a local creamery.

The owner's son had a reputation for groping the women while their hands were full, and Martinez called him out on it. His response was to push Martinez, taunt him, challenging him to knock down the stick he had slung over his shoulder to prove how tough he was. "I didn't aim for the shoulder. I didn't. I just hit him in the nose."

That act of violence landed Martinez in court. The groping and the taunting made no difference. "The reaction we got from the judge was that I shouldn't have hit him because he's going to be my employer one day," he says. "That's the first time I really faced that discrimination."

His worries did not stop at the summer's end. Hoping it would give her son a better education, Martinez's mother eventually enrolled him at a Catholic school, not knowing it was home to a priest who preyed on young boys.

"One of the kids committed suicide," Martinez recalls, punctuating the thought with a loud, visceral "whew", as if the shock had hit him anew. A talkative man, he now pauses. His eyes search the horizon. "I hadn't thought about that for a long time."

To retaliate, Martinez and other boys at the school punched out tyres and smashed windows - anything to drive the priest away. Their actions landed Martinez at a state industrial school in the city of Golden. There, every article of clothing he had, apart from his socks, was stamped with a number. "Fourteen eight fifty-four," would be his name for four years, he says.

After his release, there would be more fights. More sheriffs knocking at his door. And after a while, Martinez had had enough. Newly married, he asked his wife Lesee to pack him a bag. He pointed his Volkswagen bus towards California and joined thousands of Indigenous individuals in migrating to the San Francisco Bay Area.

Termination through urbanisation

The economic boom following World War II made city life appealing, but not all newcomers arrived by choice. At the time, the US government was promoting a series of laws known as "termination" policies, designed to strip Native Americans of their sovereignty and force assimilation into mainstream culture.

Part of its strategy was to disband communities and to relocate them into urban settings. What emerged in San Francisco was a hotbed of young, Indigenous activism. Martinez's wife soon joined him in the East Bay city of Oakland, and together they demonstrated alongside the United Farm Workers union and the anti-Vietnam war protesters of the late 1960s.

It was at one of those protests that Martinez met a pivotal figure in the Alcatraz movement: A tall Mohawk man he came to know as Richard Oakes. They forged a lifelong friendship over the bologna and cheese sandwiches Lesee had packed - an "Indian banquet," Martinez quips.

Oakes ultimately helped concoct the plan to take over Alcatraz Island in a classroom at San Francisco State University. When Oakes dove into the waters off Alcatraz and reached the island on November 9, 1969 - as a kind of test run for the full-scale occupation - Martinez recognised it as a turning point. "That lit the spark of the Red Power movement. After that, there was no going back."

Decades later, when Kent Blansett boarded a ferry to Alcatraz, he too felt an awakening. But he was equally struck by the chatter he heard around him from tourists eager to tour the prison cells of gangsters like Al Capone and Machine Gun Kelly. "I made the realisation they're here for America's toughest criminals. I'm on this journey for America's toughest Indians (Native Americans)."

The lack of awareness came as little surprise. A history professor at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, Blansett regularly asks his classes if they know Oakes's name. More often than not, the answer is no.

"Where would we be as a country if we didn't know the name Martin Luther King? Where would we be as a country if we didn't know the name Malcolm X?" he asks, ticking off prominent US civil rights leaders.

"We as native peoples weren't the only ones colonised. Colonisation is a two-way street. For Americans to be truly awoken, they need to deal with their own colonisation. Why is it that they don't know this history?"

A welcome sign on stolen land

An indigenous man himself, descending from the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Shawnee and Potawatomi nations, Blansett only learned Oakes's name as an underclassman at university. The discovery that his campus housed Indigenous remains - a desecration in the name of science - had launched him into activism, and he sought inspiration through research.

"My sanctuary at the university became the E stacks in the library," he says. "That's when I discovered Alcatraz."

It was a stark contrast to the prevailing narratives he knew, which linked Indigenous activism to violence. "Most of the images, when you think about Red Power, revolve around the [1973] occupation of Wounded Knee. Essentially, Indians with guns," Blansett says. "We became what America needed us to become. We became the villain in the story."

But in Alcatraz, Blansett found an alternative. There was a non-violent movement led by both women and men, families in tow. Oakes, in particular, gave the young Blansett "new ideas of what Native masculinity is".

"Native men were always seen in the stereotypical vein of not showing emotion, not being able to cry," Blansett says. By contrast, with Oakes, "here's this Native man who was powerful but who could also showcase emotion, showcase love."

Blansett's admiration for Oakes eventually led him to write the first book-length biography of the Alcatraz leader. But first, he felt he needed to visit the island himself - to stand at the tip of a boat and see what Richard Oakes saw.

