He also went to the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota to join last year’s protests of the Dakota Access oil pipeline.
In 2010, Banks joined several other Ojibwe from the Leech Lake and White Earth bands who tested their rights under an 1855 treaty by setting out nets illegally on Lake Bemidji a day before Minnesota’s fishing season opener. Banks paid tribute to the dead as “warriors” and declared it “a national holiday.” He was also there in 1998 for the 25th anniversary. He was part of a group of AIM supporters who returned to Wounded Knee in 2003 to mark the 30th anniversary of the standoff. In the late 1990s, Banks founded a company that sold wild rice and maple syrup, trading on his famous name. “Then we proudly sang him the AIM song as his final send off.”īanks lived near the town of Federal Dam on the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota and was a member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, one of the many bands of Ojibwe, also known as the Chippewa or Anishinaabe, living in North America. “All the family who were present prayed over him and said our individual goodbyes,” the family said. Jerry Brown refused to extradite him, and the Onondaga Nation in New York gave him sanctuary.īanks also helped lead a takeover of the Bureau of Indian Affairs offices in Washington, D.C., in 1972 as part of a protest dubbed “The Trail of Broken Treaties.” And he was a participant in the 1969-71 occupation by Native Americans of Alcatraz Island, the site of the former prison in San Francisco Bay.īanks’ family wrote on his Facebook page that as he took his last breaths, son Minoh Banks sang him four songs for his journey. He avoided prosecution on those charges for several years because California Gov.
However, Banks spent 18 months in prison in the 1980s after being convicted for rioting and assault for a protest in Custer, South Dakota, earlier in 1973. “He was someone who was both loved and hated - depending on what circle you’re looking at.”īanks and fellow AIM leader Russell Means faced charges stemming from the Wounded Knee occupation, but a judge threw out the case. “Dennis Banks is somebody who had an indelible impact on history, not just in our native community but throughout our country,” said Anton Treuer, a professor of the Ojibwe language at Bemidji State University, citing how he demanded that the powerful take notice of American Indian concerns. He had heart surgery earlier this month and was in high spirits until pneumonia he had contracted after the surgery took a turn for the worse on Friday, she said. Banks died Sunday night at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, surrounded by about 30 people, including siblings, children and grandchildren, said daughter Tashina Banks Rama.
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