In 1964 six Lakota men occupied the former federal prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. They claimed that under the terms of 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty between the Sioux and the United States, an abandoned federal facility must revert back to Indian ownership. The federal government and the media treated the occupation as a joke, but the event set the precedent for a later occupation that began in 1969 and lasted nineteen months. The second occupation made headlines throughout the world. The 1969 campaign was planned in response to the Indian Office's efforts to relocate Indians to cities, as well as to protest poor reservation conditions. The occupiers, led by Adam Fortunate Eagle, the leader of the Bay Area United Council, Richard Oakes, an Indian student at San Francisco State University, drew up a "Proclamation for the Indians of All Tribes" that offered to pay "twenty four dollars ($24) in glass beads and red cloth" for the island, a hreference to the seventeenth century purchase of Manhattan. Their goal was to establish an educational and cultural center in the abandoned prison.
———Proclamation in hand, seventy-eight Native Americans arrived on Alcatraz in the early morning of November 20, 1969. During the first few months of the occupation, Alcatraz was a rallying point for Native Americans from both urban areas and reservations. Island residents performed ceremonial dances, taught their children traditional art forms, and created a safe atmosphere for sharing cultural ideas. Despite their spirit, however, constant food and water shortages hampered the occupiers' ability to function. Dissension between the island residents and activists on the mainland further undermined efforts to sustain the group's sense of purpose.
———Alcatraz remained Indian land until twenty armed federal marshals forcibly removed the fifteen remaining inhabitants on June 11, 1971. Although their original goals were not realized, the occupiers, representing numerous tribes, successfully brought Native American issues to the forefront of American politics during a highly volatile time in American History.

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