cover image HEART OF THE ROCK: The Indian Invasion of Alcatraz

HEART OF THE ROCK: The Indian Invasion of Alcatraz

Adam Fortunate Eagle, with Tim Findley, foreword by Vine Deloria Jr. . Univ. of Oklahoma, $29.95 (232pp) ISBN 978-0-8061-3396-6

When Native American activists took over Alcatraz Island in 1969, they drew unprecedented attention to the poverty and widespread disaffection on contemporary Indian reservations, as well as to the historic injustices perpetrated by the American government. Fortunate Eagle, a member of the Ojibwa Nation, organized the nearly two-year occupation, and gives a stirring account of the Alcatraz affair in this memoir. For much of the 1960s, Fortunate Eagle, then called Adam Nordwall, was pursuing the suburban dream: he owned his own termite extermination business and competed for bowling trophies in the Bay Area, where he lived with his wife and children. At the time, the Indian population of many American cities was exploding; in the early 1950s, the U.S. government had launched a program to lure Indians off of reservations with the promise of technical training and jobs, so that the U.S. could then buy up resource-rich Indian land. The inadvertent result of the policy was that many Indians, lonely and uprooted in unfamiliar cities, began to socialize and then organize politically. Fortunate Eagle describes his political awakening in the San Francisco Indian social clubs and gives a play-by-play of the occupation, from sneaking past the Coast Guard to the political fallout, which culminated with Nixon condemning the oppression of Indians and restoring millions of acres to various tribes. Fortunate Eagle's witty and impassioned recollections will be appreciated by anyone interested in American history or the political upheavals of the 1960s. (Apr.)

Forecast:Native American political and social history is coming to the fore now more than any time since the 1960s, as academic and memoir work accumulates. While the debate has not reached Canadian proportions, look for some attention to this book along with Larry Nesper's The Walleye War: The Struggle for Ojibwe Spearfishing and Treaty Rights, coming in May (Univ. of Nebraska, $60 256p ISBN 0-8032-3344-2; paper $19.95 -8380-6).