THE EDITOR – The memories come back in flashes: the ink-black night, the whipping cold, the dark waves lapping at the side of the boat as Tashina Banks Rama stepped on board.
Tashina was only a child when it started. But every November, on Thanksgiving Day, she and her younger sister would blink awake in the early hours of the morning to join her parents on the edge of the San Francisco Bay.
It was always freezing, always quiet, at least at first.
As she hopped from the pier to the ferry, Tashina remembers hearing the water splashing below. Pendleton blankets and star quilts, patterned with radiating bursts of colour, would rustle out from bags as families piled on board. And as the streetlights and towers of the city faded behind them, a sudden drumbeat would rupture the silence.
Before them loomed a jutting rock, Alcatraz Island, surging out of the waves. The air felt heavy with intention as the boat lurched forward.
“All of a sudden, you have this feeling, this presence of spirituality and ceremony — that this is something serious we’re doing,” Tashina, now 51, She said in Aljazeera on Friday (25/11/2025).
“Even if you might not know who you’re with, you feel very safe because you’re all there for the same purpose.”
For nearly half a century, Alcatraz — best known for its infamous prison — has played host to an annual Indigenous tradition: a sunrise ceremony to greet the morning’s first rays of light.
For some, it is a day of thanks, a time to honour Indigenous ancestors and celebrate the continued survival of tribal nations across the Americas.
For others, it is a moment of “un-Thanksgiving”: an Indigenous response to the sanitised depictions of colonisation associated with the Thanksgiving holiday.
But this Thursday, as the sun rises on Alcatraz once more, longtime participants fear a new threat may end the gathering for good.
In May, United States President Donald Trump announced on social media that he had directed the Bureau of Prisons to “reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders”.
The plan has been widely denounced as impractical. The last penitentiary on the island closed in 1963 because of its dizzying operating costs, which were triple that of other federal prisons in the US.
There is no local source of fresh water on the island, and basic supplies have to arrive by boat. One estimate put the price tag for redeveloping Alcatraz at $2bn.
Still, Trump has maintained he plans to move forward, even sending his interior secretary and attorney general to scope the terrain in July.
But for Tashina, the loss of the island would mean the loss of a spiritual tradition that connects her to generations of Indigenous activists, including her father, American Indian Movement (AIM) founder Dennis Banks. The thought alone fills her with grief.
“It made me — and it actually still makes me — very sad,” she said of Trump’s order. “Thousands and thousands of prayers have taken place from that spot. It’s a sacred place.”
For one of the gathering’s original organisers, 70-year-old William “Jimbo” Simmons, the tradition traces its origins to a splash.
In 1969, Indigenous student organisers leapt into the San Francisco Bay and swam to Alcatraz’s jagged sandstone shores, in an effort to reclaim the island from the federal government.
Their attempt was not the first. In 1964, a year after the Alcatraz prison closed, a group of Lakota activists briefly occupied the island on the basis that treaty law required unused federal property to return to Indigenous hands.
But 1969 would be a turning point. The first group to land on Alcatraz was quickly intercepted by the US Coast Guard, but a second group arrived weeks later, on November 20 — and with greater numbers.
Around 80 people landed on the island, launching a historic 19-month protest. For many, it was the start of the Red Power Movement, a period of activism in Indigenous communities across the country.
“I always felt that, as Indian people, our people are engaged in the longest war in the history of the Americas still today,” Simmons said.
“One of the things that brought it to life, for a lot of us, was the occupation of Alcatraz back in 1969.”
Simmons was a floppy-haired Choctaw teenager in Oklahoma at the time, stuck in an Indigenous boarding school.
The aim of the boarding school system was to assimilate Indigenous youth into white society. Simmons remembers that, while at the Fort Sill Indian School, administrators pressured students to cut their long hair, in order to better conform.
“Our spirituality was being erased from us through boarding schools, through assimilation,” Simmons said. “Our ceremonies were being banned around those times, too. Even the sun dance was banned.”
But Alcatraz offered a spark of hope. On Thanksgiving Day in 1969, a celebration was held: A peace pipe was lit, a prayer given, and a feast shared. Dancers in traditional regalia bobbed and twirled beneath a cloudless blue sky.
Restaurants like Bratskellar’s sent supplies from San Francisco, donating turkeys, cranberry sauce and cake. For a brief moment, the population on the island swelled to 300.
