Demonstrators first started coming to Alcatraz after the US government closed the prison in 1963 and declared the property "surp
lus federal land.” Officials wanted to sell the island to a private developer, but some American Indian leaders had other ideas. They pointed out that a treaty between the United States and the Sioux said all abandoned federal land should be returned to Native people. The first group of American Indian protestors arrived in March 1964 and occupied Alcatraz for four hours. The small group of Sioux demonstrators offered to pay the US government $9.40 for the island, or 47 cents per acre – the same amount the government was paying to use tribal lands. Activists decided to state a larger action five years later, after the federal government offered to turn Alcatraz into a national park. On the morning of November 20, 1969, seventy-nine American Indians, many of them college students, set off for the island and began their occupation. Why did the Sioux demonstrators think it was fair to buy the entire island for only $9.40?
The correct answer is that it was the same amount the government paid. This is a directly stated, explicit, answer from the text. The text says "The small group of Sioux demonstrators offered to pay the US government $9.40 for the island, or 47 cents per acre- the same amount the government was paying was paying to use tribal lands." This tells us that they thought that it was only fair that since the government wasn't paying them much, that they believed they deserved the same courtesy.
