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Dennis Banks-American Indian Movement

Dennis Banks was a big part of the American Indian Movement, he did a lot to help American Indian rights. He wanted to get the Indian’s jobs because their unemployment rate was so high. Dennis wanted the Indians to get out of the perspective that the whites gave them from the beginning. Over a quarter of Indian children were sent to non-Indian foster homes. Others were sent to boarding schools where they had no family and no culture to live off of. Banks wanted all of this to stop, and the Indian’s to have more rights, to help them keep their culture.

Banks was born into poverty, like most Indians at that time. He had no contact with his father and was abandoned by his mother. When he was just 5 years old he was sent to a boarding school run by the government. In that school he last mostly all of his Indian identity. After boarding school he joined the Air Force. He was stationed in Japan where he married and had a child. After that he was arrested and sent back to Minneapolis. There he worked for minimum-wage jobs.

In 1968, Banks helped found American Indian Movement, or AIM. This made the white Americans realize that the government has a responsibility to Indian people. They wanted to show that the Indians had a legal standing in America and that they should have a moral standing too. To help American realized that the Indians were still alive and needed some attention; they raided Wounded Knee, South Dakota. The United States Marshals Service eventually removed all of the rebelling Indians. This act made America realize that the Indians were still there. New laws allowing Indian religious observance have been made.


 * Banks, Dennis and Erdoes, Richard. "Ojibwa Warrior: Dennis Banks and the rise of the American Indian Movement". University of Oklahoma Press: 2004. Amazon.com. 22 December 2009.

Dill, Jordan. “Dennis Banks's New Memoir”. 2004. 22 December 2009. []

Wilcox, Barbara. “Dennis Banks runs for justice on behalf of American Indian rights”. 2002. __Redhawks’s Lodge.__ 22 December 2009. []