photo #9277079

In the autumn of 1972, a caravan of Native activists crossed the country and arrived in Washington DC with a list of demands and a determination to be heard. What began as a march became a week that put Native rights on the front page of every newspaper in America.The movement was called the Trail of Broken Treaties, and it drew members of the American Indian Movement and many nations together around a document known as the Twenty Points, a call to restore treaty making, honor existing treaties, and respect tribal sovereignty. When promised meetings and housing fell through, the group ended up occupying the headquarters of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the very agency that governed so much of their lives. For several tense days they held the building, renaming it the Native American Embassy.The occupation ended without the violence many feared, and the activists left with their Twenty Points delivered and the nation's attention fixed on their cause. It stands alongside Alcatraz and the Longest Walk as a defining moment in the modern movement for Native rights, a reminder that a people long told to wait quietly had decided, firmly, to speak. Much of what followed in Native policy grew from the seeds planted that week.What does it say to you that Native activists had to occupy the very agency meant to serve them in order to finally be heard?