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After Alcatraz penitentiary closed in 1963 and was declared surplus federal property in 1964, Red Power activists cited a provision of the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie on returning unused federal land to Native peoples. In March 1964 Lakota activists led by Richard McKenzie held the island for four hours and offered 47 cents an acre, about $9.40 in all. The October 1969 fire that destroyed the San Francisco Indian Center, a lifeline for people relocated under the termination policy, pushed students toward action. LaNada Means of UC Berkeley’s Native American Student Organization and Mohawk student Richard Oakes organized the landing of November 20, 1969, when 14 of 89 people slipped past the Coast Guard and the caretaker radioed that the Indians had landed.

The camp grew to about 400 people under the name Indians of All Tribes. Women ran its daily life: Woesha Cloud North started a school, nurse Stella Leach ran a clinic and Linda Aranaydo fed the island. John Trudell broadcast Radio Free Alcatraz on the Pacifica network. Support came from the Black Panthers, the Brown Berets, Grace Thorpe, Jane Fonda and Creedence Clearwater Revival. The Nixon administration chose attrition. After Oakes’s stepdaughter Yvonne died in a fall on January 3, 1970, the Oakes family left, Means and Trudell split over strategy, power and phones were cut in May 1970, and federal officers removed the last 15 people on June 11, 1971.

• Creedence Clearwater Revival donated $15,000 for a supply boat named the Clearwater.
• Means recruited attorney Edward Bennett Williams to press the treaty claim in federal court.
• Marlon Brando’s visit influenced his later decision to decline his Oscar.
• In July 1970 Nixon sent Congress a message ending termination and calling for self-determination.
• Trudell later reflected that the leaders had gotten lost in their manhood, overshadowing the women’s work.