BANKS, DENNIS J.
Native American activist, organizer, and protest leader Dennis Banks (Nowacumig) helped
found the influential AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT (AIM). Under his passionate leadership in the late 1960s and early 1970s, AIM championed Native American self-sufficiency, traditions, and
values. However, its demand for federal recogni-
tion of century-old treaty rights led to violent
clashes with authorities, and the FEDERAL
BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (FBI) branded AIM
an extremist group. In turn, illegal actions by the
FBI led to Banks’s acquittal on charges stem-
ming from his role in AIM’s occupation of
Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1973. While
heightening national awareness of Native Amer-
ican issues, Banks faced prosecution several
times. He spent nearly a decade as a criminal
fugitive, receiving a form of political ASYLUM in
California from then governor Jerry Brown
before surrendering in 1984 and serving a short-
ened prison term. Since 1978, Banks has led a
Native American spiritual organization in Ken-
tucky called Sacred Run.
Banks was born April 12, 1937, in Leech
Lake, Minnesota. His difficult early life began
during one of many periods of upheaval in fed-
eral policy regarding Native Americans. Like
many Anishinabe Ojibwa, or Chippewa, chil-
dren, he was sent at the age of five to schools
operated by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs
(BIA), and he spent part of his childhood being
shuttled between boarding schools in North and
South Dakota. The BIA managed such schools
in accordance with a landmark change in federal
policy known as the Indian Reorganization Act
of 1934 (25 U.S.C.A. § 461 et seq.). Under the
terms of this so-called new deal for Indians—a
plan for tribal government that many traditional
Native Americans had resisted—schools were to
have been improved over those in previous
decades that sought to Christianize or “civilize”
their pupils. But the schools still deemphasized
Native American culture by forbidding the
speaking of the Ojibwa language, Lakota. Thus,
like many of his generation, Banks lost his native
tongue.
At the age of 19, Banks joined the U.S. Air
Force and served in Japan.Discharged in the late
1950s, he returned to Minnesota, where he faced
the same problems as young Native American
men continued to face in the 1990s and the
2000s: alienation from his culture, unemploy-
ment, poverty, alcoholism, and crime. “I was
heading down a road that was filled with wine,
whiskey and booze,” Banks later recalled. “Then
I landed in prison.” In 1966, he was convicted for
burglarizing a grocery store and began serving
thirty-one months of a three-and-a-half-year
sentence in Stillwater State Penitentiary, in Min-
nesota. In prison, Banks met fellow convict
Clyde Bellecourt, also an Ojibwa. The two men
and others founded AIM in July 1968 with sev-
eral goals in mind. They wanted to address the
problems that beset their people and find solu-
tions to basic needs such as housing and
employment. To help Native Americans live suc-
cessfully off reservations, they would start so-
called survival schools. But fundamentally, they
wanted to preserve their vanishing culture.
AIM’s emblem was an upside-down U.S. flag,
what Banks called the international distress sig-
nal for people in trouble.
When the first AIM chapter started in Minneapolis in 1968, Banks would often use a police radio to guide him to the scene when officers were arresting Native Americans. Intending toprevent police abuses, he was frequently arrestedon charges of interference. This kind of tough,streetwise advocacy helped spread the movement,making Banks, Bellecourt, and anotherAIM leader, Russell Means, heroes to many oftheir generation.
Over the next four years, the movementspread to all 50 states and to Canada. The organization’spolitical message had widespreadappeal for Native Americans who felt betrayedby the federal government’s Indian ReorganizationAct. Not only was this new deal perceived asno deal, but many believed that it opened theway for massive federal land grabs of Indian territoryon which valuable minerals were located.Banks and his fellow leaders decided to reclaimformer Indian territory, announcing that theywould symbolically “retake the country fromwest to east” like the “wagon train in reverse.”
The militancy of their claims was soon demonstrated. In its first act of protest, onNovember 4, 1969, AIM seized the abandonedfederal prison on Alcatraz Island, in San FranciscoBay, California. Two hundred activistsclaimed the island as free Indian land anddemanded that an educational and cultural centerbe established there. In ironic press statements,they announced the establishment of aBureau of Caucasian Affairs and offered to paythe U.S. government $24, in mockery of the1626 purchase of Manhattan Island from Indiansby Dutch settlers. The occupation, whichlasted nineteen months, stirred up considerablepublicity. The U.S. House of Representativespassed a joint resolution directing PresidentRICHARD M. NIXON to negotiate with theactivists, but his administration’s offer to build apark on the island was laughed off. U.S. MARSHALSultimately arrested the activists still onthe island in June 1971.
