![]() Banks said in an autobiography, “Ojibwa Warrior: Dennis Banks and the Rise of the American Indian Movement” (2005, with Richard Erdoes). “We were the prophets, the messengers, the fire starters,” Mr. But in 1984, weary of his confined life, he returned to South Dakota voluntarily and was sentenced to three years in prison. Federal officials said he would be arrested only if he left the reservation. Banks found a new refuge on an Onondaga reservation near Syracuse. Banks later became chancellor of Deganawidah-Quetzalcoatl University, a small two-year college for Indians in Davis, Calif.ĭeprived of California sanctuary when Governor Brown was succeeded by a Republican, George Deukmejian, in early 1983, Mr. Jerry Brown granted him asylum in 1976, rejecting extradition to South Dakota by saying his life might be in danger if he were sent back. With 1.4 million signatures on a petition supporting Mr. ![]() Facing up to 15 years in prison, he jumped bail and fled to California. But his own legal troubles were not over.Ĭharged with riot and assault with a deadly weapon for his role in the 1973 melee in Custer, he was found guilty in 1975. He mediated armed conflicts between Indians and the authorities in various states. Banks was a pre-eminent spokesman for Native Americans. After a federal trial, with the defense raising historic and current Indian grievances, a judge dismissed the case for prosecutorial misconduct, including illegal wiretaps and evidence that had been tampered with.īy then, Mr. Means were charged with assault and conspiracy. Two Indians were killed, and a federal agent was shot and paralyzed. Shootings punctuated the days of stalemate, leaving wounded on both sides. Means demanded the ouster of Richard Wilson, the elected leader of the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council, whom they called a corrupt white man’s stooge. Proclaiming a willingness to die for their cause, Mr. agents and other law-enforcement officials cordoned off the area with armored cars and heavy weapons, touching off a 10-week battle of nerves and gunfire. ![]() followers with rifles and shotguns occupied Wounded Knee. Means famous across America began when 200 Oglala Lakota and A.I.M. “We had reached a point in history where we could not tolerate the abuse any longer, where mothers could not tolerate the mistreatment that goes on on the reservations any longer, where they could not see another Indian youngster die,” he told the author Peter Matthiessen. Banks, who said he had merely tried to ease tensions, was charged with assault and rioting. It became a riot when the slain man’s mother was beaten by officers. ![]() Banks led 200 American Indian Movement protesters in a face-off with the police in Custer, S.D. In 1973, after a white man killed an Indian in a saloon brawl and was charged not with murder but with involuntary manslaughter, Mr. In 1972, the two organized cross-country car caravans on “Trails of Broken Treaties.” They converged on Washington with 500 followers to protest Indian living standards and lost treaty rights, occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs and held out for nearly a week, destroying documents and the premises, until the government agreed to discuss Indian grievances and review treaty commitments. Their band seized the ship Mayflower II, a replica of the original in Plymouth, Mass., and a televised confrontation between real Indians and costumed “Pilgrims” made the American Indian Movement leaders overnight heroes. Means first won national attention for declaring a “Day of Mourning” for Native Americans on Thanksgiving Day in 1970. He found sanctuary in California and New York but finally gave up and was imprisoned for 14 months. He was jailed for burglary and convicted of riot and assault, and he became a fugitive for nine years. Banks, whose early life of poverty, alcoholism and alienation mirrored the fates of countless ancestors, led protests that caused mass disorder, shootouts, deaths and grievous injuries. George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in the Montana Territory in 1876. Banks and his Oglala Sioux compatriot Russell Means were by the mid-1970s perhaps the nation’s best-known Native Americans since Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, who led the attack that crushed the cavalry forces of Lt. Banks lived on the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota, where he was born and where he grew up. His daughter Tashina Banks Rama said the cause was complications of pneumonia following successful open-heart surgery a week ago at the clinic. Banks, the militant Chippewa who founded the American Indian Movement in 1968 and led often-violent insurrections to protest the treatment of Native Americans and the nation’s history of injustices against its indigenous peoples, died on Sunday night at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
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