Native Americans hold their annual Indigenous Peoples Day Sunrise Gathering on Alcatraz Island on Monday.
Sarah McGrew/S.F. Chronicle
Scenes from the Indigenous Peoples Day Sunrise Gathering on Alcatraz Island on Monday.
Sarah McGrew / S.F. Chronicle
Dancers wearing traditional dress jumped in place to keep warm as the light gathered over Alcatraz Island Monday at the Indigenous Peoples Day Sunrise Gathering.
The annual gathering of prayer, singing, community outreach and dancing took place despite the government shutdown closing many national parks and in protest of President Donald Trump’s intent to turn Alcatraz, where the gathering has taken place ever since Native Americans occupied the island from 1969 to 1971, back into a prison.
“This island we are standing on is sacred space,” said Grandmother Mary Lyons, an Ojibwe elder, before singing a traditional song with her granddaughter.
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Ericson Amaya of Oakland, who has attended the event since he was a child, shook his head at the idea of restoring Alcatraz to a federal prison.
“This is an abandoned facility,” said Amaya, who works with a youth group called 67 Sueños.
“Give it back to the people, to the caretakers of this land. Don’t use it to cause harm.”
The gathering happened this year with the support of the National Park Service, said Morning Star Gali, tribal and community liaison at International Indian Treaty Council, which hosts the event.
A dancer performs during the Indigenous Peoples Day Sunrise Gathering on Alcatraz Island on Monday.
Sarah McGrew / S.F. Chronicle
During a government shutdown in 2013 under Barack Obama’s presidency, the event was canceled because Alcatraz Island was closed completely and ferries were not running. This time, Alcatraz has mostly been open since the shutdown began on Oct. 1.
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People lined up before 4 am at the Embarcadero for ferries to the island and then quietly followed youth carrying flags in the dark up to the parade grounds, where a bonfire was burning.
The gathering brought together Native Americans from all over California as well as Hawaii and other parts of the country. Aimee Tallbull, who is part of the Northern Cheyenne tribe in Montana, traveled to the gathering for the first time from her home in Vancouver, Wash. Her home is right near Portland, Ore., and she is worried about the Trump administration’s threats to send the National Guard there.
“It’s amazing to see so many people with different types of backgrounds coming together for this. I’m in awe,” she said, tearing up. “It makes me feel better about this world.”
The horizon started turning orange close to 7 a.m. Toward the end of the event, people in the crowd linked arms and moved in a circle around All Nations dancers in the center.
A bonfire burns as Native Americans come together on Alcatraz Island for the Indigenous Peoples Day Sunrise Gathering.
Tara Duggan / S.F. Chronicle
The International Indian Treaty Council hosts the event every year on Indigenous Peoples Day and Thanksgiving Day. It commemorates the Native American occupation of Alcatraz from 1969 to 1971, which helped spark the modern Indigenous rights movement, Gali said in a statement.
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“It is a symbol of survival and resistance,” Gali said. “To now transform Alcatraz back into a prison would be an assault on that legacy and a desecration of what it represents.”
The International Indian Treaty Council also noted in a news release that over 20 Native American men were brought as prisoners to the island in the late 1800s and some were either killed or died there — another reason it opposes turning it back into a federal prison.
Moises Salazar, 13, and Paulina Salazar,15, of the Northern Paiute and Western Shoshone Tribes, were among the dancers for Monday’s gathering on Alcatraz Island.
Sarah McGrew / S.F. Chronicle
The gathering came after President Donald Trump issued a proclamation last week that Oct. 13 would be called Columbus Day only, reversing course from his predecessor, Joe Biden, the first president to recognize both Indigenous Peoples Day and Columbus Day as names for the second October of the month. (San Francisco changed the name to Indigenous Peoples Day in 2018.)
As part of a movement to remove institutional support of diversity, equity and inclusion in the federal government, the Trump administration issued a directive in May to remove signs at national parks that might “disparage Americans past or living” or contain “partisan ideology.” That led to Muir Woods removing notes added to an exhibit that honored the history of Indigenous tribes and women’s groups that helped preserve the park.
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“We are here to honor truth in history,” said Radley Davis, a board member of the International Indian Treaty Council, speaking at the gathering. “We won’t allow those truths to be erased no matter how hard they are.”