In April 1971, Banks led several AIM membersin a week-long takeover of the Fort SnellingMilitary Base, in St. Paul. Seizing an abandonedbuilding, the group announced that it intendedto start an Indian survival school there. SenatorWalter F. Mondale agreed to negotiate withBanks, but before he could, a federal SpecialWeapons and Tactics (SWAT) unit arrested theprotesters. Around the United States, otheroccupations of government property took placeas AIM chapters demonstrated against brokentreaties. As a white backlash against the protestsbegan, several Indians were beaten or shot.Charges of MANSLAUGHTER brought againstwhite attackers usually ended in acquittal,inflaming the Indian movement. It maintainedthat little or no help was forthcoming from theBIA or the FBI.
In response, car caravans converged onWashington, D.C., on November 2, 1972, in aprotest rally dubbed the Trail of Broken Treaties.AIM presented a 20-point proposal demandingthat the government revamp the BIA, recognizeIndian sovereignty, restore the power of Indiansto negotiate treaties, and create a review boardto study treaty violations. A group of 400 protestersseized the BIA building; clashed with riotsquads; and, renaming the facility the NativeAmerican Embassy, ransacked files that Bankssaid contained evidence of federal mistreatmentof Indians. Banks told reporters, “We are tryingto bring about some meaningful change for theIndian community. If this is the only action thatwill bring change, then you can count ondemonstrations like this 365 days a year.” OnNovember 6, the Nixon White House agreed tonegotiate. After two days, Banks’s followersdeparted in return for the appointment of a specialpanel to investigate conditions on Indianreservations. But within a week after thetakeover, federal funding was cut off for three ofAIM’s survival schools.
In early 1973, a turning point occurred inBanks’s life and the direction of AIM. On February6, he led an AIM protest 200 strong inCuster, South Dakota, after a white man accusedof killing an Indian in a barroom brawl wascharged with INVOLUNTARY MANSLAUGHTER.Banks met with local officials, but when the slainman’s mother, Sarah Bad Heart Bull, tried toenter the courthouse, she and other NativeAmericans were beaten by the police. A riotensued, in which AIM members set fire to policecars and the CHAMBER OF COMMERCE office. Forhis role in the Custer incident, Banks wascharged with ARSON, BURGLARY, and maliciousdamage to a public building, all of which hedenied. But his radicalization was complete. “Wehad reached a point in history where we couldnot tolerate the abuse any longer,” Banks laterexplained, “where mothers could not toleratethe mistreatment that goes on on the reservationsany longer, they could not see anotherIndian youngster die.”
Three weeks later, Banks, Means, and otherAIM members took over the town of WoundedKnee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in SouthDakota. For Native Americans, the town has abitter place in history: it is the site where, in1890, 300 unarmed Sioux men, women, andchildren were massacred by the Seventh Cavalryof the U.S. Army. Banks and Means hopedto invoke this symbolism by seizing the town byarmed force and issuing new demands. They wanted the federal government to investigatethe BIA and to address treaty violations, andthey denounced recent tribal elections as corrupt manipulations by white U.S. citizens. As national attention focused on the growingarmy of some three hundred FBI agents andU.S. marshals, and the armored personnel carriers surrounding the militants’ fortifications, gunfire was frequently exchanged. Over 71 days, while the government ordered surrender without AMNESTY, the town was held. “We laiddown our weapons at Wounded Knee,” Bankstold the press from within the stronghold,recalling the 1890 massacre. “Those weapons weren’t just bows and guns, but also a sense ofpride.”
The takeover ended on May 9, 1973. Pentagon documents later revealed that the U.S. Armyhad readied a vast military arsenal to clear outAIM members, including more than 170,000rounds of ammunition, grenade launchers,explosives, gas, helicopters, and jets. In the end,however, casualties were limited: two Native Americans were killed and several wounded;three members of the government forces werewounded, including one agent who was paralyzed.As a condition of surrendering, AIM was once again promised a federal investigation ofits demands, but none was forthcoming.
