San Francisco, California (CNN) -- Alcatraz Island was a chilly, unwelcoming place once reserved for infamous criminals. Not even the federal government appeared to want it after the penitentiary closed in the 1960s. Adam Fortunate Eagle remembers "The Rock" a little more warmly: a place where fellow Native Americans took a stand that may have helped end the U.S. policy of tribal assimilation. 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.
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Native Americans occupied Alcatraz for 19 months, starting in November 1969
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Indians wanted to focus on "broken treaties, broken promises," professor says
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Occupiers didn't get demands but may have helped end U.S. policy of tribal assimilation
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Co-organizer: Move brought "Indian issues to the forefront of the public awareness"
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The initial group demanded control of Alcatraz so it could develop several Indian institutions, such as a center of Native American studies, a spiritual center and a museum, partly as replacements for a San Francisco @placeholder center that had burned down.
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But another motive for the occupation was the government's general treatment of @placeholder.
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The U.S. 16 years earlier had begun a policy of terminating @placeholder reservations and relocating the inhabitants to urban areas.