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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 1, 2017)
Page 10 The Skanner November 1, 2017 ford, longtime friends, said the majority of public schools are now non-White. The pro- liferation of charter and alternative schools has also chipped away at the effectiveness of public schools. The federal govern- ment has played such a major role in shaping education policy and schools now mostly prepare African Amer- icans for prison, not college, Brown said. “The school’s struc- ture that’s used is that they teach our kids how to stand in a straight line, to raise their hands when they have to go to the bathroom…you do that in prison, so that’s the training they’re get- ting,” Brown said. He then quoted what he said was a prophet- ic statement made by W.E.B. Du Bois 57 years ago. “[African American] teachers will become rarer and in many cases will disappear,” Brown said quoting Du Bois, noting that the predic- tion has come to pass. Brown continued, quoting Du Bois: “[Af- rican American] chil- dren will be instructed in public schools and taught under unpleas- ant if not discouraging circumstances. Even more largely than to- day, they will fall out of school, cease to enter high school, and fewer and fewer will go to col- lege.” Horsford, like the oth- er panelists, said no one should be surprised, because, after all, reseg- regation has occurred and education is the “new civil rights in the new Jim Crow.” “We shouldn’t operate from the assumption that our schools are broken,” she said. “They are doing ex- actly what they were designed to do, which is to sift and sort children into different catego- ries for economic rea- sons.” Horsford added that African Americans must tap the potential, possibilities and gifts of the young people who truly hold the answers to society’s pressing problems. Even educators have suffered and are poor- ly valued in a system guided by high-stakes testing and perfor- mance-based account- ability, Horsford said. “We have to engage in parallel efforts… we need to reimagine schools and school sys- tems that support ev- eryone,” said Horsford. “We also have to make sure that, in the mean- time, we are preparing students to not only survive, but also thrive in an era of extreme in- equality.” American Indian Activist Dennis Banks Dies at Age 80 In 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee, Banks and others held federal agents at bay for 71 days By STEVE KARNOWSKI Associated Press D ennis Banks, a co-founder of the American In- dian Movement and a leader of the 1973 Wounded Knee occupa- tion, has died, his family announced Monday. He was 80. Banks was one of sev- eral activists who found- ed the American Indian Movement in Minneap- olis in 1968, and he was a leader of AIM’s armed takeover of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Da- kota in 1973, in a protest against both the tribal and U.S. governments. The village had been the site of a massacre by U.S. soldiers in 1890 that left an estimated 300 Indians dead. The occupiers held federal agents at bay for 71 days. Banks died Sunday night, his family wrote on his Facebook page. He had developed pneumo- nia following heart sur- gery, and his family said they honored his wishes not to be put on life sup- port. Daughter Arrow Banks told The Associ- ated Press the family would have more to say after a family meeting Monday. Banks, whose Ojibwe AP PHOTO/JIM MONE, FILE News Educating cont’d from pg 9 In this March 18, 1973, file photo taken in Wounded Knee, S.D., American Indian Movement leader Dennis Banks, left, reads an offer by U.S. government seeking to effect an end to the Native American takeover of Wounded Knee. Looking on is AIM leader Carter Camp. The family of Banks said he died Sunday, Oct. 29, 2017, at the age of 80. name was Nowacumig, lived near the town of Federal Dam on the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. His “ ed for rioting and assault for a protest in Custer, South Dakota, earlier in 1973. He avoided prose- cution on those charges All the family who were present prayed over him and said our individual goodbyes family said that as Banks took his last breaths, son Minoh Banks sang him four songs for his jour- ney. “All the family who were present prayed over him and said our individual goodbyes,” the family said. “Then we proudly sang him the AIM song as his final send off.” Banks and fellow AIM leader Russell Means faced charges stemming from the Wounded Knee occupation, but a judge threw out the case. How- ever, Banks spent 18 months in prison in the 1980s after being convict- for several years because California Gov. Jerry Brown refused to extra- dite him, and the Onon- daga Nation in New York gave him sanctuary. Banks was part of a group of AIM supporters who returned to Wound- ed Knee in 2003 to mark the 30th anniversary of the standoff, in which two Native Americans died. Banks paid tribute to them as “warriors” and declared it “a nation- al holiday.” He was also there in 1998 for the 25th anni- versary. Banks also helped lead a takeover of the Bureau of Indian Affairs offices in Washington, D.C., in 1972 as part of a protest dubbed “The Trail of Broken Treaties.” And he was a participant in the 1969-71 occupation by Native Americans of Al- catraz Island, the site of the former prison in San Francisco Bay. He returned to the Leech Lake Reservation in the late 1990s and founded a company that sold wild rice and maple syrup, trading on his fa- mous name. In 2010, Banks joined several other Ojibwe from the Leech Lake and White Earth bands who tested their rights under an 1855 treaty by setting out nets illegally on Lake Bemidji a day before Minnesota’s fishing sea- son opener. The Banks family said funeral arrangements were still being finalized, but that he would be bur- ied with traditional ser- vices in his home com- munity of Leech Lake.
