Alcatraz, the Trail of Broken Treaties, Wounded Knee--these are the well-known sites of "takeovers" by American Indian activists, mostly members of the American Indian Movement or AIM, in the 1960s and 1970s. AIM began in 1968, in Minneapolis-St. Paul, when urban Indians organized to protect their rights and preserve their traditions. Indian activism spread across North America with other takeovers, sit-ins, and demonstrations. Recent studies of American Indian activism have been welcomed for their contribution to people's understanding of a crucial period in recent Indian history. However, most of these studies have focused on the very visible, public figures of the Red Power movement, virtually all of whom have been men. Women's activism, while less visible, has been crucial to sustaining Indian communities, particularly in urban areas, and to maintaining the momentum begun in the heady days of the 1960s and 1970s. Individuals need to look more closely at the contributions of women to those activist movements. In this paper, the author examines the role of women in the 1971 takeover of the United States Coast Guard Station in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and how women parlayed that takeover into a longstanding community organization: the Indian Community School. Leaving the political issues largely to men, the women turned their attention to the needs of their children, ultimately creating a center that is now funded by Indian gaming and serves the entire urban Indian community of Milwaukee. Their success is not acknowledged by AIM, and the Milwaukee takeover itself is rarely mentioned in histories of Indian activism. (Contains 34 notes.)