Banks and Means were prosecuted on tenfelony counts each in a dramatic eight-monthtrial in St. Paul, during which federal marshalsused mace on courtroom spectators. The defendants alleged that their takeover of Wounded Knee was justified by the government’s violationsof the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie—a pactin which the Sioux Indians had been promisedgovernment protection for ending their armedresistance. But the case against Means and Banksfoundered on revelations that the FBI had used illegal wiretaps and had changed documents,among other illegalities, in mounting its prosecution.On September 16, 1974, all charges weredismissed.
Although Banks acted as a negotiator duringthe mid-1970s, settling disputes between NativeAmericans and authorities, other aspects of hislife soon changed for the worse. In July 1975, a South Dakota jury convicted him on charges ofriot and assault with a deadly weapon for hisrole in the 1973 riot at the Custer County Courthouse. The conviction carried a maximum sentenceof 15 years in prison. Before sentencing, Banks heard prison guards say he would not last 20 minutes in the South Dakota State Penitentiary.He fled, only to be arrested by FBI agentson January 23, 1976, in northern California. Amassive petition movement supported by theactors Jane Fonda and Marlon Brando appealedto Governor Brown on Banks’s behalf. Brown reduced Banks’s bail, refused EXTRADITION requests from South Dakota, and informed authorities there that he was protecting Banks because of sworn statements that Banks’s lifewould be endangered if he were imprisoned.Banks lived freely in California, serving as chancellorof the two-year Indian college Deganawidah-Quetzalcoatl University, until the 1983inauguration of Republican governor George Deukmejian ended his asylum.
Banks then took sanctuary on the Onondaga Reservation in New York. Because reservationsin the state are not under federal jurisdiction,the FBI chose not to arrest him as long as heremained there.
After nine years as a fugitive, Banks gave himself up to state authorities in South Dakotain fall 1984. His request for clemency was denied, and he was sentenced to three years inprison. After his PAROLE on December 9, 1985,he spent time on the Pine Ridge Reservation, where, through his success at persuading Honeywell and other companies to locate factories there, employment doubled. But his legal troubles continued. Banks had been charged withillegal possession of dynamite stemming fromthe 1975 arrest of his wife, Kamook Nichols. A lower court dismissed the charges in 1983 on theground that Banks and three other defendants had been denied their SIXTH AMENDMENT rightto a SPEEDY TRIAL, and a second federal courtup held the ruling. But on January 21, 1986, the members of the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5–4 vote, held that their rights had not been violated, because they were free without bail and not under indictment during the 90-month delay in their prosecution. Banks pleaded guilty onMarch 8, 1988, and received five years’ PROBATION.Also, in 1988, Banks’s autobiography Sacred Soul was published.
In 1994, Banks led the four-month “Walk forJustice.” The purpose of the trek from AlcatrazIsland in San Francisco to Washington, D.C.,was to publicize current issues regarding NativeAmericans.
Banks continued to serve as director ofSacred Run, an organization he founded in 1978to address Native American spiritual concerns.Since then the Run has become an international, multicultural event that carries the message ofthe sacredness of life and of humankind’s relationshipto the earth. By 1996, Banks had led runners over 58,000 miles through the UnitedStates, Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.
Banks has had roles in movies including WarParty, The Last of the Mohicans, and Thunderheart. A musical cassette, Still Strong, featuring Banks’s original work as well as traditional Native American songs, was completed in 1993 and a music video with the same name was released in 1995.
In the early 2000s Banks continued working toward the release of Leonard Peltier. Peltier, an Ojibwa whom Banks considers to be a political prisoner, was convicted in 1977 of the murder oftwo FBI agents during a gunfight in Oglala, North Dakota. In addition to supporting the Peltier defense and other issues concerning Native Americans, Banks traveled and lectured in the United States and abroad.
FURTHER READINGS
Churchill,Ward. 1988. Agents of Repression: The FBI’s SecretWars against the Black Panther Party and the AmericanIndian Movement. Boston: South End Press.Dennis Banks Website.Available online at <members.aol.com/nowacumig/main.html> (accessed May 31, 2003).Sayer, John William. 1997. Ghost Dancing the Law: TheWounded Knee Trials. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press.Smith, Paul, and Robert Warrior. 1997. Like a Hurricane: TheIndian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee. NewYork: New Press.Weyler, Rex. 1982. Blood of the Land: The Government andCorporate War against the American Indian Movement.New York: Everest House.
CROSS-REFERENCES
Native American Rights.
