Reopen Alcatraz? Indigenous people say it’s more than madness – it’s historical erasure

A group of Sioux Indians protest at Alcatraz in an attempt to claim the land under the allowances provided in an 1868 treaty with the US government. Photograph: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive

When Donald Trump pledged to reopen the notorious Alcatraz prison as a detention center for immigrants and violent offenders, the idea was met with contempt and mockery. San Francisco leaders have called it Trump’s “stupidest idea yet” and threatened to cut off the island’s sewage and garbage services if the president acts on his carceral ambitions.

But for the Indigenous people of the San Francisco Bay Area, the idea was more than just laughable. It was an affront to their identity, and an attempt to erase the island’s history as a site of Indigenous resistance.