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.
