Educational Media Reviews Online

In every major political activist movement there is one person who is synonymous with the name of that movement. Gloria Steinem was the epitome of the second-wave feminist movement. Malcolm X was one of the main figures of the civil rights movement. For the American Indian Movement (AIM), which joined Native peoples across the United States together during the 1960s and 1970s in protest of police brutality, poor living conditions, and high unemployment rates, Dennis Banks (Anishinaabe) was the identifiable commander. AIM gave the Native people a purpose to fight for, teaching peoples from hundreds of different tribal nations that “it’s ok to accept our culture, speak our language, dance our dances, love ourselves, get educated.” Dennis Banks and the creation of AIM were the sparks needed to create cultural awareness and self acceptance between Native peoples and non-Native peoples during that tumultuous time period. A Good Day to Die: Dennis Banks and the American Indian Movement chronicles the life and activism of its leader, Dennis Banks, alongside the hundreds of other Native peoples and allies who helped to make the movement a success during its time. Detailing Banks’ childhood, years enrolled in a boarding school, military career, prison sentence, and work with AIM – all accomplished through exquisitely crafted interviews – the viewer learns how Banks’ personal experiences with an unjust American society led him to co-found AIM in the hopes of forcing American politicians to listen to the concerns of Native people, as their voices were not being heard in the civil rights or women’s rights movements. The majority of the film is spent detailing the events that transpired at the height of AIM, including the occupation of Mount Rushmore, the Trail of Broken of Treaties caravan to Washington, D.C., the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) occupation in Washington, D.C., the burning of the courthouse in Custer, South Dakota, and the occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

The film’s true merits lie in its extensive use of oral history interviews and archival footage to portray the work Dennis Banks accomplished with AIM. The scenic context for the interviews with Banks are particularly striking: when he is going to be speaking about his time in prison he is filmed sitting in a jail cell; when he is addressing his experience at the boarding school he is sitting in the grass across the street from that boarding school; when he recollects his time in the military he returns to his old military base in Japan. By resituating Banks in the physical space of his past, he is able to emotionally (re)connect with his own personal history and portray that history in an emotionally effective way to the audience. Not only are there interviews with Banks about his life growing up and his work with AIM, but there are interviews with elders, other AIM leaders, scholars, comedians (Charlie Hill), and actors (Wes Studi). The plethora of oral history interviews from a wide spectrum of perspectives allows for an accurate representation of both the intricacies and controversies of the movement. Through this methodology, the viewer is able to become familiarized with the history leading up to AIM and the contemporary implications of the work that occurred throughout the movement.

The major weakness of A Good Day to Die is its lack of gender analysis and focus on women in AIM. Although a few women are interviewed throughout the film, their roles within AIM are barely discussed. At one point in the film we see a woman being physically dragged away from a protest by a police officer, signifying that there were women on the front lines of movement, but there is no mention of this moment. The first woman that is discussed in some depth is not one of the hundreds of women who were right there with men in protest of the American government; instead, Dennis Bank’s partner, Ka-Mook Nichols, is highlighted for their romantic love story, which apparently is more important than the literal fight of women within AIM.

Finally, at fifty-three minutes into the film, one man is quoted as saying, “the backbone of the Indian Civil Rights Movement was not men, it was women. They were the damn backbone of it!” One minute of this ninety-two minute film is dedicated to discussing how crucial women were to the advancement of AIM. There is no discussion of women who entered the most dangerous protests and even gave birth to future warriors during gunfire at Wounded Knee, such as Mary Crow Dog; or the women who sacrificed their lives for the greater cause, such as Anna Mae Aquash, in whose mysterious death Dennis Banks may have had a central role. By largely eliminating or alienating women from the other (read: men) leaders of the movement, both AIM and A Good Day to Die remain quite patriarchal in tone and substance.

Apart from the marginalization of women, this film remains an excellent educational tool that could be implemented in the high school or college U.S. history or Native American history classroom. Its historical background provides a rich survey of U.S.-Indian relations during the twentieth century that nicely complements the PBS documentary We Shall Remain: Wounded Knee, which also interrogates the American Indian Movement by focusing on the events surrounding the Wounded Knee takeover of 1973. Because of its rich connotations of American Indian history, politics, and activism, A Good Day to Die could easily find itself in a U.S. history, U.S.-Indians relations, or Native American studies library collection.

A Good Day to Die: Dennis Banks and the American Indian Movement is an emotional exploration of the history and people surrounding the main events of the American Indian Movement during the 1960s and 1970s. With the lack of a major focus on women’s roles in AIM, there is the potential for scholarly analysis on the role of masculinity within the American Indian Movement. Overall, A Good Day to Die is highly recommended viewing for those studying Native American or U.S. history, or for those simply interested in learning more about how Native Americans were central to the politically unstable climate of the activist movements in the mid-twentieth century.