TTT1214-April2-DickBancroft
He’s an unlikely radical. But his country’s hypocrisy, its lies about war and its clandestine destabilizing of democratically elected governments while propping up despots in others, when the conduct became as transparent as it did, drove Dick Bancroft round the bend back in the 1960s…and he’s seen no end of it in South America, in the Middle East, in Asia, Africa. This, after an affluent childhood in “old” St. Paul and an “iffy” education at the city’s primary private school – St. Paul Academy where his dyslexia contributed to less than stellar scholastics.
Bancroft has never wanted for the resources to support his family, but the resources that turn most affluent Americans into Republicans (he voted for Eisenhower in 1952) couldn’t prevent his radicalization after witnessing racism and exploitation in both his own and other countries. Where a few economic interests have enslaved the indigenous peoples of others, aided and abetted by the political class of the United States, controlled and manipulated by the economic aristocracy, Bancroft’s gift of chronicling and recording on film the history and historiography of the exploited classes everywhere put Bancroft front and center of international intrigue and domestic rebellion by our country’s own Natives – including the founding and fostering of the American Indian Movement (AIM).
Stokely Carmichael, William Kunstler, Dennis Banks
Thus did Dick Bancroft and his wife, Debbie dedicate these last 50 years to fighting the barbarism and subversion of justice here and abroad through his camera lens and financial resources, hoping to expose the lies perpetrated by our governments in pursuit of profits and power across the prairie and around the globe.
Dick Bancroft continues our look into the history and work of protest and dissent in Minnesota and its export elsewhere to expose the violence and hypocrisy of a country whose founding documents say one thing about liberty, justice, peace and equality while its history and official decisions contradict all of them, year after year, decade after decade. (Listen to last week’s conversation with Historian Rhoda Gilman and African-American change agents of the 60s, Rose Mary Freeman Massey and Melvin Giles.)
Bancroft has rubbed shoulders and noses with Nobel laureates, Guatemalan Rigoberta Menchú and Ireland’s Mairead Corrigan Maguire, photographed them and been their friend. He has earned blood-brotherhood with the Ojibwe and Dakota peoples of Minnesota and the Upper Midwest with his work with AIM. And he has created a pictorial history of the joys and tragedies that accompany the lives of native peoples everywhere.
Here’s a new addition: a 1970s photo of Dick Bancroft (with hair still dark) with L-R, Troubadour Larry Long (and still writing and singing), Painter Jan Attridge (another illustrator of nature and Native life in Minnesota and the Dakotas and still painting) and The Circle Native newspaper contributor, Mordecai Specktor (also Editor of the American Jewish World):
TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL and MICHELLE ALIMORADI talk with Dick Bancroft, now nearly 85 years old, and reflect with him about the events that most marked his abandonment of his family’s political underpinnings and racial prejudices to create a world of peace and justice with Debbie and their children, which include polar explorer Anne Bancroft.
Dick will offer signed posters as membership premiums that feature his iconic photo of Rigoberta Menchú – symbol of Guatemala’s indigenous fight for independence and outspoken advocate for justice in the banana fields of her country.
He’s an unlikely radical. But his country’s hypocrisy, its lies about war and its clandestine destabilizing of democratically elected governments while propping up despots in others, when the conduct became as transparent as it did, drove Dick Bancroft round the bend back in the 1960s…and he’s seen no end of it in South America, in the Middle East, in Asia, Africa. This, after an affluent childhood in “old” St. Paul and an “iffy” education at the city’s primary private school – St. Paul Academy where his dyslexia contributed to less than stellar scholastics.
Bancroft has never wanted for the resources to support his family, but the resources that turn most affluent Americans into Republicans (he voted for Eisenhower in 1952) couldn’t prevent his radicalization after witnessing racism and exploitation in both his own and other countries. Where a few economic interests have enslaved the indigenous peoples of others, aided and abetted by the political class of the United States, controlled and manipulated by the economic aristocracy, Bancroft’s gift of chronicling and recording on film the history and historiography of the exploited classes everywhere put Bancroft front and center of international intrigue and domestic rebellion by our country’s own Natives – including the founding and fostering of the American Indian Movement (AIM).
Stokely Carmichael, William Kunstler, Dennis Banks
Thus did Dick Bancroft and his wife, Debbie dedicate these last 50 years to fighting the barbarism and subversion of justice here and abroad through his camera lens and financial resources, hoping to expose the lies perpetrated by our governments in pursuit of profits and power across the prairie and around the globe.
Dick Bancroft continues our look into the history and work of protest and dissent in Minnesota and its export elsewhere to expose the violence and hypocrisy of a country whose founding documents say one thing about liberty, justice, peace and equality while its history and official decisions contradict all of them, year after year, decade after decade. (Listen to last week’s conversation with Historian Rhoda Gilman and African-American change agents of the 60s, Rose Mary Freeman Massey and Melvin Giles.)
Bancroft has rubbed shoulders and noses with Nobel laureates, Guatemalan Rigoberta Menchú and Ireland’s Mairead Corrigan Maguire, photographed them and been their friend. He has earned blood-brotherhood with the Ojibwe and Dakota peoples of Minnesota and the Upper Midwest with his work with AIM. And he has created a pictorial history of the joys and tragedies that accompany the lives of native peoples everywhere.
Here’s a new addition: a 1970s photo of Dick Bancroft (with hair still dark) with L-R, Troubadour Larry Long (and still writing and singing), Painter Jan Attridge (another illustrator of nature and Native life in Minnesota and the Dakotas and still painting) and The Circle Native newspaper contributor, Mordecai Specktor (also Editor of the American Jewish World):
TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL and MICHELLE ALIMORADI talk with Dick Bancroft, now nearly 85 years old, and reflect with him about the events that most marked his abandonment of his family’s political underpinnings and racial prejudices to create a world of peace and justice with Debbie and their children, which include polar explorer Anne Bancroft.
Dick will offer signed posters as membership premiums that feature his iconic photo of Rigoberta Menchú – symbol of Guatemala’s indigenous fight for independence and outspoken advocate for justice in the banana fields of her country.
RICHARD BANCROFT – Global Photographer; Peace Advocate