As his ferry swung around to dock, goosebumps erupted on his skin. The message he saw before him, scrawled in red paint, shook him to his core: "Indians welcome."

"As an Indigenous person, this was the first welcome sign I'd ever seen in my own homeland." The sign filled him with pride - and the pain of wondering why he had not felt welcome in the first place.

Reclaiming a 'sense of identity'

Alcatraz veteran Eloy Martinez still dreams of a day when he can walk down the street like any other person, a day when "nobody's watching me like I'm an interloper". He does not know if he will live to see it. He is 79 now and walks with a cane after a motorcycle accident broke his pelvis. He wonders aloud if this will be the last Alcatraz anniversary he and other original occupiers will share.

His friend, Richard Oakes, did not live to attend the reunions. On September 20, 1972, at age 30, Oakes was shot dead on a rural road north of Santa Rosa. His killer, 34-year-old Michael Morgan, claimed self-defence. Oakes's body was found unarmed.

One witness at the trial testified that Morgan had proclaimed open season year-round for "coons, foxes and Indians." Another testified that Morgan was, in fact, a "wonderful, fine person". The charges against him were eventually reduced from murder to manslaughter. Then Morgan was acquitted entirely.

For Oakes's children, the legacy of Alcatraz has been difficult to grapple with. "Lost" is how younger daughter Fawn Oakes describes herself growing up. Born after the Alcatraz protest, she was too young to retain any memories of her father, and yet, expectations for her were high.

"He was there for everyone else but me," she remembers thinking. Her older brother Leonard, on the other hand, was present for the Alcatraz occupation - but he was only three. He remembers very little. The significance of that time period only hit him at age 13, after he found his late father's suitcase, brimming with newspaper clippings and documents.

"In the beginning of the occupation, in the beginning of this whole ordeal, I didn't know who I was. I didn't know what I was," Leonard says. But later, understanding what happened at Alcatraz gave him "a sense of identity. It gave me a sense of clarity in who I am and what I'm here for."

As for Fawn, returning to Alcatraz has been part of her healing process. It has helped her come to terms with her family's grief - and develop pride in her father's work.

"People say Alcatraz is not an island. My father used to say it was an idea, an idea of becoming who you are: Becoming self-sufficient. Becoming Native. Becoming strong in your community. An idea to help one another. Not just on the island but when you go home," she says.

Returning to the island

Many of the original occupiers did take that legacy home. Alcatraz veterans popped up at Fort Lawton in Washington state, where they took hold of a disused army base. They appeared at Pyramid Lake, Nevada, carrying water from around Alcatraz to protest against the draining of the lake.

Occupations arose from coast to coast, from Pit River, California to Washington, DC, leading then-President Richard Nixon to declare an end to federal termination policies.

But the "Indian future" determined "by Indian acts and Indian decisions" that Nixon promised never truly materialised. And even now, Eloy Martinez discerns a flicker of panic when he tells Alcatraz employees he has returned to "reclaim the island", now a national park.

For years, Martinez has helped lead efforts to preserve the occupation's history and restore what evidence remains. He often enlists Indigenous youth to repaint the slogans he and other occupiers stamped on the wall in 1969. Richard Oakes's grandson even found one spot on the ceiling where Martinez wrote his name using the smoke from a votive candle.

That commemoration work has not always earned Martinez respect. It took stubborn lobbying to launch the programmes and exhibits that exist on the island today. And even then, Martinez recalls one former federal marshal who threatened him for promoting the occupation's history.

"He pointed to me and said, 'I want to tell you something.' He says, 'If Nixon and [White House adviser Leonard] Garment hadn't ordered a stand-down in 1969, I would have blown your a** out of the water.'"

But Martinez remains undeterred. The way he sees it, the original occupiers set out to build an Indigenous cultural centre, and it exists today on Alcatraz. Lands, rights, treaties, freedom - it all can be stripped away. So 50 years on, Martinez is determined to spread the one thing no one can take away: Education.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Allison Griner

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Occupying Alcatraz: The spark that lit the US Red Power movement

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It was at one of the United States's most infamous prisons, more than a mile from any shore, that Eloy Martinez found a vision of freedom. The adrenaline surging in his veins that night felt nearly unbearable. A cold wind whipped his face, and a coastguard blockade patrolled the waters nearby.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Establecen un precedente: Maine prohíbe las mascotas con temática nativa americana

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
¿Seguirán otros estados el ejemplo de Maine, y prohibirán igualmente el uso de mascotas con temática nativa americana en las escuelas públicas?

