Rock Festival Would Benefit Indian Students : Concerts: Promoter hopes that Irvine Meadows shows--still in the planning stage--will also raise awareness of Native American issues.

Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre has reserved dates for a threeday rock festival that aims to raise awareness of American Indian issues on the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ landing in the New World.

Proceeds from the Red Dawn Festival, tentatively set for Oct. 16 through 18, would go to the American Indian College Fund (AICF), which provides scholarships for students at 26 colleges run by Indian tribes.

The festival would not be produced by Irvine Meadows’ regular, in-house concert promoter, Avalon Attractions, but by Event Productions, a Marina del Rey company that plans to rent the amphitheater, according to Matt Curto, director of operations at Irvine Meadows.

“I had a meeting with the people (from Event Productions), and I am holding dates. But it’s one of those things where you believe it when you see it,” Curto said. “Obviously, they have grandiose ideas. I don’t know what to expect at this time.”

The prime mover is Noel (Ratty) Wyatt, a British-born, Hollywood-based promoter who has been a roadie and tour manager for rock bands. So far, Wyatt said, he and partner Steven M. Bristow, who has a similar background as a factotum for touring rockers, have received letters of confirmation from hard rock bands the Cult, Bang Tango and L.A. Guns, the soft-rock band America, and an unsigned Southern California group, Ariel.

Wyatt, 37, said the promoters have verbal promises from several major rock acts in addition to the Cult, which headlined recently at Irvine Meadows. He said he couldn’t name them because he hasn’t received written confirmation. “Suffice to say we have artists who could sell out 20,000-seat venues on their own,” Wyatt said. “We have at least five of those.”

Plans call for three eight-hour concerts. Wyatt and Bristow said they are trying to find corporate sponsors to pay staging costs, which would allow all proceeds to go to the New York City-based AICF. Bristow, who previously co-produced “Party Ninjas,” a series of Los Angeles Area hard rock benefit shows for a missing children’s fund, said a successful Indian benefit could generate as much as $3 million in revenues from ticket sales, merchandising, and broadcast rights to a film documentary of the concerts.

Putting on a benefit of such scope “is a grand ambition,” Wyatt acknowledged, “but if we get the right backing, it will happen. We’ve moved a long way down the road.” Bristow said he expects tickets to go on sale in September, after the festival lineup has been locked in.

Wyatt said he has had a long-standing interest in American Indian issues, spurred partly by the fact that his father, who was raised in England by foster parents, was part Apache.

“I’d been thinking about doing something like this for a long time,” Wyatt said. “1992 is the 500th anniversary of Columbus, but it’s also 500 years of survival for American Indians. It’s probably the biggest opportunity American Indians have had for a forum in a long time. People should be aware of what’s going on. The idea is to make this event spiritual, but also to raise money for people to go to school. Education is where everything springs from.”

Bristow said the festival would feature between-acts speakers and videos about American Indians, but “we’d like to be as nonpolitical as possible” and establish “a real positive attitude. We don’t want to be showing bad conditions on a reservation. I think people are aware of them already. It’s not a forum for that. It’s ‘Let’s just get some education going and (rectify) those conditions.’ ”

Gail Bruce, vice president of the American Indian College Fund’s board of trustees, said the Irvine Meadows shows would mark the first large-scale public event for the organization, which was established in 1987 using the United Negro College Fund as a model. Since 1989, when it launched its fund-raising operations, AICF has raised about $7 million from private donors, corporations and charitable foundations.

Bruce said she tried to organize a rock benefit for the fund last year, with Robbie Robertson as host, but had to set her plans aside for medical reasons.

“It was a blessing” when Wyatt and Bristow approached the AICF with their proposal to stage a benefit, Bruce said. “They can do the work as producers, and I can oversee it and see that it remains Indian and has the integrity and quality we want. I feel very comfortable that they can pull it off, and I am going to do everything I can to help them.”

Bruce said a successful benefit could raise the profile of the American Indian College Fund and add considerably to the $3 million it already expects to raise this year.

“A lot of people want to help Indians, but they don’t know how to do it,” said Bruce, who is not Indian. “We want to show people there are dedicated Indians doing something to help their people through education, and they need help to continue. What we want is for people (at the concert) to get an understanding of the culture, and to be touched by these people.”

Bruce said she is extending invitations to such performers as Robertson, Tom Petty and Tina Turner, who are part American Indian. Plans also call for showcasing American Indian musicians and dancers between the major rock acts on the bill.

The last major American Indian-related benefit concert in Orange County proved controversial.

In October, 1987, Willie Nelson, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Kris Kristofferson, Robin Williams and John Trudell played a four-hour concert dubbed “Cowboys for Indians and Justice for Leonard Peltier” at the Pacific Amphitheatre. Peltier, a founder of the American Indian Movement, was convicted of murdering two FBI agents in a 1975 shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

His supporters have maintained that the trial was unfair, with the conviction based on flawed evidence. The FBI’s top official in Los Angeles objected to the concert, and it was picketed by about 20 demonstrators.

The show went off smoothly, drawing an estimated 9,000 fans, about half the Pacific’s capacity.