Dying young leaves the deceased forever entombed in what they were and not what they might have become. Had Richard Oakes not died at age 30 on September 20, 1972, there is no telling the heights he might have reached.
Oakes was a Mohawk Native American who was born May 22, 1942, in St. Regis Mohawk Reservation near the banks of the St. Lawrence River. He went to work on the seaway at age 15 and learned the trade of a high steelworker (welding metal frame to skyscrapers thousands of feet high)
While working in San Francisco he enrolled at San Francisco State University and worked with anthropology professor Bea Medicine, to create one of the first Native American Studies departments in the nation.
Aokes was determined to search out his people's past in hopes it will bring them a brighter future. He and his family visited Indian reservations across the US and Canada. At the same time, he became active in the Mohawk National Council, organizing peaceful protest, which they called White Roots of Peace. In the spring of 1969, Oakes met the members of the White Roots of Peace.
In 1969, Oakes led a group of 80 students from the UCLA American Indian Studies Center and urban Bay Area Native Americans in an occupation of (Then deserted ) Alcatraz Island in a protest occupation that lasted until 1971. Oakes was the first of five young Indians to .dive from a boat and swim 200 yards through the cold water of San Francisco Bay to land and claim Alcatraz for the American Indians.
Oakes proclaimed the purpose of taking the island "To better the lives of all Indian people" by making "known to the world that we have a right to use our land for our own benefit" through reclaiming Alcatraz "in the name of all American Indians by right of discovery."
It was a high ideal, but within a year, the island was a disorganized mess. An aide to Oakes said "Oakes wasn't a drinker. He was an intellectual, he didn't need that kind of stimulation. He was resented by a lot of the people. Indians don't like one of us who is too smart, too w h i t e -m a n, and some resented Oakes even if he was bitter on white men and could be awful hard on them, talking with them.
Then in July of 1970 Oakes' 12-year-old adopted daughter, Yvonne Rose, fell to her death from concrete steps of the old cell block building. Oakes wondered if her death, the result of severe brain trauma, was a homicide. After that, January of 1970, Oakes and his family left he island.
Later he said "It (The takeover) started the ball rolling for our cause there were mistakes, but we won't make them again. Since Alcatraz there have been other Indian invasions, but none has whipped up as much public interest. We started a fight to retain our culture and get back what rightfully belongs to us, and the battle will not end until we have reached everyone our goals."
"With the older Indian rapidly vanishing," Oakes said, "unless we take action right away, the real Indian culture will be lost forever." He also advocated ending the military draft of Indians from the reservation because it drained “the able-bodied men from the reservation and leaves only the very young and the very old, who are not able to further the Indian cause there.” He also planned to create a traveling medical clinic. “This traveling clinic will take in all the low economic areas, even those that have no Indians."
In 1970, Oakes and 25 others were arrested after they chopped down a tree, blocking a road near Stewart's Point, roughly 100 miles north of ' San Francisco, and collected $1 in tolls from several motorists. Oakes said he intended to buy back the road with the money.
After that, he was injured in a San Francisco poolhall, beaten with a pool cue in a Mission District bar on July 11, 1970 where he once worked as a bartender. A year before, Oakes had slugged a Samoan, Tommy Pritchard, then 27. A year later Oakes and Pritchard ran across each other again in the same bar and Pritchard whacked Oakes on the chin with the pool cue, beat him to the floor and then struck him repeatedly with the stick on the right temple. A four operation helped, but the damage was severe and the articulate, handsome young man with a dream started to shatter after he had a metal plate placed in his head as a result of the beating.
He said, "I have severe headaches that bother me to the point that I have a hard time controlling my temper when I think about the injustices that have been placed upon my people. Anyway, I'm lucky to be alive. I don't talk as fast as I did before my injuries, my left side is still stiff, and my hair, which was completely shaven off when I was hospitalized, is still short, but growing back at a healthy rate. With continued therapy and other visits to the Indian medicine men in various parts of the country, I hope to be as fit as I was before I was severely injured."
Oakes was a controversial figure in the main steam and within the Indian American community. He suggested that all of us white people go back to where we came. He could be belligerent in his public dealing.
Oakes continued his organizing efforts to form a strong and united American Indian nation, however in September of 1972, he fell into an argument with a YMCA camp manager in Sonoma, California named Michael Morgan. The camp edged Oakes property on the Kashia Reservation.
At about 4:45 p.m. Morgan, who had been at the camp corrals working with the horses, was walking home when, according to Morgan and later conformed by police, Oakes jumped out from behind a tree and started to question Morgan about an Indian juvenile who had been arrested at the YMCA camp on September 18 for attempted horse theft. It was the second run in between Morgan and Oakes.
On September 14, Oakes and the accused 16 year old horse thief, were hunting on YMCA property. When Morgan confronted them, Oakes argued that the land belonged to the Indian people and pulled a knife. Morgan fired a warning shot in the air and Oakes and the boy left. In the September 18 incident, the argument escalated, and Morgan shot and killed Oakes. He was later acquitted on the ground of self-defense.