In 1969, a group of Native American activists landed on the island of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay and claimed it for American Indians to call attention to Indian repression in the United States. This book gives the historical background to centuries of oppression, war, and suppression of Indian rightsall of which led to the occupation. The book shows how this act spurred other Indian activists to protest U. S. government policies, such as the American Indian Movement (AIM) stand-off in 1973 at Wounded Knee in the Pine Ridge reservation of South Dakota and the Longest Walk from Sacramento, CA, to Washington in 1978. In the late twentieth century, the government passed a number of bills to protect American Indian languages, religions, and graves. In 2004 the National Museum of the American Indian opened in Washington, D.C.