On November 20, 1969, Indians of All Tribes landed on Alcatraz Island and claimed the abandoned prison "by right of discovery," offering the government twenty-four dollars in glass beads and red cloth for it. The nineteen-month occupation — led at first by Richard Oakes, with LaNada War Jack, John Trudell's Radio Free Alcatraz, and hundreds of residents — was the founding act of Red Power, ended by federal removal in June 1971.

Alcatraz begat a wave of occupations — Fort Lawton (where Bernie Whitebear's occupiers were jailed and won the land that became Daybreak Star), Mount Rushmore, the BIA building, and dozens more — whose arrestees were the movement's first cohort of prisoners. The occupations' veterans built the American Indian Movement's national campaigns, traced in this section's AIM pages.