"The Unification of Thought, Word, and Deed, of All Indians": The Alcatraz Newsletter and the Political Theory of Urban Autonomy

This thesis engages in a close reading of the three newsletters produced during the Occupation of Alcatraz Island by the urban Indigenous collective, the Indians of All Tribes (IAT). The Alcatraz Newsletter served as a platform through which the IAT could disseminate their written work, poetry, and art as well as solicit monetary donations to sustain the occupation. As I argue, the IAT use these newsletters to articulate a novel notion of Indigenous self-determination that I conceptualize as "urban autonomy." Urban autonomy, as a political theory of urban Indigenous self-determination, functions as an alternative to the territorialized notion of tribal sovereignty. While tribal sovereignty is a workable concept to empower and strengthen Indigenous political nations or nation-building projects within reservation lands, urban autonomy is not concerned with Native nationhood. Instead, urban autonomy registers a form of Indigenous diasporic politics and the making of an intertribal urban diasporic political community. My reading of the Alcatraz Newsletters sees the IAT engaged in three distinct forms of Indigenous political criticism. I argue that urban autonomy is activated as a discursive practice within and through this indigenous political criticism.