1978: NOAA announces gender-neutral hurricane naming system
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From Nov. 20, 1969, to June 11, 1971, 89 Native Americans and their supporters occupied Alcatraz Island in a 19-month-long protest. Led by Richard Oakes, LaNada Means, and others, and with John Trudell as the group’s spokesman, they lived on the island in San Francisco Bay together until the federal government shut down the operation. The group identified as the Indians of All Tribes and claimed that, under the Treaty of Fort Laramie between the U.S. and the Lakota tribe, all retired, abandoned, or out-of-use federal land was returned to the Indians who once occupied it. Since Alcatraz penitentiary had been closed on March 21, 1963, and the island declared surplus federal property in 1964, activists felt that the island qualified for a reclamation by Natives. At the height of the occupation there were 400 people on Alcatraz, including students and children. Native and non-native people brought food and other necessities to the island, but a Coast Guard blockade made it increasingly difficult to supply the occupants with food. Means — one of the first and last on the island — made it clear to the media that the group wanted complete control over Alcatraz to build a cultural center that included Native American Studies, an American Indian spiritual center, an ecology center, and an American Indian Museum. The occupation affected federal assimilation, or Indian Termination, policies and established a precedent for Native American activism.
(Wikipedia) (photo courtesy Golden Gate National Recreation Area/National Park Service)
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