More SFSU Heroes

Richard Oakes

Richard Oakes was a former SFSU student, important member of American Indian Studies, and an Indian occupier at Alcatraz Island. Oakes played an integral part in creating one of the first American Indian Studies departments in the nation. He developed the initial curriculum and encouraged other American Indians to enroll.

As a Mohawk Indian, Oakes was a strong supporter of Native American rights. He believed that Native American people have a right to their land and identity and that they deserve respect, justice, and control. In 1969, Oakes led a group of students and urban Bay Area Indians in an occupation of Alcatraz Island that would last until 1971. He also recruited 80 UCLA students from the American Indian Studies Center.

Indians of various tribes joined Oakes and staged the longest occupation of a federal facility by Indian people. The historic occupation was made up initially of young Indian college students.

Described as a handsome, charismatic, talented and natural leader, Oakes was identified as “chief” of the island. Oakes had control of the island from the very beginning, with an organizational council put into effect immediately. Everyone had a job, including security, sanitation, day care, schooling, cooking, and laundry. All decisions were made by the unanimous consent of the people.

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Alcatraz Proclamation

In the period 20 November 1969, through 10 June 1971, a group of Native Americans took possession of Alcatraz Island and held it as Indian Land. This “Occupation of the Island of Alcatraz” was initiated and led by a group of Native Americans that called themselves the “Indians of All Tribes”, or IAT.

This Alcatraz occupation lasted a total of 14 months and came to an end when the occupying Indians were removed with force by the US government. The IAT group was claiming the island while they were citing the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty between Sioux and the US government.

The treaty included the return of all abandoned, retired, or out-of-use lands in federal possession to Native peoples. Upon the closing of the Alcatraz penitentiary institution in 1963, the federal government had declared Alcatraz the island as retired (or surplus) federal property. So activists of the Red Power movement reclaimed the island. On 9 March 1964, a group of Sioux, including Richard McKenzie, occupied Alcatraz Island for the duration of four hours.

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Richard Oakes, Native American Activist

Richard Oakes, the famous Mohawk Native American activist, is world renown for leading the unused Alcatraz prison occupation in the San Francisco Bay at the end of the 1960s. Richard is well-credited with bringing change to the narrative around the rights of indigenous peoples. See also this 1969 video with Richard Oakes delivering his famous Alcatraz Proclamation during the occupation of Alcatraz:

Richard was born on May 22, 1942, and he died in September 1972, so he would have been 76 years old today if he hadn’t been killed and still alive. In Richard’s honor, a Google Doodle was created.
Richard Oakes was a Mohawk tribe member, a tribe that originated from the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada regions. Richard grew up in upstate New York but moved to the San Francisco area where he enrolled at San Francisco State University.

Oakes was not so pleased with the classes offered at SF State and when he got involved in the local Native American communities, he helped with founding (together with an anthropology professor) the first U.S. Native American Studies departments.

The revolutionary, vibrant atmosphere at the end of the 1960s, in combination with his social and academic connections, led Richard Oakes to start one of the most feared and respected radical direct action movements ever set up by activists from Native American origin.

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Ease Your Financial Burden: Federal Student Loan Consolidation

The time eventually comes when having hopefully earned their degree, a student has to begin repaying all those student loans that they took out over the years and for some people that can be more of a financial burden than they had bargained for.

For this reason, many students opt to try and find out about federal student loan consolidation, to see if consolidating the loans they have taken out with Uncle Sam over the years can be consolidated and their payments made a little more manageable.

Which Federal Loans can be Consolidated?

Federal student loan consolidation can usually be applied to most of the loan the federal government extends, including PLUS loans. You cannot consolidate your federal loans together with any private loans you may have taken out though, they have to be consolidated separately in an agreement with the particular lender you chose to work with.

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Online Education – A Form of Globalization?

The classroom concept has undergone a huge transformation with the passage of time. Virtual classroom education, another name for online education, is quite different from the traditional campus classrooms. The conventional form of education still exists in the present day.

