Dennis Banks

Dennis Banks (born April 12, 1937, Leech Lake Reservation, Minnesota, U.S.—died October 29, 2017, Rochester, Minnesota) Ojibwe activist and a founder of the American Indian Movement (AIM), a prominent Native rights organization. Banks led high-profile protests that increased awareness about the U.S. government’s long history of mistreatment of Native peoples.

Early life

Banks was born on the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. His Ojibwe name was Nowa-Cumig (meaning “in the centre”), and he was a member of the Turtle Clan. He was raised in poverty by his grandparents, and, when he was just five years old, he was taken away from them and sent to a boarding school for Native children. He attended a series of such schools but ran away from them often. When Banks was 17 years old, he ran away for the last time and returned to Leech Lake. Unable to find work, he joined the U.S. Air Force. While stationed in Japan, Banks married a Japanese woman and went absent without leave. He was arrested and returned to the United States. After his discharge from the military, he moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he struggled to provide for his family and became involved in petty crime. In 1966 he was convicted for burglarizing a grocery store, and he subsequently spent about two and a half years in prison.

Founding the American Indian Movement

Banks was released from prison in 1968. Once free, he, along with Clyde Bellecourt (an Ojibwe man he met in prison) and others, founded the American Indian Movement (AIM). The original purpose of the group was to help the Native people of Minneapolis adjust to urban life. However, as AIM membership grew, so did the goals of the organization. AIM would soon become known nationwide for its bold advocacy of Native rights. In 1969 Banks met Russell Means, and the two became AIM’s most prominent leaders.

Banks and other members of AIM joined a group called the Indians of All Tribes in an 18-month occupation of Alcatraz Island that began in November 1969. AIM next achieved notoriety with a Thanksgiving Day protest in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1970. Banks and Means declared that the holiday should be a national day of mourning for everything Native peoples had lost since the arrival of European settlers in the Americas. Some AIM members took over a replica of the Mayflower, the ship that carried the Pilgrims. In 1972 Banks and Means organized the Trail of Broken Treaties, in which hundreds of Native activists traveled in a cross-country car caravan to Washington, D.C. The leaders of the protest planned to meet with government officials to demand the recognition of Native rights. When they arrived in Washington, D.C., however, the meetings were canceled. AIM members then occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs building for six days.

Banks and Means organized another protest in 1973. They led about 200 AIM members and their allies in the occupation of Wounded Knee, a town on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Wounded Knee was the site of an 1890 massacre in which U.S. troops killed as many as 300 Lakota Sioux. Banks and AIM wanted to call attention to local corruption on the Pine Ridge Reservation as well as the ongoing mistreatment of Native peoples. Federal authorities surrounded the town, beginning a tense standoff that lasted more than two months. Two activists were killed by gunfire, and one federal marshal was seriously wounded. Banks and Means were tried for their roles in the occupation, but the case against them was eventually dropped due to prosecutorial misconduct.

Banks still faced trial, however, for another incident. Just weeks before the Wounded Knee occupation began, Banks had led AIM members in a confrontation with police in Custer, South Dakota. They were protesting because a white man had killed a Native man in a fight but had not been charged with murder. Rather, he had been charged with involuntary manslaughter, a less serious offense. The protest turned into a riot, and Banks was charged with rioting and assault. He was found guilty in 1975.

Later years and film career

Following the verdict, Banks fled. He spent nine years as a fugitive, first in California and then in New York. In 1984 he returned to South Dakota, turned himself in, and served 14 months in prison. Upon his release he moved to the Pine Ridge Reservation and became a counselor for residents with addictions to drugs or alcohol. In later years Banks appeared in a number of films, including Thunderheart (1992) and The Last of the Mohicans (1992), in which he appeared with Means. In the 1990s he founded a maple syrup and wild rice company. His memoir, Ojibwa Warrior: Dennis Banks and the Rise of the American Indian Movement (written with Richard Erdoes), was published in 2004.