Dennis Banks

Dennis Banks (2013)

Dennis Banks (born April 12, 1937 in the Leech Lake Reservation , Minnesota ; † October 29, 2017 ibid), also called Nowa Cumig , co-founded the American Indian Movement (AIM) in 1968 , a US indigenous organization that - often in opposition to the official Indian policy of the United States - advocating the self-determination rights of North American Indians .

Along with Russell Means and John Trudell , Banks was one of the best-known activists and spokesmen for the AIM, who were already politically active in its founding phase.

biography

Dennis Banks was an Anishinabe - Indians . He took part in numerous protests. 1969–1971 he took part in the occupation of the former prison island Alcatraz in the Bay of San Francisco and in 1972 he took part in the organization of the Trail of Broken Treaties running across the USA ("March" or "Path of broken treaties") , which ended with the occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, DC . He was also one of the leaders of the protest movement in the Pine Ridge Reservation , South Dakota , against its corrupt director Dick Wilson in 1973 and the associated 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee .

Under Banks' leadership, AIM protested in 1973 in Custer , South Dakota, against a court verdict acquitting a white man of the murder of an Indian. As a result, Banks was arrested along with 300 Indian activists in 1975 and brought to justice. He was convicted of inciting civil unrest in Custer. He went into hiding to avoid prison and FBI pursuits .

In California , Banks was under the protection of then Democratic Governor Jerry Brown , who refused to extradite him to South Dakota. From 1976 to 1983 he studied at the University of Davis in California and, after graduating, taught at Deganawida Quetzecoatl University (DQU). When Brown was replaced by Republican George Deukmejian in 1984 , Banks fled to the Onondaga Reservation in New York State , where he and his family found asylum until he surrendered to the South Dakota authorities a few months later. While with the Onondaga, he organized the Great Jim Thorpe Longest Run from New York City to Los Angeles to seek the return of the gold medals won at the 1912 Olympics to Jim Thorpe's family . On October 8, 1984, Banks was sentenced to jail, and on August 6, 1985, he was paroled .

Dennis Banks (top row, second from left) at a "veteran" meeting from the year 2013, AIM activists at the Wounded Knee occupation in 1973 had participated

In 1987 Dennis Banks was called to Uniontown , Kentucky , where grave robbers had been caught stealing treasures from Indian graves. He organized reburial ceremonies. Thanks to his work, Kentucky and Indiana passed strict laws against the desecration of graves. In 2006 Dennis Banks organized the Sacred Run from Alcatraz to Washington, DC, in which runners from Japan , Australia , Ireland and Canada also took part. Banks founded the Nowa Cumig Institute , a non-profit organization that manages the proceeds of its music productions ( Still Strong CD and benefit concerts ) for the benefit of youth programs in Indian communities.

Banks played himself in a supporting role in the film Thunderheart (1992, German  half-blood ) . In the same year he also appeared in a small supporting role alongside his political companion Russell Means in the Michael Mann film adaptation of The Last of the Mohicans .

Dennis Banks died in October 2017 at the age of 80 shortly after heart surgery.

literature

• Richard Erdoes : Ojibwa Warrior: Dennis Banks and the Rise of the American Indian Movement , Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0-8061-3580-8

documentary

• A Good Day to Die - The Life of Dennis Banks . Documentary USA 2010, directed by David Mueller and Lynn Salt (Choctaw)

Web links

Commons : Dennis Banks  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Robert D. McFadden: Dennis Banks, American Indian Civil Rights Leader, Dies at 80 . New York Times , October 30, 2017 (English)
• Dennis Banks in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Steve Karnowski: American Indian activist Dennis Banks dies at age 80 . AP article in Washington Post , October 30, 2017.
2. ^ Indian Leader Gets Jail Sentence. In: The New York Times . October 9, 1984, accessed October 31, 2017 . 

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This article is based on the article Dennis Banks ( memento of July 1, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) from the free encyclopedia Indianer Wiki ( memento of March 18, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) and is under Creative Commons by-sa 3.0 . A list of the authors was available in the Indian Wiki ( Memento from July 1, 2007 in the Internet Archive ).