Biography
Mohawk (Haudenosaunee) prisoner and one of the leaders of the September 1971 Attica State Prison uprising in New York. After New York State Police killed dozens of inmates and hostages in the assault that ended the rebellion, the state singled out uprising leaders for prosecution; Hill was convicted in 1975 of killing prison guard William Quinn — a charge supporters and human rights observers cited by the U.S. National Minority Advisory Council on Criminal Justice (1980) considered politically motivated, given that the state continually invented and revised its account of Quinn's death to justify the assault on D-Yard. Hill spent years in New York prisons before his eventual release and went on to become a prominent Indigenous rights activist known as Splitting the Sky.