While local actions multiplied in Native communities and nations, the spectacular November 1969 seizure and eighteen-month occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay grabbed wide media attention. An alliance known as Indians of All Tribes was initiated by Native American students and community members living in the Bay Area. They built a thriving village on the island that drew Native pilgrimages from all over the continent, radicalizing thousands, especially Native youth. Indigenous women leaders were particularly impressive, among them Madonna Thunderhawk, LaNada Means War Jack, Rayna Ramirez, and many others who continued organizing into the twenty-first century. The Proclamation of the Indians of All Tribes expressed the level of Indigenous solidarity that was attained and the joyful good humor that ruled:

We, the Native Americans, reclaim the land known as Alcatraz Island in the name of all American Indians by right of discovery.

We wish to be fair and honorable in our dealings with the Caucasian inhabitants of this land, and hereby offer the following treaty:

We will purchase said Alcatraz Island for twenty-four dollars (24) in glass beads and red cloth, a precedent set by the white man’s purchase of a similar island about 300 years ago.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples' Hist…, loc. 404604