Ojibwa Warrior: Dennis Banks and the Rise of the American Indian Movement [Paperback]

Dennis Banks (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 21, 2005

Dennis Banks, an American Indian of the Ojibwa Tribe and a founder of the American Indian Movement, is one of the most influential Indian leaders of our time. In Ojibwa Warrior, written with acclaimed writer and photographer Richard Erdoes, Banks tells his own story for the first time and also traces the rise of the American Indian Movement (AIM). The authors present an insider’s understanding of AIM protest events—the Trail of Broken Treaties march to Washington, D.C.; the resulting takeover of the BIA building; the riot at Custer, South Dakota; and the 1973 standoff at Wounded Knee. Enhancing the narrative are dramatic photographs, most taken by Richard Erdoes, depicting key people and events.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A compelling account of one of the most influential Indian leaders in the United States, this autobiography describes how Banks was taken from his family as a young child and placed into a government boarding school by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) in an attempt to "acculturate" him. Nine years later, he returned to the Ojibwa "rez" only to find that he had forgotten his native Anishinabe language and many of his culture’s traditions. "My teachers … had made me into an ‘apple’—red outside but white inside." Nonetheless, Banks stayed for two years, reconnecting with family and relearning skills like rabbit trapping, before he joined the Air Force in search of "three meals and warm place to sleep." When he returned from his tour in Japan in the late 1950s, he re-experienced the prejudice, brutality and poverty that were preying upon his people in America. Angered by what he saw, Banks founded the American Indian Movement (AIM) with the help of his friends. His retelling of these events reads as seamlessly as a great campfire story (or a well-edited oral transcript). He takes readers deep inside the traditional Sun Dances and Sweat Houses of his Ojibwa Tribe and deep into the action of the Trail of Broken Treaties—a peaceful march on Washington that turned into a historic, six-day takeover of the BIA headquarters. Bank’s 11-year run from the FBI, his many wives and children and the strategies of AIM all find their place in his winding narrative, making this volume an important addition to this history of Native American and civil rights movements in the United States. 73 b&w photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Banks opens his honest and moving autobiography with the 1973 standoff at Wounded Knee, pondering how he got there, from his 1937 birth in Leech Lake, Minnesota, to a major confrontation with the U.S. government. He recalls being separated from his family, language, and traditions while he lived "a life of innumerable rules" at a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school. He escaped at 16, joined the air force, and was later imprisoned for burglary. In prison, Banks studied the history of American Indian civil rights and became committed to the American Indian Movement (AIM), overseen by the spiritual leaders Mary Crow Dog and Leonard Crow Dog, subjects of previous books by coauthor Erdoes. The decision to make AIM confrontational but not violent led to the occupations of Alcatraz and Mt. Rushmore, the 1972 march on Washington, and Wounded Knee, which Banks considers "the greatest event in the history of Native America in the 20th century." For readers who can recall the spotty media coverage of these events, this powerful litany of AIM's accomplishments is especially provocative. Deborah Donovan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press (February 21, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080613691X
• ISBN-13: 978-0806136912
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #151,688 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #53 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Ethnic & National > Native American

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Real Human Being, March 7, 2005

By 

Mick McAllister - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Ojibwa Warrior: Dennis Banks and the Rise of the American Indian Movement (Hardcover)

The rumors of this book began more than fifteen years ago, and those of us who understood that it was Dennis Banks, not the flamboyant Russell Means, who was the heart and soul of AIM, have been waiting patiently. It was worth the wait. Banks tells a truly Indian life story--it's no accident that more than half the pictures are of other people: his relations.

Don't look for startling revelations here. We still don't know who really killed the FBI agents at Pine Ridge. But if you want to know how it is to grow up Indian in today's America, this is the book to start with.

It would be great to see the University of Oklahoma Press with a deserved best seller. And Richard Erdoes has capped an admirable career as scribe to contemporary native peoples with his collaboration on this strong, true book.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thanks to a real Warrior., May 12, 2004

By 

James Branham ( Runs with Wolf) (Baltimore, MD USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ojibwa Warrior: Dennis Banks and the Rise of the American Indian Movement (Hardcover)

Dennis Banks and the founders of AIM, deserve respect and thanks for their sacrifices, especially from American Indians. They woke us up with their refusal to fade away. They instilled honor and respect back into our lives and made us realize the pride of who we are. We are not sports team mascots, wacky Hollywood injuns or the names of vehicles, but a real and proud people, the First People.

If you want a close up look at a history, struggle and a real warrior this is the book.....and if you're American Indian buy this book and consider it a tobacco offering for Dennis Banks.

Mitakuye Oyasin - We are all related.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Personal History and Social Commentary, August 8, 2006

By 

Jeff Hendricks (Long Beach, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ojibwa Warrior: Dennis Banks and the Rise of the American Indian Movement (Hardcover)

Ojibwa Warrior is an autobiography and first hand account of the formation and rise of the American Indian Movement told by one of its founders, Dennis Banks. Banks' book, Ojibwa Warrior, is a multi-dimensional account of the history of racism and empire in the United States which should be of great interest not only to historians but also to anthropologists, philosophers, ecologists and especially social and environmental activists.