# data[].attributes.headline
Half of Oklahoma could be Indian Territory

# data[].attributes.subject
Half of Oklahoma could be Indian Territory

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | Opinion: Half the land in Oklahoma could be returned to Native Americans

# data[].attributes.headline
Native people resist efforts to limit their voting 

# data[].attributes.subject
Native people resist efforts to limit their voting 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | Despite obstacles, Native Americans fight for their voting rights

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Native Americans are pushing back against discriminatory voting policies that have disenfranchised them for decades

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
(Credits: Camera, Sound and Editing by Lisa DiLillo)
Writer Hayes Peter Mauro discusses his book, "Messianic Fulfillments, Staging Salvation in America." One of the subjects in his book focuses on the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. American Indian children were sent to off-reservation schools to become assimilated into American culture. At Carlisle, they attempted to "Kill the Indian: Save the Man".  Carlisle and similar schools have been controversial because many Native Americans say that these forced children to leave their families at young ages, and to give up their own cultures, languages, religion and even their names, doing psychological damage to generations. Tribes with the largest number of students included the Lakota, Ojibwe, Seneca, Oneida, Cherokee, Apache, Cheyenne, and Alaska Native.

# data[].attributes.headline
Native Tribes forced to prove they do exist

# data[].attributes.subject
Native Tribes forced to prove they do exist

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | "They say we are extinct": Chinook tribes fight for recognition

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Chinook tribes of Washington are not recognized by the federal government due to paperwork problems. A proposed revision in regulations may change that.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Production Co.: A Tribe Called Red Inc. / Pinnguaq
Producer: Combo Bravo / Guillaume Decouflet / Joel McConvey
Director: Jon Riera / Dan LeMoyne
DOP: Jack Yan Chen

Dancers:
Angela "Lunacee" Gladue
Deanne Hupfield 
John Hupfield 
Lisa Odjig McHayle
Marcelino "Frost flow" DaCosta 
Matt "Creeasian" Wood 
Nagisa Okano
Nigel Schuyler
Q Rock
Soupy Soup 
Toby Montana
Yuta "Tiny Touch" Uno

# data[].attributes.headline
Artifacts from the Carlisle Indian School

# data[].attributes.subject
Artifacts from the Carlisle Indian School

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Antiques Roadshow
Clip: Season 15 Episode 16 | 2m 55s

Philip Weiss appraises a collection of photographs and other memorabilia from the Carlisle Indian Industrial School's football team and coach, ca. 1910, from Washington DC Hour 1.

Aired: 05/22/11

Rating: TV-G

The full episode is no longer available for online streaming. Why?

Please continue to enjoy extra(s) from this episode.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Appraisal: Carlisle Indian School Archive, ca. 1910 | Season 15 Episode 16 | Antiques Roadshow

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Antiques Roadshow Clip: Season 15 Episode 16 | 2m 55s Philip Weiss appraises a collection of photographs and other memorabilia from the Carlisle Indian Industrial School's football team and coach, ca. 1910, from Washington DC Hour 1. Aired: 05/22/11 Rating: TV-G The full episode is no longer available for online streaming.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Welcome to Britannica School , a safe, up-to-date, and age-appropriate information resource for Elementary, Middle, and High School.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | PRO/CON: Should we celebrate Christopher Columbus?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The official trailer for More Than A Word, a documentary examining Native American based sports mascots.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Tribe Called Red   I  "Stadium Pow Wow"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Directed by Kevan Funk 
Cinematography by Liam Mitchell 
Produced by Mad Ruk

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Welcome to Britannica School , a safe, up-to-date, and age-appropriate information resource for Elementary, Middle, and High School.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Black Seminoles, also called Seminole Maroons or Seminole Freedmen, a group of free blacks and runaway slaves (maroons) that joined forces with the Seminole Indians in Florida from approximately 1700 through the 1850s. The Black Seminoles were celebrated for their bravery and tenacity during the th…

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
More Than A Word analyzes the Washington football team and their use of the derogatory term R*dskins. Using interviews from both those in favor of changing the name and those against, More Than A Word presents a deeper analysis of the many issues surrounding the Washington team name. The documentary also examines the history of Native American cultural appropriation. In partnership with Media Education Foundation, this documentary will be released in September 2017.

You can pre-order the film or sign up to host a screening here: http://www.mediaed.org/mtaw

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
More Than A Word analyzes the Washington football team and their use of the derogatory term R*dskins. Using interviews from both those in favor of changing the name and those against, More Than A Word presents a deeper analysis of the many issues surrounding the Washington team name.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Back in 2008, A Tribe Called Red began a thoroughly popular night at a club in Canada's capital, Ottawa. It is called Electric Pow Wow, and the group experiments with beats, singing, and samples to a frenetic audience. Combining the rhythms and traditional singing of powwow-music meant to accompany dancing-with an array of dance genres including dubstep, dancehall, drum'n'bass, and electro, they create what has been labeled "powwow step." Watching ATCR seamlessly jump from supercharged drums on a remix of Northern Cree's " Red Skin Girl" to a sing-songy sample "Indians from all directions"-a clip from Jamaican dancehall artist Supercat's " Scalp Dem "-underlines their iconoclastic politics in the name of First Nations. At the time, Ian "DJ NDN" Campeau has noticed, "We had a platform where people were going to listen to what we were going to say, and we should probably use that properly right now and just bring some sort of awareness."

