Banks, Dennis (1937-2017), was a Native American leader who became known for his sometimes controversial efforts to protect the rights of Indigenous (native) peoples. In 1968, he helped found the American Indian Movement (AIM). AIM works for equal rights for Native Americans and improvement of their living conditions.
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In 1973, Banks became a leader and spokesman of a group of AIM members and others who that year seized the village of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Russell Means, another AIM member, joined Banks in leading and speaking for the group. At Wounded Knee, the United States Cavalry had massacred as many as 300 Sioux in 1890. The AIM group occupied the village in part to protest federal policies toward Native Americans, and in part over a tribal leadership dispute among the Oglala Lakota Sioux. The occupiers demanded a Senate investigation of the U.S. government’s treatment of Native Americans and the return of lands taken from them in violation of treaties between the tribes and the federal government.
During the occupation, which lasted 71 days, several gunfights took place between the occupiers and federal authorities. Two Native Americans were killed and more than 300 were arrested as a result of the occupation. Banks and Means were tried on 10 felony charges, including conspiracy, theft, and assault on federal officers. However, a federal judge dismissed the charges against both men because prosecutors had mishandled the case.
In 1975, Banks was convicted of riot and assault as a result of his role in a 1973 AIM protest in Custer, South Dakota. The protest took place outside the Custer courthouse after a preliminary hearing in the trial of a man accused of murdering a Native American. After Banks’s conviction, he fled to California, where California Governor Jerry Brown refused to extradite (return) him to South Dakota. Brown left office in 1983, and Banks moved to the Onondaga Reservation in New York. In 1984, he returned to South Dakota and turned himself in for the riot and assault conviction. Banks spent 14 months in a South Dakota prison.
Dennis James Banks was born on the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. He was of Chippewa (also known as Ojibwe or Anishinaabe) descent. Banks served in the United States Air Force during the 1950’s and was stationed in Japan. He portrayed Native American characters in several motion pictures, including The Last of the Mohicans (1992) and Thunderheart (1992). In the late 1990’s, Banks founded a food company that produced maple syrup, wild rice, and other traditional Native American foods. Banks died on Oct. 29, 2017, in Rochester, Minnesota.
