_(cropped).jpg)
Community hub
Recent from talks
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Dennis Banks
Dennis J. Banks (April 12, 1937 – October 29, 2017) was a Native American activist, teacher, and author. He was a longtime leader of the American Indian Movement, which he co-founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1968 to represent urban Indians. He was a pre-eminent spokesman for Native Americans. His protests won government concessions and created national attention and sympathy for the oppression and endemic social and economic conditions for Native Americans.
Born on Leech Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota in 1937, Dennis Banks was also known as Nowa Cumig (Naawakamig in the Ojibwe Double Vowel System).
At the age of 5, Banks was taken from his reservation and family to be forcibly moved to a federal Indian boarding school, run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (now the Bureau of Indian Education). Its goals were to "civilize" and educate Native American children in English and mainstream culture, in effect, to assimilate them. Children were prohibited to speak their native languages or practice their traditions. Vocational training was emphasized. Banks ran away often, returning to live with family at Leech Lake. He attended Pipestone Indian Boarding School in Minnesota, which closed in 1953. It had been founded in 1892 according to the federal model established at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.
When he was 17, Banks joined the US Air Force and was stationed in Japan. He was fascinated to be in a place where Europeans were the minority. During this period, in 1956 he was ordered to shoot to kill anti-base protesters during the Sunagawa Struggle. The events had a profound influence on him. After he went AWOL, he was dishonorably discharged from the military. He returned to Minnesota, where he participated in a burglary, for which he was convicted, serving two and a half years in prison.
Banks was a champion of Native pride, who defied authority and spoke for the Nation's oldest minority. In 1968, Banks co-founded the American Indian Movement (AIM) in Minneapolis. AIM sought to ensure and to protect the civil rights of Native Americans living in urban areas and to protest the treatment of Native Americans and the nation's history of injustices against its indigenous peoples. Banks felt that a point had been reached in history, where Native Americans could not tolerate any longer the abuse and Native American mothers could not tolerate any longer the mistreatment that goes on on reservations.
Banks participated in the 1969–1971 Occupation of Alcatraz, initiated by Indian students from San Francisco of the Red Power movement. It was intended to highlight Native American issues and promote Indian sovereignty on their own lands. Banks and Oglala Lakota Russel Means were by the mid-1970s the best known Native Americans since Lakota war leaders Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, who led the attack that defeated the forces of General Custer at The Battle of Little Big Horn, also known as The Battle of the Greasy Grass.
Banks also traveled to Germany, where he, together with AIM co-founder Vernon Bellecourt, set up an AIM office in West Berlin and also traveled behind the Iron Curtain to meet with East German AIM supporters.
In 1972, he assisted in the organization of AIM's "Trail of Broken Treaties", a caravan of numerous activist groups across the United States to Washington, D.C., to call attention to the plight of Native Americans. The caravan members anticipated meeting with United States Congress leaders about related issues, but government officials, most notably Harrison Loesch, the Interior Department Assistant Secretary responsible for the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), refused to meet with delegates. Banks helped lead a takeover of the BIA offices. Activists seized and occupied the headquarters of the Department of Interior.; in the process some vandalized the offices of the BIA. Many valuable Indian land deeds were destroyed or lost during the occupation.[citation needed] Over 9000 tons of documents were removed by AIM members and hidden by the Hatteras Tuscarora and Lumbee in Robeson County, N.C. The FBI would find the documents and many were returned to the BIA.
Hub AI
Dennis Banks AI simulator
(@Dennis Banks_simulator)
Dennis Banks
Dennis J. Banks (April 12, 1937 – October 29, 2017) was a Native American activist, teacher, and author. He was a longtime leader of the American Indian Movement, which he co-founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1968 to represent urban Indians. He was a pre-eminent spokesman for Native Americans. His protests won government concessions and created national attention and sympathy for the oppression and endemic social and economic conditions for Native Americans.
Born on Leech Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota in 1937, Dennis Banks was also known as Nowa Cumig (Naawakamig in the Ojibwe Double Vowel System).
At the age of 5, Banks was taken from his reservation and family to be forcibly moved to a federal Indian boarding school, run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (now the Bureau of Indian Education). Its goals were to "civilize" and educate Native American children in English and mainstream culture, in effect, to assimilate them. Children were prohibited to speak their native languages or practice their traditions. Vocational training was emphasized. Banks ran away often, returning to live with family at Leech Lake. He attended Pipestone Indian Boarding School in Minnesota, which closed in 1953. It had been founded in 1892 according to the federal model established at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.
When he was 17, Banks joined the US Air Force and was stationed in Japan. He was fascinated to be in a place where Europeans were the minority. During this period, in 1956 he was ordered to shoot to kill anti-base protesters during the Sunagawa Struggle. The events had a profound influence on him. After he went AWOL, he was dishonorably discharged from the military. He returned to Minnesota, where he participated in a burglary, for which he was convicted, serving two and a half years in prison.
Banks was a champion of Native pride, who defied authority and spoke for the Nation's oldest minority. In 1968, Banks co-founded the American Indian Movement (AIM) in Minneapolis. AIM sought to ensure and to protect the civil rights of Native Americans living in urban areas and to protest the treatment of Native Americans and the nation's history of injustices against its indigenous peoples. Banks felt that a point had been reached in history, where Native Americans could not tolerate any longer the abuse and Native American mothers could not tolerate any longer the mistreatment that goes on on reservations.
Banks participated in the 1969–1971 Occupation of Alcatraz, initiated by Indian students from San Francisco of the Red Power movement. It was intended to highlight Native American issues and promote Indian sovereignty on their own lands. Banks and Oglala Lakota Russel Means were by the mid-1970s the best known Native Americans since Lakota war leaders Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, who led the attack that defeated the forces of General Custer at The Battle of Little Big Horn, also known as The Battle of the Greasy Grass.
Banks also traveled to Germany, where he, together with AIM co-founder Vernon Bellecourt, set up an AIM office in West Berlin and also traveled behind the Iron Curtain to meet with East German AIM supporters.
In 1972, he assisted in the organization of AIM's "Trail of Broken Treaties", a caravan of numerous activist groups across the United States to Washington, D.C., to call attention to the plight of Native Americans. The caravan members anticipated meeting with United States Congress leaders about related issues, but government officials, most notably Harrison Loesch, the Interior Department Assistant Secretary responsible for the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), refused to meet with delegates. Banks helped lead a takeover of the BIA offices. Activists seized and occupied the headquarters of the Department of Interior.; in the process some vandalized the offices of the BIA. Many valuable Indian land deeds were destroyed or lost during the occupation.[citation needed] Over 9000 tons of documents were removed by AIM members and hidden by the Hatteras Tuscarora and Lumbee in Robeson County, N.C. The FBI would find the documents and many were returned to the BIA.