A Journey to Freedom: Richard Oakes, Alcatraz, and the Red Power Movement

Blansett, a historian whose heritage includes multiple Indian nations, retraces the steps of the 1960s–1970s Red Power movement—which sought increased native control over internal affairs, the return of native land, and justice for the cultural and economic damage done by U.S. and Canadian government policies—through this well-researched biography of Mohawk ironworker and nontraditional college student Richard Oakes. Born in New York, Oakes advocated for Indian studies programs and helped create Indians of All Tribes, an intertribal organization that participated in a 19-month occupation of the abandoned prison island of Alcatraz beginning in 1969. The occupiers, seeking not only to bring attention to native grievances but to establish a cultural center, held powwows, ran a school, and staffed a medical clinic. Photographs document Oakes’s personal life and activist work, demonstrating his positive influence on other protests until his murder by a white man at age 30. Blansett clearly admires Oakes’s activism, but that doesn’t preclude a frank discussion of Oakes’s legal troubles as a teenager—which resulted in his work as a community organizer for the San Francisco police—and his abandonment of his first wife and son. This scholarly yet reader-friendly text will enlighten readers about an often-overlooked part of a continuing civil rights struggle. [em](Sept.) [/em]