The event even made the front page of The San Francisco Chronicle newspaper the next day.
“I want to thank you for making it possible in my lifetime to see a rebirth of our culture, our religion and our ways,” a 65-year-old medicine man named Semu Huaute was quoted as saying in the newspaper.
The Alcatraz occupation was televised across the country. It helped inspire young people like Simmons to get involved in civil rights.
“Even though I wasn’t there at Alcatraz, I was aware of Alcatraz,” Simmons explained. “I always say that Alcatraz was the spark that woke up a lot of people.”
The occupation ended in 1971, when the federal government removed the last of the Indigenous protesters from Alcatraz. But the spirit of activism continued.
Simmons still remembers the day he met John Trudell, one of the leaders of the Alcatraz occupation. It was 1972, and he was a senior at the Fort Sill Indian School when Trudell came to speak to his history class.
“That was when I first started hearing about the American Indian Movement,” Simmons said.
At age 17, Simmons was feeling rudderless. He had quit school, but he did not want to stay home. Instead, he decided to join the army. But that too felt like a poor fit. So he went AWOL: absent without leave. He eventually landed in military prison.
“When I got out of prison, I realised I was probably in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Simmons said. He left for the San Francisco Bay Area in California.
That density is, in part, the legacy of a government policy known as “termination”. In the 20th century, efforts to dismantle sovereign Indigenous tribes led to a spike in migration to urban areas.
Simmons found himself joining a vibrant Indigenous community in California, one that included Dennis Banks, Tashina’s father and himself a veteran of the Alcatraz occupation.
“Our people were going through a spiritual awakening,” Simmons recalled.
Ceremonies had continued to be held on Alcatraz. Starting in November 1973, activist Adam Fortunate Eagle returned to the island with other veterans of the occupation to sing, dance and hold a moment of silence for those who had passed away.
He returned the year after, and the year after. By the end of the decade, groups like the newly formed International Indian Treaty Council had started to look towards the island as well.
“One of the things that we started thinking about was, ‘Well, we should do something at Alcatraz,’” Simmons, a member of the group, recalled.
At first, Thanksgiving Day — with its romanticised images of feasting Pilgrims and accommodating tribes — seemed like the perfect opportunity to reject mainstream narratives and protest the continued oppression of Indigenous peoples.
“We used to call it ‘un-Thanksgiving Day’ because we never really had anything to be thankful for on Thanksgiving,” Simmons said.
But not everyone agreed. Simmons remembers some community members hoped to use Alcatraz to celebrate Indigenous survival and pride.
“Some of our elders say, ‘Well, every day is a day of thanksgiving for us’. So we took that in too,” Simmons said.
Their plans came to a head on Alcatraz Island. The first time Simmons made the voyage, he felt a rush. The history he had heard unfold on TV and over the radio suddenly became very real, very present.
“I couldn’t believe that we were actually going to the island,” he recalled.
One of the early ceremonies they held there was in February 1978, to launch a protest known as The Longest Walk.
Simmons had volunteered to be one of the 24 activists who trekked on foot from California to Washington, DC, as a way of drawing attention to violations of Indigenous rights.
After five months and more than 4,800km (3,000 miles) of walking, Simmons reached the nation’s capital, where he and his fellow activists were greeted by thousands of supporters.
But the following year, at one of the first Thanksgiving ceremonies at Alcatraz, less than a hundred people showed up.
Still, he remembers how the beating pulse of the ceremonial drum carried him across the bay. As his ferry sidled up to the island, Simmons joined the drummer at the front of the group.
“That was always a big thing for me,” he said. “I was always in the lead there with the drum, walking, leading the people up there to where we were going to circle up and have our fire.”
Marching up the island’s steep incline, they reached the parade grounds, a flat lip of land extending southward. The island’s lighthouse, tall and austere, loomed overhead. There, with San Francisco’s skyline hazy on the horizon, they lit a sacred fire.
“It’s an everlasting fire. It’s a fire that we carry inside us,” Simmons explained. “You carry a fire, which is your spirit. And so, to me, every time that fire is lit, you’re taking care of that spirit.”
Medicine men, sun dancers and other spiritual leaders brought sacred items, including ceremonial pipes, to share. Everyone offered prayers.
For Simmons, it was a nourishing experience. It kindled a shared sense of resistance.
“For me, spirituality has a lot to do with who we are and what we become,” he said.
