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Posted: Thursday, 22 November 2007 3:22PM
Native Americans Hold Annual Sunrise Ceremony at Alcatraz
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 SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) -- An estimated 1,000 Native Americans and their supporters gathered on Alcatraz Island this morning for their annual Thanksgiving Sunrise Ceremony.
The event commemorates the birth of the modern American Indian civil rights movement, which gained national prominence when a group of San Francisco State students occupied the former prison site in 1969 and 1970.
"We consider it relighting the fire of Indian survival, Indian resistance here in this hemisphere. To remind people that first of all, John Wayne didn't kill us all. That we're still alive, distinct cultures that are thriving here in America,” explained Bill Means, a Lakota and one of the founders of the International Indian Treaty Council.
Means said it was only fitting that the protests took place in San Francisco in the 60s and 70s. "The civil rights movement as you know was going strong, the anti-war movement, so it was a time when the status quo was unacceptable for most Americans,” he said. “This being a hotbed of organization, a hotbed of liberation here in the Bay Area, Berkeley, etcetera, it was only right that Indian people also get together to take our rightful place in the struggle for civil and human rights."
Means credits the Alcatraz protest with sparking a worldwide movement that is still very much alive today. "It started out here as a small spark, a small fire of resistance and survival. It's now become a worldwide movement of indigenous people culminated by the recent declaration that was recently passed at the United Nations."
 Listen to the full interview with Means
(RdD)
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Copyright 2007, KCBS. All Rights Reserved.
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