Native American Leader Dennis Banks on Overlooked Tragedy of U.S. Indian Boarding Schools

DemocracyNow.org - On "Columbus Day" -- known to many as Indigenous Peoples Day -- we're joined by Dennis Banks, a legendary Native American activist from the Ojibwa Tribe. In 1968, he co-founded the American Indian Movement. A year later he took part in the occupation of Alcatraz Island in California. In 1972 he assisted in 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. That same year AIM took over the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) building in Washington, D.C. In early 1973, AIM members took over and occupied Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for 71 days, which some have come to call Wounded Knee II. Earlier this year, he led a cross country walk from Alcatraz to Washington calling for the release of imprisoned Native American activist Leonard Peltier. Banks share his thoughts about "Columbus Day", the U.S. treatment of American Indians, and his own story of growing up in the Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school system.

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