Banks begins the book with one of the most important events of the 20th century - the armed takeover and occupation of Wounded Knee by the American Indian Movement in 1973. Throughout the course of interaction between the Federal government of the United States and the remaining Tribal Reservations, the takeover of Wounded Knee was arguably the most important event of the 20th century. The takeover placed the American Indian Movement and the struggle for Native sovereignty into the national and international spotlight. The takeover of Wounded Knee is a fitting beginning for Banks' book, which is filled with various stories and events that combine into a overarching narrative of uncompromising struggle against oppression and determination to better the lives of Native Americans by any and all means necessary.

From Wounded Knee, which is dealt with in detail towards the end of the book, Banks fades back to his childhood years on the Leech Lake Ojibwa Reservation in Northern Minnesota where he was born in 1937. Banks was born into an economically poor yet culturally rich environment where he and his family lived close to the land and relied on natural foods to supplement their scarce and unhealthful government rations. Dennis tells of the close relationship that he had with his Grandparents, who still spoke the Ojibwa language and continued to practice the spiritual and cultural traditions of their ancestors. Throughout the book, Dennis would reflect back on those happy days often. However, the good times did not last. At the age of six, Dennis and his siblings were forcibly removed from the care of their relations to be placed into State run boarding schools. Banks' experience in this "school" was one that can be described as nothing other than a Government sponsored attempt at cultural genocide.

When Dennis returned to the reservation, he found the situation there to be much worse than when he had left as a child. Although the reservation had always been poor and marginalized, the situation was now much worse - increasing numbers of white folks had encroached into the reservation and the state had forced the Ojibwa nation to take out licenses to hunt traditional foods on their own land. The ability to sustain oneself on the reservation had become nearly impossible and Banks did what many youths from poor and marginalized areas often do in a tragic attempt to better their economic situations - he joined the armed forces. Ironically, rather than making Banks into a mindless soldier for America, his time in the Air Force ended up engendering within him a consciousness of the racist and imperialistic nature of the United States:
"I had been guarding the ramparts of the American Empire, but now I felt like those Crow and Arikara Indians who, after scouting for Custer and fighting on behalf of the whites, were pitted against their own brothers, the Cheyenne and Lakota. My Japanese family members were called gooks, slopes, and slant-eyes by whites, and those who suffered from these names were people just like me. Was I not a slant-eye, as all American Indians are? The American Air Force, which I had thought of as a friend, turned out to be an enemy" (p.55).

Although his antipathy toward the Air Force had already been established, Banks extended his tour of duty two years to remain in Japan with his new Japanese wife and child. When Banks was reassigned to the States shortly after, he went AWOL in order to remain with his family. However, his freedom did not last for long and he was quickly captured, court-marshaled, jailed and shipped back to the States where he received a dishonorable discharge.

By the mid 1960s, Banks was remarried with children and living in the "Indian Ghetto" section of Minneapolis where he had sunken into despair and alcoholism. In 1966, he was arrested, convicted and sent to prison for two years for stealing groceries to feed his family. During his time in prison he wrote that he had become invigorated by the growing resistance to U.S. empire both inside and outside the country and was especially inspired by groups such as the Weather Underground and the Black Panther Party. When he was released from prison in 1968, he returned to Minneapolis, determined to organize the Indian community to join in the struggle against racism and empire. On July 28, 1968, Banks organized a meeting in the "Indian Ghetto," where over 200 people showed up to discuss how to best empower their local community - during this meeting the American Indian Movement (A.I.M.) was formed.

A.I.M. began with the formation of a local cop-watch program to monitor and intervene in police abuses of the Indian community. As A.I.M. began to grow and achieve successes in its various struggles, native communities around the country began to call upon the group to intervene in their local struggles. A.I.M.'s tactics were confrontational and although they did not seek violence, they were not afraid to use it if they deemed it necessary to achieve their goals. Coupled with their militant organization and tactics, Banks also describes a spiritual foundation based on a synthesis of traditional native ceremony/spiritualism that was very important to the cohesion and morale of the organization. Although A.I.M.'s tactics were modeled after groups such as the Panthers and Weathermen, those groups suffered from a reactionary anti-spiritualism and disconnected consciousness. It is very likely that A.I.M's spiritual foundation was the key element that allowed A.I.M. to achieve many great successes in their struggles as well as to remain as an organized movement while other resistance movements dismantled and faded into oblivion when faced with the violent repression of the U.S. government under the cointelpro program.

A.I.M. achieved many great victories in their struggles, but they also suffered many devastating defeats. Banks describes some of the more notable actions that A.I.M. undertook during the 1970s and early 1980s, including the six day long occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters in Washington D.C., the riot in Custer, South Dakota, which ended in the arson of the County Court House, the three month long armed takeover and occupation of Wounded Knee in South Dakota, and the shoot-out between A.I.M. members and F.B.I. agents at the Jumping Bull ranch on the Pine Ridge reservation. Banks also describes he and Leonard Peltier's time together on the run from a massive national manhunt after the Jumping Bull ranch incident and also writes about the time he spent in California during the 1980s while he lived under an asylum granted him by then Governor Jerry Brown.

The importance of Banks' book cannot be understated. As a primary source document, it will remain as an important reference for present and future historians studying the American Indian Movement and the various groups with which it interacted. The book will also be of great importance for present and future resistance groups who find themselves engaged in struggle against the forces of empire and the repressive apparatus of the United State Government - for these people and groups Ojibwa Warrior will provide much needed insight into the strengths and weaknesses of resistance movements in the United States and the strengths and weaknesses of the various repressive agencies of the U.S. government.