11-01-2018, 02:15 PM
(11-01-2018, 11:29 AM)Marypoza Wrote: RlP Dennis Banks. I knew him personally when he lived in the area during the 1990s he was a very cool dude.
Indeed. A great, courageous and wise activist.
Dennis Banks (Ojibwe, 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 inMinneapolis, Minnesota in 1968 to represent urban Indians.
Born on Leech Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota, he was also known as Nowa Cumig(Naawakamig in the Double Vowel System), which in the Ojibwe language means "in the center of the universe."
In 1968, Banks co-founded the American Indian Movement (AIM) in Minneapolis.[1] They were seeking to ensure and protect the civil rights of Native Americans living in urban areas.[2]
Banks participated in the 1969–1971 occupation of Alcatraz Island, 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. 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.[3] The 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]
In 1973 Banks went to Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota when the local Lakota civil rights organization asked for help in dealing with law enforcement authorities in nearby border towns. Residents of Pine Ridge believed the police had failed to prosecute the murder of a young Lakota man. Under Banks' leadership, AIM led a protest in Custer, South Dakota in 1973 against judicial proceedings that had resulted in the reduction of charges of a white man to a second degree offense for murdering a Native American.