"I asked the 19-year-old waitress if she had ever heard of Dennis Banks. No. Of the American Indian Movement? No. Of Wounded Knee? Maybe a book her mother once read? For that historical amnesia alone, the publication of Dennis Bank's memoir, "Ojibwa Warrior," is a welcome event.

Banks' story, for all its ambiguities, remains important, not only for AIM history but also for the arc of his own life. Now an elder back at Federal Dam, Minn., the man who could have been killed so often throughout his passionate rebellion against repression runs a natural-foods business. Some of his old warrior friends are officials in newer, friendlier tribal governments. It is a more just world for Indian people that he, with many others, helped stir into life."

Get the Story:
Book review: Ojibwa Warrior: Dennis Banks and the Rise of the American Indian Movement (The Minneapolis Star Tribune 6/20)
pwlat