“Forty years ago Friday, dozens of Native Americans – mostly California college students – boated to the largely abandoned island in San Francisco Bay, starting an unarmed occupation that lasted nearly 19 months and captured the attention of media around the world,” says this CNN report.

“We changed the whole course of history, not only for the island, but for the government and its relationship with the Indians,” Adam Fortunate Eagle tells CNN.

The group’s ideas were both lofty – they wanted to call attention to persistent mistreatment of Native people – and practical. They also sought to use the abandoned facilities on Alactraz for, among other things, a replacement for an American Indian center that had burned down.

Among the occupiers was Benjamin Bratt, now a television and film actor. His mother, a Quechua Native from Peru, brought him and his siblings there as children.

“Forty years later, Native people still recognize the occupation for what it was and re-mains: a seminal event in American history that brought the plight of American Indians to the world’s attention,” Bratt and his brother Peter said in a statement.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Alcatraz, American Indian Movement, Benjamin Bratt, buffalo post, Native American history, Native American news, Quechua