SF’s most untraditional Thanksgiving tradition continues early Thursday morning, as the Indigenous Peoples Thanksgiving Sunrise Gathering on Alcatraz Island returns, and will be streamed online.

Each year since 1975 (except for a couple of those years during COVID spikes), Native Americans and like-minded supporters have gathered at Alcatraz Island before sunrise on Thanksgiving Day for an event that’s come to be known as Unthanksgiving. The event is technically called the Indigenous Peoples Thanksgiving Sunrise Gathering, and happens again Thursday morning, to commemorate the 1969-71 Native ​​occupation of Alcatraz and to honor the Ramaytush Ohlone people who have never ceded that land.

If you’re thinking of going, this is a very early morning commitment, and tickets are quite limited. While the event is free and open to the public, boat tickets to Alcatraz are $15.50, and the boats all leave from Pier 33 between 4:15 am and 6 am. Plus those tickets are currently showing as sold out, though organizers said in a recent Facebook post that “There will be 300 [tickets] available at the Pier 33 kiosk on the morning of the gathering.”

So it might be a better bet to just catch the online stream. KPFA will be streaming the audio online, and on your FM dial at 94.1. Video of the event will be streamed live on the Facebook page of the International Indian Treaty Council, with the event starting before sunrise. (Thursday’s sunrise is estimated to be at 7:04 am.)

That same International Indian Treaty Council (IITC) organizes this event. “It’s important to remember the brutal history of genocide that Indigenous Peoples have suffered,” IITC executive director Andrea Carmen said in a previous year’s announcement. “It’s also important that we gather together to give thanks for our lives, the survival, and resiliency of our cultures, and the spirit of resistance passed down to us by our ancestors. Because of their courage and sacrifice, we still have these sacred ways that continue to give us strength to be who we are.”

Will Colin Kaepernick show up for Unthanksgiving at Alcatraz, as he has done many previous years? You’d have to be on Alcatraz Island come 5 am tomorrow morning to know for sure. Though last year, Kaepernick sprung for breakfast for 200 attendees, prepared by Native American chef Crystal Wahpepah of Oakland’s Wahpepah’s Kitchen.

Related: 'Unthanksgiving': Scenes From The Annual Native American Ceremony On Alcatraz [SFist]

Image: @gothspiderbitch via Twitter