Every Thanksgiving We Drive to Alcatraz. Except This Year

The night before Thanksgiving, my bestie, Sam Escobar and I are usually on our way to Alcatraz Island, taking turns with driver and passenger duties through the 7.5-hour drive up the I-5 from the Los Angeles area.

While he’s been going since 2018, this would be my third time coming up with the Southern California chapter of the American Indian Movement. Every year, dozens of AIM members gather at Alcatraz to commemorate the 19-month occupation of the Rock, which started on Nov. 20, 1969. Our “Thanksgiving meal” is usually to the tune of gas station roller hotdogs and chips, supplemented with caffeine and cigarettes. Then it’s George Michael car karaoke for dessert. 

During the 1969 occupation, people were bringing in food past Coast Guard blockades via canoes and other watercraft, including private ferries and a boat donated by Creedence Clearwater Revival. According to the Treaty of Fort Laramie, unused federal land is supposed to go back to Natives, but there was tension for some reason? Even when AIM offered $24 in glass beads and red cloth, the same amount colonizers allegedly “paid” for Manhattan Island in the first place. If anything, they were still turning a profit? But anyways.

These days, folks gather annually as the sun rises to commemorate and celebrate the occupation. Attention and prayer is brought to long-standing Indigenous issues: poverty, police brutality, and being over-represented in the carceral system, to name a few. AIM veterans who originally occupied the island make the pilgrimage back to share wisdom and prayer. In the last few years, we’ve had a Palestinian dabke in the arbor. It’s always been about community. When I go, I’m reminded of the Third World Liberation Front and the possibilities of cross-cultural organizing. 

Ceremony is where we share stories, break bread, and take care of each other. Not “Thanksgiving” — a fiction that covers up the fact that colonizers used to feast after scalping us and destroying our villages. Ironically, that’s what contemporary white history books say we did. (It’s giving Israel, but OK!) 

In the year of our lord Doechii, 2025, things are different. The ceremony ends at about 10am Thanksgiving Day, but Sam won’t be there this time. Instead, he’ll be sitting in a jail cell eating expired Chick-o-Sticks and moldy bologna while the country has a feast celebrating the genocide of our people. He should be on the Island taking care of the elders — helping them find a comfy seat, hearing their wisdom, and chain-smoking cigarettes together.

So yeah. This year is different. I hope this is the last ceremony Sam has to miss.