Their third album We Are the *Halluci Nation *ramps up the activism and accompanies it with some of the heaviest and most infectious sounds around. The patch on the cover of the album underlines the heart and beat of the album: "500 years and still drumming; Our DNA is the earth and sky." Canada's CBC radio promoted this album as "critical listening for all Canadians." Given Canada's history of cultural genocide, this is a given, but the statement should be expanded. This album is critical listening for everyone.

The Native producer and DJ crew are loud and direct about their politics. The words of the late Santee Dakota poet John Trudell open the record, defining their "Halluci Nation" as "the tribe that they cannot see" who "see the spiritual in the natural" vis-a-vis the oppressive ALie Nation, who "see the material religions through trauma [where] nothing is related, all the things of the earth and in the sky have energy to be exploited." The record's anti-colonial message is poetic and clear. This is dance music, which could also be classified as EDM, but it's also a range of other genres. At its soul, however, this is music that demonstrates how protest takes on different forms and to connect the physically and spiritually displaced.

"We are the evolution, the continuation," says Trudell in the title track, charting the course for an album and a philosophy that represents and respects indigeneity. Women's voices are centered as much as men's. Every song brings together a community of sounds and influences from various parts of the globe. The *Halluci Nation *is thus expansive and inclusive, from the *yoik *chants of Maxida Märak that sit atop the soft drums of "Eanan" to the rhythmic throat-singing of Tanya Tagaq on the infectious "Sila" to the pure pop bounce of Lido Pimienta on "For You (The Light Part II)," as well as features from Saul Williams, Shad, and Yasiin Bey.

The first single "R.E.D." features rapper Yassin Alsalman (a.k.a. Narcy) and Yasiin Bey, whose recent border-crossing issues reflect the reality of "ALie Nation." Narcy, an Iraqi-Canadian MC whose work has always been political, spits out the line "Coca-cola soul controller holy waters," a five-word collage that both reveals and describes the popular impact of capitalism. The voices of the Black Bear Singers introduce the drum of the chorus, one that calls for "original nation." It's a banging rap song that brings together the pan-African, Iraqi, and Indigenous.

There's nothing small or subtle about ATCR because they deal in big issues. Two interludes feature the voice of Joseph Boyden, author of The Orenda. Just as this novel dug into the history of Canada's settler colonialism-whose legacy extends through to the horror of assimilative residential schools and racist government policy-so too do these short monologues. Presented as phone calls to a prison, they provide stark images of the impact of settler colonialism.

But the foundation of ATCR, as well as the powwow, is the drum. In the past, samples have fueled some of the group's biggest tunes, from the Black Lodge Singers on " Electric Pow Wow Drum" to Northern Voice on "Sisters". The drum groups that ATCR sample are legends in their own right-crowds of spectators elbow their way close to these groups at pow wows, trying to capture the songs on phones and iPads. For Halluci Nation, ATCR worked with Manawan, Quebec's Black Bear Singers, resulting in a clear, resonant sound that provides an approximation of the huge scale of a drum group if you don't have the opportunity to experience it live. It is to ATCR's credit that they have been able to capture some of this size, whether through these recording sessions alongside Black Bear Singers or sourcing original a capella recordings from groups like Chippewa Travellers and Northern Voice. This comprehensive attention to sound makes *Halluci Nation *a relentless record: song after song of pointed commentary and heavy beats.

"Members of the Halluci Nation are anybody who is willing to accept they need to learn how to treat other people like humans," says ATCR's Bear Witness. At a time when isolationist nationalism seems in vogue-a nationalism that denies colonial histories while refusing refugees-A Tribe Called Red have created a landmark soundtrack for a world in which we all are connected.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Tribe Called Red: We Are the Halluci Nation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Back in 2008, A Tribe Called Red began a thoroughly popular night at a club in Canada's capital, Ottawa. It is called Electric Pow Wow, and the group experiments with beats, singing, and samples to a frenetic audience.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | The Lakota Music Project hopes to connect people through music

# data[].attributes.headline
Comparing Donald Trump and Andrew Jackson

# data[].attributes.subject
Comparing Donald Trump and Andrew Jackson

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | Opinion: Can Andrew Jackson's re-election be a model for Trump?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Both Donald Trump and Andrew Jackson fit the model of an out-of-nowhere populist seizing power. Can Andrew Jackson's feat of winning re-election provide lessons for Trump?