Dennis Banks - Work With AIM

Work With AIM

In 1968 Banks co-founded the American Indian Movement (AIM) in Minneapolis. They were seeking to ensure and protect the civil rights of Native Americans living in urban areas, whom they believed were being discriminated against by law enforcement. Their related goals became to protect the traditional ways of Indian people and to engage in legal cases protecting treaty rights of Natives, such as hunting and fishing, trapping, and wild rice farming.

Banks participated in the 1969-1971 occupation of Alcatraz Island, initiated by Indian students from San Francisco of the Red Power movement, and intended to highlight Native American issues and promote Indian sovereignty on their own lands. In 1972 he assisted in the organization of AIM's "Trail of Broken Treaties", a caravan of numerous activist groups across the United States to Washington, D.C. to call attention to the plight of Native Americans. The caravan members anticipated meeting with United States Congress leaders about related issues; but government officials, most notably Harrison Loesch, the Interior Department Assistant Secretary responsible for the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), refused to meet with delegates. The activists seized and occupied the headquarters of the Department of Interior and vandalized the offices of the BIA. Many valuable Indian land deeds were destroyed or lost during the occupation.

Banks went to Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota in 1973 when the local civil rights organization asked for help in dealing with law enforcement authorities in nearby border towns. Residents of Pine Ridge believed the police had failed to prosecute the murder of a young Lakota man. Under Banks' leadership, AIM led a protest in Custer, South Dakota in 1973 against judicial proceeding that reduced the charges to a second degree offense against a white man accused of murdering a Native American.

AIM became involved in the political faction wanting to oust the elected chairman of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, Richard Wilson. A failure of an impeachment proceeding against him led to a large protest. Banks and other AIM activists led an armed takeover and occupation of Wounded Knee. After a siege of 71 days by federal armed law enforcement, which received national attention, the occupation was ended. Thirty resident families returned to the village to find that their homes and businesses had been looted and destroyed by the activists. The town was never rebuilt. Banks was the principal negotiator and leader of the Wounded Knee forces. Subsequent investigation of Wilson found questionable accounting practices, but no evidence of criminal offenses.

As a result of involvement in Custer and Wounded Knee, Banks and 300 others were arrested and faced trial. He was acquitted of the Wounded Knee charges, but was convicted of incitement to riot and assault stemming from the earlier confrontation at Custer.