Both modes of education are running in parallel in the present world. However, online education or distance mode of education enables one to reach out to those courses that seemed far away and out of reach.

The thought immediately comes to mind is whether it will be an effective mode of education. The answer is yes. The entire process has turned out to be effective and successful due to the sincere career aspirants who study the course materials with full concentration and dedication. Now, most colleges have started their correspondence or online courses to enable students around the globe to have access to their courses of study. This has acted as a mutual benefit.

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Are Credit Cards Still Available To College Students?

A few years ago the major credit card companies made a lot of money issuing special credit cards for college students. These credit cards were exceptionally easy for a full-time college student to obtain, even though most of them had very little in the way of a credit history.

These credit cards for college students came with all sorts of attractive benefits attached to them and obviously, for most students on a tight budget having such a financial avenue open to them was a very attractive prospect.

The Credit CARD Act of 2009

The downside of these credit cards for college students was that many students quickly found themselves in more debt than they could realistically handle. Spending the money was easy – paying it back not quite so simple. As a part of a fairly comprehensive attempt to reform the way credit card companies work, the 2009 Credit CARD Act aimed to change the way students were given credit cards to cut down on the rising numbers of young people who found themselves in over their heads.

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Minority women starting their own businesses

It’s lonely at the top — especially for minority female business owners, says a major California study out recently.

The study of 807 women paints one of the most detailed portraits yet of the USA’s 1.6 million minority female entrepreneurs. The number of such companies is growing four times faster than all U.S. businesses, making them a major source of future economic growth.

One highlight of the survey is that minority women are more likely than white women to start and run businesses by themselves. Their goals are often altruistic, such as serving their community. And many have more trouble than white women getting financing, says the study by the Center for Women’s Business Research.

Still, the top issues for female business owners — hiring, boosting revenue, and finding capital — are largely the same regardless of race or ethnicity, says the center. Those issues mirror the concerns of all small-business owners.

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California School Problem – Fighting The Science Dumb-Down

Glenn T. Seaborg is an eminent scientist – so eminent that he’s the only living person with an element named after him. But the state of California won’t let him help write science standards for its public schools. His problem? Taking the idea of standards too seriously.

Seaborg, 85, is what more trendy educators today would call an elitist. That is, he thinks schools should teach the difficult principles of science even if all students may not grasp them. He’s worried that if schools try too hard to make hard subjects fun, they’ll cheat the students out of essential knowledge.

He and two other Nobel laureates have joined with more than 30 other scientists and teachers to fight for rigorous goals in teaching science in California public schools. They’ve been treated with less than respect.

The state board set up to adopt science standards turned down their offer to write standards for free. The job went to a group made up mostly of teachers and education professors, at a cost of $178,000. And one member of the state panel, Judy Codding, added insult to injury. “They wouldn’t know a classroom if you put it in front of them,” the Los Angeles Times quoted her as saying.

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Silicon Valley and Outsider Art

Silicon Valley recently caught up. The “Drawing the Inner Terrain: Self-Taught Artists” exhibit at the Palo Alto Art Center was dedicated to Derrel DePasse, former president of Blauvelt Group of Palo Alto. She was a self-taught expert in outsider art who died unexpectedly last summer before the publication of her acclaimed new book, Traveling the Rainbow: The Life and Art of Joseph Yoakum (University Press of Mississippi).

Yoakum is known for his wild visionary landscapes. “We all assumed he’d made up these imaginary landscapes,” says John Ollman, a Philadelphia art dealer, “but she followed his roaming and found that he’d actually been to most of the places.

” That a tech executive transformed herself into an outsider art expert doesn’t surprise Signe Mayfield, curator of the Silicon Valley show. Like many, Mayfield sees a link between twin cultural explosions: technology and outsider art. “Art that has the human touch takes on greater significance when we’re so surrounded by sleek modernity and technology,” she says.

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