The first time I landed on Alcatraz Island for a tour of its prison, I marveled at the stories about “Birdman of Alcatraz” Robert Shroud, and my own hometown’s celebrity criminal, Al Capone, while listening to the tour’s headset. I walked through each cell of the crumbling prison, imagining the smell of garlic from bubbling red sauces in North Beach and the sound of its wine-soaked laughter that had echoed across the Bay.
Acknowledging the gratitude for my own freedom, I could understand that a glimpse of reality through barred windows was far more torturous than any time those prisoners may have spent in the hole. At the time, I believed this visit to Alcatraz was my initiation into California’s history.
Back on land, my subsequent years played out similarly to many generations of newcomers who came to San Francisco. I formed friendships with strangers to create a chosen family, and discovered my own values while living alone for the first time in my life.
This year, while my family awoke back east to celebrate our ancestral Pilgrims by skipping breakfast to make room for late afternoon gorging, I set my alarm for 4:00 a.m. and woke before the sun in San Francisco to catch a ferry back out to Alcatraz Island. I was going to celebrate indigenous people for the 33rd Annual Sunrise Gathering on Alcatraz Island, and participate in a missing piece of California history that never came through that educational headset twelve years before.
My friend and I disembarked the ferry to city lights flickering within San Francisco’s skyline. While we took in the squeals of waking seagulls among the pre-dawn sky, I thought about the bird life that had been soaked from the oil spill weeks before and how, like indigenous people, they were resilient from prior environmental injustices. As we moved closer to the circle that gathered on the southernmost edge of the island, we nestled our way into the inner ring so I could photograph Aztec dancers swirling to beating drums.
Radley Davis, from the Pit River (Iss Ahwi) Tribal Nation in California, spoke while a fire roared in the center.
“We are all a spirit,” he said while I looked up into the sky to think of the loved ones I had lost over the years. “It is up to you to find out what is your job on this world. Why are you here? What is it that you were supposed to be when you were born? Find your life,” he concluded. His plea made me turn to my friend, also a writer, and smile, since we had discussed on the ferry over how lucky we were to have found the words and stories in which to write about our lives.
While Davis and others spoke about the Alcatraz Island occupation, the event from the 1970s that we were commemorating, I snapped photos of stomping barefoot ankles flanked with wooden bells, Native American headdresses resembling the crowns of endangered birds, and Aztec performers that danced through the smoke of burning sage.
Once the Native Americans finished their chants, the sun was high enough to glisten through the space between their tropical bird feathers, and I took a deep breath. I had found a tradition that I didn’t even know I had been looking for, one that didn’t even come from my own ancestors. It had prayers, drumbeats that brought me back to the beat of my own heart, and space for silence to reconvene with nature. It was tradition aligned with my beliefs, and for that, I was extremely grateful.
Photo courtesy of the author
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