“Alcatraz has been that beacon of light that attracts a lot of people to our struggles and movement. When people come to Alcatraz, they walk away with a different understanding of being, of who they are.”
Those first Thanksgiving celebrations would stretch late into the night, well after the sunrise ceremony on the island ended.
One poster for the 1979 “un-Thanksgiving” advertised events until midnight, including speeches, dancing and a potluck dinner — as well as a tongue-in-cheek contest for the best Pilgrim costume.
For the 46 years since, the sunrise ceremony has continued and grown, according to Morning Star Gali, the California tribal and community liaison for the International Indian Treaty Council.
Now, the Thanksgiving gathering attracts throngs of participants, many of whom arrive long before the first ferry departs at 4:15am. Attendance, after all, is restricted to 5,000 people.
“We’ve really just had to cap it at that limit of 5,000,” Gali explained. “It would be more than that, but it is an island.”
The gathering has also become a starry event: The actor Benjamin Bratt, whose mother was part of the original Alcatraz occupation, is a regular participant. American football star Colin Kaepernick has attended. So, too, has Lethal Weapon actor Danny Glover.
The sheer number of supporters that arrive each year leaves Gali in awe.
“How amazing is it that 5,000 people are willing to get up at three o’clock in the morning, in the cold, wet weather, in all of the conditions, and be on the island to greet the sun and pray with us?” Gali asked.
This year, the guest of honour was scheduled to be Leonard Peltier, a famed activist who was granted clemency in January under then-President Joe Biden.
Many in the Indigenous community considered Peltier a political prisoner, wrongfully incarcerated for the 1975 shooting deaths of two federal agents. Peltier was ultimately unable to attend, though he did record a message that was played at the gathering.
“We have to celebrate these wins,” Gali explained. “We have to celebrate this freedom that was so hard fought for and so long fought for.”
A member of California’s Pit River tribe, Gali has coordinated the sunrise ceremony for the last 17 years. But her history with the event goes back even further: Her mother was pregnant with her during the original 1979 unThanksgiving event.
Some of her earliest memories involve being a pigtailed young girl, hoisted into her father’s arms as they rode the ferry to the island.
Even Gali’s name is a reference to the sunrise ceremony: a nod to the stars and planets that glimmer on the eastern horizon just before the sun comes up.
Most years, planning for the Thanksgiving ceremony is a months-long endeavour. Attendees approach Gali as early as January to ask for details, so they can plan their holiday travel.
But this year has brought more uncertainty than most. Not only did Gali and the other organisers have to contend with President Trump’s threats to redevelop the island, but they also had to deal with the longest government shutdown in US history.
Alcatraz remains under federal control, and conducting the ceremony requires permitting and coordination with the National Park Service, as well as a local ferry operator.
“With the shutdown, we’ve been asking, ‘OK, what are our contingency plans? What is our plan B? What is our plan C?’” Gali explained.
After nearly 43 days, the shutdown came to a close on November 12 — with only two weeks to spare before the Thanksgiving holiday. Organising for the ceremony has been nonstop ever since.
Gali said Trump’s plans to build a new federal prison on the island have also been part of her discussions ahead of this year’s event.
“It really doesn’t make any sense,” she said of Trump’s order, pointing to an ongoing, $63.6m effort to preserve the historic prison on the island.
That structure, as well as sites associated with the 1969 Alcatraz occupation, would have to be erased to make way for a modern prison. The mere thought reminds Gali of the disproportionate rates of incarceration among Indigenous communities in the US.
“Our messaging was just, ‘This is not the time to continue to incarcerate anyone, but especially Indian peoples on Indian land that has such a significant history,’” Gali said.
For Tashina, levelling the island would feel like the loss of something intimate. Being able to attend the sunrise ceremony, she said, “feels like coming home”.
Her father, Dennis Banks, lived in California from 1976 to 1983, and Tashina remembers how spectacular it was to be standing next to him on the windswept rocks, watching the sun pierce the night.
“He just thought it was so beautiful: the power of people coming together, the power of prayer,” Tashina recalled.
But should the wrecking ball come to Alcatraz, Simmons warned that activists today may borrow a tactic from Banks’s time.
After all, the 1969 occupation ultimately prevented the island from being redeveloped into a space museum. If a few hundred activists could stop the government then, Simmons found himself imagining what a few thousand could do now.
“We would reoccupy it,” Simmons said plainly. “We would go out there, and we would stay there.
