Union Pacific Railroad Museum and Union Pacific’s Council of Native American Heritage (CONAH) employee resource group will celebrate National Native American History Month with a free, virtual, presentation by Professor Kent Blansett of the University of Kansas.

 Drawing from his recent book A Journey to Freedom: Richard Oakes, Alcatraz, and the Red Power Movement (Yale University Press, 2018), Professor Blansett will discuss Richard Oakes’s critical role in Red Power activism from the 1960s to the 1970s.

This presentation highlights the 50th anniversary of the nineteen-month takeover of Alcatraz Island by the organization Indians of All Tribes. Oakes also helped organize the highly publicized Alcatraz, Fort Lawton, and Pit River “takeovers.”