33 Facts About Dennis Banks

Dennis Banks was a Native American activist, teacher, and author.

Dennis Banks was a longtime leader of the American Indian Movement, which he co-founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1968 to represent urban Indians.

Dennis Banks attended Pipestone Indian Boarding School in Minnesota, which closed in 1953.

When he was 17, Dennis Banks joined the US Air Force and was stationed in Japan.

Dennis Banks was fascinated to be in a place where Europeans were the minority.

Dennis Banks returned to Minnesota, where he participated in a burglary, for which he was convicted, serving two and a half years in prison.

In 1968, Dennis Banks co-founded the American Indian Movement in Minneapolis.

In 1973 Dennis Banks went to Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota when the local Lakota civil rights organization asked for help in dealing with law enforcement authorities in nearby border towns.

Dennis Banks was the principal negotiator and leader of the Wounded Knee occupation.

Dennis Banks was acquitted of the Wounded Knee charges, but was convicted of incitement to riot and assault stemming from the earlier confrontation at Custer.

Dennis Banks had been shot in the back of the head execution style, and her murder was unsolved for decades.

Dennis Banks was given amnesty in California by then-Governor Jerry Brown, who refused to extradite him to South Dakota to face the charges related to activities in the 1973 Custer protests.

Dennis Banks received financial support from actor and AIM sympathizer Marlon Brando.

Dennis Banks taught at the recently opened Native American Studies department at Contra Costa College and at Deganawidah Quetzalcoatl University, a Native American-controlled institute of alternative higher learning, where he became the first American Indian chancellor.

In 1985, Dennis Banks left Onondaga to surrender to federal law enforcement officials in South Dakota.

Dennis Banks served 18 months in prison related to the 1973 charges for the Custer riot.

Dennis Banks's activities resulted in the states of Kentucky and Indiana passing strict legislation against grave desecration.

In 2006, Dennis Banks led Sacred Run 2006, a spiritual run from San Francisco's Alcatraz Island to Washington, DC The runners followed the ancient Native American tradition of bringing a message of "Land, Life and Peace" from village to village.

Dennis Banks delivered a "Manifesto for Change" to Representative John Conyers.

Dennis Banks was a member of the board of trustees for Leech Lake Tribal College, a public, two-year college located just outside Cass Lake, Minnesota.

Dennis Banks appeared on the California ballot with presidential nominee Gloria La Riva.

Dennis Banks had roles in the movies War Party, The Last of the Mohicans, Thunderheart, and Older Than America.

Dennis Banks participated as a musician on such albums as Peter Gabriel's Les Musiques du Monde and Peter Matthiessen's No Boundaries.

Early in his life, Dennis Banks enlisted in the United States Air Force and was sent to Japan.

Dennis Banks left Japan after being court martialed by the Air Force for being AWOL.

Dennis Banks returned to Japan several times, but Machiko had remarried and Michiko was at university in Northern Japan.

At Pine Ridge Reservation, Dennis Banks met Darlene Kamook Nichols, who was 17 and still in high school.

Dennis Banks has several stepchildren: Roland Blanchard, Beverly Baribeau, Glenda Roberts, Denise Dennis Banks, Pearl Blanchard, and Danielle Louise Dickey.

Dennis Banks has a granddaughter named Migizi from Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Mr Dennis Banks was in a relationship with married Lumbee Attorney and Native Rights Activist, JoJo Brooks Shifflett in the later years of his life and at the time of his death.

In 2012, Dennis Banks joined forces with Golden Globe and Grammy Award-winning artist Kitaro in celebration of the Earth on the CD Let Mother Earth Speak.

The project contains a message of international peace, intertwined with stories and life lessons from Dennis Banks, and featuring the music of Kitaro.

Dennis Banks died at the age of 80 of complications from pneumonia following heart surgery on October 29,2017, in Rochester, Minnesota.