My handout for my presentation on Dennis Banks' book.

This is my handout for my presentation on Dennis Banks' book. It is just quotes but I feel that they are the strongest and most interesting quotes I found in the book, which is sourced below the quotes:

“The old boarding schools that Indian kids were forcibly taken to were concentration camps for children where we were forbidden to speak our language and were beaten if we prayed to our Native creator.”
- Dennis Banks (24)

“ ‘You always aim to do this and to do that. Why don’t we just call ourselves “AIM”?’ Clyde, George, and I came up with a number of names that had the word ‘movement’ in them. We finally settled on “American Indian Movement.”
- (Banks 63)

“The dark agony of a silent man was suddenly transformed into an issue an entire nation must face.”
- The Nishnawbe News (Banks 114)

“Among us were people from many tribes: Navajo, Ojibwa, Sac and Fox, Potawatomi, Iroquois, Lumbee, Shinnecock, Pueblo, Kiowa, Comanche, Ponca, and several more, including tribes from the north-west. About 65 percent of the people present were local Lakotas…Even some non-Indians had come to help us—Chicano brothers, young white men and women from the ‘60s counterculture, and a white doctor with a few nurses. We welcomed them all.”
- (Banks 165)

“By March 30, we were down to two meals a day. A week later it was one meal a day. And then a week after that, we had to get by with one meal every other day with a bowl of thin soup in between. On the day the occupation ended, the only food left was a forty-pound bag of dry pinto beans.”
- (Banks 188)

“From 1972 to 1976, Pine Ridge reservation was a killing field….More than three hundred people are reported to have met a violent end in this place of fear and suppression…Over 90 percent of the killings and other violent crimes were never investigated.”
- (Banks 294)

“The tribal president had a crude poster on the wall of his office that stated, ‘one of Russell Means’ braids cut off—five dollars, two braids—ten dollars, Russell Means’ whole head pickled—one hundred dollars.”
- (Banks 285)

“Dick Wilson had finally been defeated. He lost his bid for a third term as tribal chairman by a three-to-one margin. The winner was a former BIA superintendent and longtime Wilson opponent, Al Trimble. Unfortunately, Wilson had two months left before he had to relinquish his office, during which time he wielded absolute power.”
- (Banks 288)

“Never give up. That’s how I run my life. And I stay close to nature. During the sugaring time, it is important to recognize that one can’t take all the sap away from the tree. We have to leave enough so that the tree can survive and thrive, otherwise one might make a mistake and take the tree’s life force away. So we must think the Indian way if we are going to survive.”
- Grandpa Bijah (Banks 344)

“Life is like a circle
You walk and walk only
To find yourself at the
Place you started from”
-Henry Crow Dog, Lakota (Banks 348)

“Age brings wisdom—sometimes.”
- Dennis Banks(Banks 354)

“I thank the American Indian Movement for being strong. AIM will always be strong because it is a spiritual movement. Every day we receive calls of distress, and every day we offer tobacco ceremonies for those in need. Right now this earth, our mother, is in distress. She needs our help. Can we—all of us—respond? I don’t know, but I am convinced that if we don’t respond, we will be in peril and our future will lay in question.”
-(Banks 362)



SOURCE:
Banks, Dennis, and Richard Erdoes. Ojibwa Warrior: Dennis Banks and the Rise of the American Indian Movement. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004. N. pag. Print.