Interview with Dennis Banks on Alcatraz

Interview from November 1996 on Alcatraz Island with Native American activist and author Dennis Banks of the Ojibwe nation. He is there taking part in a ceremony to honor the Native American occupation of Alcatraz and discusses: the formation and founding of the American Indian Movement (AIM) and how his life in boarding schools, the military and prison helped to shape his beliefs because " I came from those walks of life that were very hard"; the injustice he observed in the Minnesota State Prison system, where he states 510 of the 1000 inmates were Native American in the late 1960s; his involvement in the Occupation of Alcatraz, which "highlighted the very belief ... that without land we're nobody"; finding common ground with the Black Panther Party on patrolling the community; the sickness of white people's "nomadic state of mind" in the US; how Native American women were the backbone of the Alcatraz Occupation and why the occupation eventually became "hard to sustain." Opening graphic designed by Carrie Hawks.

Note that this footage was originally shot on BetaCam SP videotape by James M. Fortier for the PBS documentary 'Alcatraz is Not An Island' and kindly donated to the TV Archive by Fortier in 2020. On 11/12/2021 James Fortier pointed out that: "Dennis Banks' interview only appeared in the original 72 minute film festival version of the PBS documentary "Alcatraz Is Not An Island." In order to meet PBS running time limitations of 56:46 his interview clips were cut along with other scenes and interview clips." [see DIVA comments]