For the past seven months, numerous American Indian tribes have held a nonviolent movement of protest and resistance against a planned oil pipeline near the sacred sites and water supplies for Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota.

In some ways, the protest is historic and unprecedented. In other ways, it’s a continuation of the contemporary American Indian movement that began with the occupation of Alcatraz in 1969-71. On Thanksgiving morning, I went to the tribes’ annual sunrise gathering on Alcatraz Island to find out if other people were thinking about the connection.

Boy, were they. When I straggled up to Pier 33 at 4 a.m., there were thousands of people in different lines — lines to buy tickets, to pick up tickets, to board the ferry. I already had a ferry ticket, but I was exhausted and confused, so I wandered around, asking person after person for the boarding line. When I found it, the family ahead of me turned and told me how lucky I was.

Back to Gallery Seeking a brighter future at dawn on Alcatraz 4 1 of 4 Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle 2 of 4 Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle 3 of 4 Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle 4 of 4 Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle







“A lot of people you see trying to buy tickets now, they’re not going to make it,” said the man standing in front of me.

“But it’s only 4 a.m.,” I croaked.

He smiled. “This must be your first time.”

His name was Efrain Tevez, and he and his family had driven up from Monterey for the gathering. I learned pretty quickly that many, if not most, of the attendees had traveled long distances to be there.

“I’ve been coming since 2009,” Tevez, 35, told me. “I’m Christian myself, but I deeply respect what this is. I’m from El Salvador originally, and when I was growing up, there were indigenous people who lived near the capital. I saw the government, working with corporations, wipe them out. So this is all connected, and none of it’s ancient history.”

Not only is it not ancient history, but everyone seemed to have very recent history on their minds.

“Today is the day we need to send up our prayers and our dances,” said Andrea Carmen of the Yaqui Nation at the beginning of ceremony. Eloy Martinez, who occupied Wounded Knee in 1973 and is a firekeeper at Standing Rock, stepped forward to present a fire offering from the camp.

“This is from the original fire that’s been burning at Standing Rock since April,” Martinez said. All 4,000 shivering attendees cheered.

“There are dark days ahead,” Carmen said. “I won’t say his name here.” A resounding boo went up at her oblique reference to President-elect Donald Trump. “But we’re in a fight right now, and it’s only going to continue. We need to remember that our ancestors went through worse.”

All of the ancestors. The sunrise gathering is an “all nations” event, and one of the things that became abundantly clear as it progressed was how common the story of violence and brutality is among indigenous people all over the world.

Carmen and Martinez asked us to honor nearby sites where American Indians are struggling to preserve the health of their land — Medicine Lake, near Sacramento, where the Pit River tribe has been fighting energy development, and Rio Yaqui, in Mexico, where the Yaqui tribe has been protesting industrial pollution for several years.

A delegation of Lumad people from the Philippines talked about how the government there is waging a military offensive against them for their land, and wowed the crowd with a delicate dance that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Renaissance court.

And of course, there was the story of Thanksgiving.

“The colonists killed 600 unarmed Pequods, and Gov. John Winthop declared a day of thanksgiving,” Carmen said. “This is the celebration of a massacre.”

The recitation of events at the gathering was grim. But the event itself was moving, even uplifting.

Speaking as an ignorant nonnative, listening to the harmonious tones of native languages was a revelation. And it’s impossible to feel bad in the presence of traditional Aztec dancing, drum circles, smudged sage and tobacco offerings.

Also, I had the sense that the experience of Standing Rock, despite the protesters’ long odds, had given not only the tribes, but also those who stand with them a sense of renewed purpose and community.

“The first time I came to this event in 2010, I was just attracted to the idea of an ‘unthanksgiving,’” Hunter Gassaway, 48, told me. Gassaway is a Choctaw from New Orleans who grew up celebrating Thanksgiving with his adoptive family. When he moved to the Bay Area, he told me, he was able to get in touch with an Indian community. (There are some 20,000 American Indians in the Bay Area.)

“But to be here this year, after so much, in this sacred place?” Gassaway said. “It has a new power.”

Caille Millner is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cmillner@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @caillemillner