Voices Of Sovereignty: Indigenous Radio and Refusing The Prison Industrial Complex And Settler Colonial Education

• In Event: Sovereign Stories: Indigenous Medias and Narratives

Abstract

This paper parcels out the relationship between education and prisons, emphasizing settler colonialism as a structure to showcase how activists on the island subverted these institutions through music and radio. I argue that through Native music and radio, activists were able to create a counter-discourse to those created by education and the carceral state. These transmissions introduced Indigenous concepts and history and shape Indigenous media and activism today. In addition, the activists on the island used radio to voice frustrated with the ways prisons and education stifled Indigenous cultural practices. By understanding how prison and educational institutions worked in tandem, we can see how the broadcasts created a counter-hegemonic discourse and enacted sonic sovereignty. Through a content analysis of Radio Alcatraz episodes, I employ a historical ethnomusicological (McCollum and Hebert 2014) and Indigenous Sound studies (ISS) methodology to examine how Radio Alcatraz, in addition to the occupation of Alcatraz, became a site of resistance that enacted sonic sovereignty (Reed 2019:524) and questioned educational and carceral logics. I analyze thirty-nine episodes from the Pacifica archive of the Indian Land Radio (also known as Radio Free Alcatraz) alongside interviews conducted during field work with organizers, participants, and performers associated with the occupation.

Author

• Everardo Reyes, University of California-Berkeley