Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, November 24th, 1969, day four of the Alcatraz occupation.

So yeah, we're fudging the date a little bit, but it's the beginning of what would end

up being a 19-month occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay.

On November 20th, 78 American Indians from 20 tribal groups calling themselves the Indians

of all tribes took the island reclaiming it as native land.

In case you're wondering, yes, Alcatraz it was a prison for many decades, but it had been decommissioned,

essentially abandoned in 1963, and now this occupation in 1969

was part of a larger indigenous civil rights movement.

Many point to the occupation of Alcatraz

as the birth are certainly one of the key moments

in the modern Native American

civil rights movement. So here to discuss as always is Nicole Hammer of

Colombia. Hello Nicky. Hello Jody and our guest for this episode is Julian Brave Noiskat, journalist and writer, and also one of the

forces behind the 50th anniversary commemoration of the Alcatraz occupation that took place last

year. So Julian, thank you, thank you for doing this.

Thanks so much for having me.

So, you know, this is a pretty obvious question,

but we're recording this the week of Thanksgiving.

Is that a coincidence on that timing that this took place the week of

Thanksgiving in 1969 well so actually my understanding of the history is that they had

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