A Light That NEVER Was : Dennis Banks Dead
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| ©2017 Turtle Heart : Garden Detail 3 Nov 2017 |
Death of Dennis Banks : A Light That Never Was
Ed Note:
It brings me no satisfaction to have nothing good to say about Dennis Bank$. It would be so great to have American Indians to celebrate and honour in these pages. There are so many fine American Indians...but they never seem to attract the American press. What is so frustrating is the sad mythology and obtuse nature of American media reporting and its fascination and morbid obsession with criminals like Dennis Bank$, Russell Means and fat Leonard Peltier. We all really wish the American media would just pay attention...(ed)
SEE also this link: Conflicted Legacy of Dennis Banks
Serial criminal, self-promoter, philanderer and suspected murderer Dennis Banks has passed away this week. Across the uninformed, clueless national media the myth building has proceeded relentlessly to copy and paste their absurd observations and celebration of the life of an unworthy and pathetic symbol of the American media’s absolute failure to show even the slightest interest in telling the world the truth about American Indian people and history.
It brings me no satisfaction to have nothing good to say about Dennis Bank$. It would be so great to have American Indians to celebrate and honour in these pages. There are so many fine American Indians...but they never seem to attract the American press. What is so frustrating is the sad mythology and obtuse nature of American media reporting and its fascination and morbid obsession with criminals like Dennis Bank$, Russell Means and fat Leonard Peltier. We all really wish the American media would just pay attention...(ed)
SEE also this link: Conflicted Legacy of Dennis Banks
Serial criminal, self-promoter, philanderer and suspected murderer Dennis Banks has passed away this week. Across the uninformed, clueless national media the myth building has proceeded relentlessly to copy and paste their absurd observations and celebration of the life of an unworthy and pathetic symbol of the American media’s absolute failure to show even the slightest interest in telling the world the truth about American Indian people and history.
The media tells us he was surrounded by his “family”. But who was his family? He has one wife he abandoned in the middle of an Oregon highway, pregnant with his child. Numerous (dozens) women over the years gave birth to Bank’s illegitimate children, children he never recognised or supported. So who were these “close family members”?
Banks remained un-indicted for his part in the torture and murder of Anna Mae Aquash. Yet most American Indians, if not the actual media and courts, know he was involved closely in the decision to murder this young mother. No one mentioned this story.
There are only a handful of American Indian people who get covered in the national press. The Americans seem desperate to have some sort of American Indian to write about. They have made up stories and given them a face. Banks is one of those. The media never talks about his crimes, his scams, his embezzlements, his illegitimate children, his domestic abuse allegations, none of it. When it comes to American Indians it seems the truth is not at all important. There are so many fine American Indian people who have never been discussed. When the media talks about these people they always have Banks or Russell Means or Leonard Peltier, a trio of gangsters, cowards, thugs and killers who were photogenic and manufactured from white guilt to stand in for the thousands of honest, decent but utterly forgotten American Indians who strive with dignity for their lives every day. The actual obscenity of Banks obituaries stands in direct contrast and a horrible one at that in the face of the deep struggle for truth against the corruption and lies of Donald Trump. Perhaps people don’t care about that either, but at least there is what some call real and actual journalistic “search for truth” in those stories.
The truth about American Indians does not matter at all to the media. Not. At. All. The writers at the NPR, the NY Times, the Washington Post…the information on American Indians at all of them is just made up. Reporters who have professional credentials and actual reputations are employed to just make things up, to gloss over the truth, to pen platitudes and empty biographies as they move on to the next big story. And everyone is OK with it. How is this aversion to the actual known facts of the absurd fake life of Dennis Banks not at all known to these people?
I have said for years that American Indian people are literally drowning in a vast ocean of bad information. The lamentations in the press about Bank$ is yet more evidence of just how putrid and sad this reality is. No one on earth can point to a single useful accomplishment or act of so-called “leadership” by Dennis Banks. Yet there is a volume of eulogies rolling in that imply something was there. When there wasn’t. How odd is that?
I don’t often think of dead human beings. Most of my lamentations are for the animals I knew. Cats. Birds. John Belushi. My old friend Red Horse, my friend Ralph Verde. I am a bit furious Banks dropped dead before he could be indicted for his part in the murder of Anna Mae Aquash Pictou. Her torture and murder will weep for justice for eternity now, while the dirty little Dennis Banks gets eulogised as some sort of hero by a culture that loathes and despises its American Indians. The last of the criminals and cowards that “founded” AIM are dead. Each one of them got away with it. Escaped into the shadow world.
Empty people resurrected into icons of a light that never was.
©2017 Turtle Heart
