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Kaepernick Appears at Alcatraz Indigenous People's Gathering

  • Colin Kaepernick, who kneeled for the national anthem at an NFL game to demonstrate against racism, prompted a protest movement that has swept the United States.

    Colin Kaepernick, who kneeled for the national anthem at an NFL game to demonstrate against racism, prompted a protest movement that has swept the United States. | Photo: Reuters

Published 23 November 2017
Opinion

"I realize that our fight is the same fight," former NFL footballer Colin Kapernick told the Indigenous gathering. "We are all fighting for our justice and our freedom."

Former NFL footballer Colin Kaepernick has made a surprise appearance at the Indigenous People's Day Sunrise Gathering on Alcatraz Island in California, expressing his solidarity with Indigenous Nations.

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"I realize that our fight is the same fight," he said at the public gathering off the coast of San Francisco on Thursday. "We are all fighting for our justice and our freedom.

"If there's one thing that I take away – and seeing the beauty of everybody out here – it's that we're getting stronger every day, we're only getting larger every day.

"I see the strength in everybody, the dancing, the rituals, that is our resistance. We continue to fight."

Kaepernick, the former San Francisco quarterback, was an unexpected face at the gathering. The NFL athlete-turned-activist sparked a national protest movement last year when he refused to stand for the national anthem by way of protesting police violence and racism.

The annual Sunrise event commemorates the Occupation of Alcatraz: from November 1969, the island was seized for more than 19 months by a group of Native Americans from San Francisco, part of a wave of Native activism across the United States.

Alcatraz Island was once a sacred space for Ohlone Indigenous people, but was later occupied by the U.S. government and turned into a federal prison which famously housed notorious mobster Al Capone. The prison was closed in 1963, but the island remains under the control of the U.S. Parks Service.

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