Banks, Dennis James, 1937-2017

p. 30 Banks attented Wahpeton Indian School and Flandreau Indian Boarding School; p. 50 Banks was ordered to shoot protesters in Japan; p. 54 Banks had a baby named Michiko with a woman, Machiko, in Japan; p. 60 Banks read about civil rights in prison; p. 61 Banks co-founded the American Indian Movement (AIM) on July 28, 1968, alongside Clyde Bellecourt, George Mitchell, Harold Goodsky, Frances Fairbanks, and about two hundred meeting attendees; p. 349, Banks started a relationship with Alice Lambert; p. 361 Banks started a business with his son Minot

Born Dennis J. Banks or Nowa Cumig, April 12, 1937, on Leech Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota; raised by grandparents; attended Pipestone Indian Boarding School; joined United States Air Force at 17; went AWOL; arrested for burglary. He co-founded the American Indian Movement (AIM), which participated in the Trail of Broken Treaties, occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the occupation of Wounded Knee. During the occupation, Banks met Darlene Kamook Nichols, whom he later married and with whom he had four children. Remaining in California afterward, Banks taught tribal federal law at the Deganawidah Quetzalcoatl University, of which he became chancellor in 1979. Banks went to New York to live with the Onondaga Nation in 1984. A year later, Banks returned to South Dakota to surrender to federal officials, after which he was sentenced to 18 months in prison. He served half of his sentence before being released on parole in 1985, at which point he began working as a drugs and alcohol professor at the Lone Man School on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. In his later years, Banks continued to work as an activist for Native Americans by leading spiritual runs and participating in walks across the country to raise awareness. He died on October 29, 2017, in Rochester, Minnesota.