The Trail of Broken Treaties (also known as the Trail of Broken Treaties Caravan and the Pan American Native Quest for Justice) was a 1972 cross-country caravan of American Indian and First Nations organizations that started on the West Coast of the United States and ended at the Department of Interior headquarters building at the US capital of Washington DC. Participants called for the restoration of tribes’ treaty-making authority, the abolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and federal investment in jobs, housing, and education. The protest inspired sizable gatherings of Native Americans throughout the journey, with the caravan described as "over four miles long and included some 700 activists from more than 200 tribes and 25 states" when it departed St Paul, Minnesota for Washington D.C. The eight organizations that sponsored the caravan included the American Indian Movement, the Canadian Assembly of First Nations (formerly the National Indian Brotherhood), the Native American Rights Fund, the National Indian Youth Council, the National American Indian Council, the National Council on Indian Work, National Indian Leadership Training, and the American Indian Committee on Alcohol and Drug Abuse. In Minneapolis, American Indian Movement (AIM) headquarters, activists developed a Twenty-Point Position paper to define their demands. History The 1960s were a period of increasing activism by American Indians (and First Nations in Canada) as they worked to renew civil rights and improve relations with federal governments that had repeatedly failed to satisfy treaty obligations. By this time numerous American Indians were living in urban settings, encouraged to relocate from reservations by the federal government in an effort to find more work opportunities, but often isolated by discrimination, poor educations in public schools, police harassment, and limited work. The lengthy occupation of Alcatraz by student activists from San Francisco and the founding of the American Indian Movement (AIM) in 1968 in Minneapolis, Minnesota by mostly Ojibwe activists were examples of rising activism. To raise national awareness of issues related to Indian-federal relations, AIM and other organizations conceived a cross-country caravan to promote their cause. Protesters joined portions of the caravan in West Coast cities: Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, which they departed on October 6, by bus and auto. The three caravans merged in Minneapolis, Minnesota where leaders drafted a Twenty-Point proposal of demands. The caravan reached the nation's capital of Washington, D.C. in early November, the week before the presidential election (in which