The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

I first met Dennis Banks two years ago, at a gallery opening featuring the work of Dick Bancroft, a local photographer who specializes in chronicling the American Indian Movement (AIM) and father of the famous polar explorer, Ann Bancroft.

We were at Ancient Traders Gallery, on Franklin, and Banks was dressed that night in feathers and skins, his long hair loose, eyes tired but warm. Someone mentioned I was a food writer and suddenly Banks chimed in, saying he’d recently started a natural foods company up on the Leech Lake Indian reservation. He was selling native foods, such as chokecherry syrup and wild rice. Was I interested?

I was. My editor at the time was not. Dennis Banks was old news, he told me. But I was dogged: I’d read Larry Oakes’s terrific 2004 series on the Leech Lake reservation in the Star Tribune. I knew about the soaring rates of obesity and diabetes on Indian reservations nationwide. Later that year, when I visited Pine Ridge, a woman whom I met told me all her granddaughter’s teeth were pulled when the child was three, because the Coca-Cola in her baby bottles had destroyed them. We were in Kyle, a town of just under 1,000 families. She took me to the area’s only “store” — a shack that sold mostly Doritos, white bread, cigarettes, and bottled soda pop.

I never forgot that meeting with Banks. And when I got a new food-writing job with a different editor, I called him and asked if he was still willing to talk.

He was silent for a long time. I expected him to say no. In my mind, I was already going through the list of other people I could call. Then he cleared his throat and said, “Sure I remember you. How about tonight? I have to go down to the Cities anyway.”

Originally, he chose the buffet at Mystic Lake Casino for our dinner. And I have to admit, I paused. It’s my policy to go wherever my guest chooses, but I never expected this: the lights, the noises, the sheer quantity of food — not to mention my ambivalence about state-sanctioned gambling. But I swallowed and said, certainly, I’d meet him there.

Three hours later, when I called him to confirm, he told me his plans had changed. There was a barbecue being held in his honor and I should meet him there. “Won’t the host mind?” I asked. Again, Banks was silent for a time.

“Nah,” he finally said, then gave me the address. “I have to go; I’m supposed to pick someone up at the airport in three and a half hours.” He was still in Leech Lake, about four hours away.

I took this into account and showed up at the barbecue roughly half an hour late, ready to slink away if the owner seemed miffed. The address led me along winding roads to a rambling wooden structure on a treed lot in Plymouth. Inside the garage, four dark-haired young people were preparing mountains of food: burgers, grilled chicken, a gargantuan bowl of macaroni salad of which Mystic Lake would be proud.

“I’m here to interview Dennis Banks,” I said.

“He’s not here yet,” said a man in his 20s. Then he grinned. “But there’s a bunch of Indian guys inside. Pick someone else.”

He wasn’t kidding. Sitting in a screened porch, decorated with dream catchers and strings of white lights that hung like shards of broken glass, were Vernon Bellecourt, Bill Means, and Floyd “Red Crow” Westerman.

I explained to Syd Beane, the owner of the house: I’d been invited by Banks, whom I hoped to interview.

“Welcome!” he said. “We have plenty of food.” He introduced me to everyone seated on the porch; each of the elders rose to shake my hand. “Now sit,” said Beane. “We were just discussing some of the issues we face as Native Americans. Our agenda.”

“What is your agenda?” I asked.

“The protection of sacred sites.” It was Westerman’s voice, a low sound that unfurled like smoke. “Better media to advance our causes. A treaty for all indigenous people. Also,” his face barely changed, “we build canoes to send Europeans back to their native land.” Everyone laughed. Even Westerman smiled, like a baby does, pleased but surprised.

I was convinced we’d met before, and we might have crossed passed once or twice. But the real reason this man seemed so familiar was that I’d seen and heard him at least a dozen times: as the shaman in Oliver Stone’s The Doors, “One Who Waits” on Northern Exposure, and Albert Hosteen on the X-Files. He rose with a bowl and a sheaf of herbs to perform a smudging ceremony before the meal, and I felt as if this were something I knew. Westerman recited a prayer that sounded like a song. He purified the room and the people in it with the burning sage. Then he walked to a tree I hadn’t noticed before — the porch is built around it, with a hole cut in the ceiling that allows it to grow upward — and blessed it, patting the bark all around, as if it were a brother.

Then it was time to eat. We trouped to the garage, all but the elders — Bellecourt, Means, Westerman, and Beane — whose plates were filled and brought to them by Beane’s three 20-something daughters. The burgers were fat, juicy, cooked medium rare at most; in a word, perfect. The macaroni salad, which one of the daughters proudly told me was made with a whole jar of mayonnaise, contained crunchy bits of apple and celery. But it was the homemade baked beans, spiked with sorghum, that tasted like every summer barbecue should: sweet, smoky, wholesome, chewy.

Bellecourt told stories while we ate, mostly about Marlon Brando, who famously rejected the Academy Award in 1973 in support of the American Indians at Wounded Knee. One afternoon in the mid-‘70s, Vern Bellecourt and his brother, Clyde, were in California and decided to drop in on Brando at his house on Mulholland Drive. These were the days when AIM members had automatic caché in Hollywood. Brando opened the door himself and welcomed them; he’d just finished filming Apocalypse Now (a film no one had yet heard of), and he was enormous. Bellecourt stops here to gesture: a huge, belly that protruded nearly to his knees. The brothers asked Brando how he’d gotten so fat, and he responded that he’d done it for a role, drinking three or four chocolate milkshakes a day.

On a whim, Bellecourt’s story continued, Brando decided to use them in a series of public service announcements about the plight of Indian people. Together, the three filmed all afternoon. After a dozen takes, Brando told his people to order some food catered in; it was set out in the dining room. Unfortunately, when Brando’s dogs got in the way of the filming, they, too, were placed there. When the three men had finished for the day, they went to eat their belated lunch and found nothing left but a shred of pastrami. Over a second round of food, Brando told the brothers he’d recently been contacted about taking a role in the upcoming Superman movie. What did they think? Would it diminish his credibility in any way?

The entire vignette had the cadence of a story told many times to many different audiences. But Bellecourt is a master, and he kept the crowd at the barbecue — mostly Indian, surely familiar with the tale — entranced.

After Brando, talk turned to Johnny Depp — a protégé of Marlon Brando’s and AIM’s newest hope for a mega-star advocate. He’s contacted many of the members over the years and explored the idea of doing a movie about their plight. Each member told his story about a missed phone call or a meeting with Depp that didn’t quite materialize.

“I guess he was too busy making Pirates of the Caribbean 19,” someone said. The elders nodded but did not respond. It was clear they’re still hoping to bring Johnny Depp along.

As a group, they’re unhappy with the way Indian stories have been told. “ Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee should have been called Bury the TRUTH at Wounded Knee,” Beane said.

Bill Means, one of the originators of the global International Indian Treaty Council and a milder man than the others, suggested a structure like Crash to tell the modern story of American Indians. “We need to show different families from different tribes,” he said. “But they’re all connected somehow.” Everyone agreed that would work well, if only they could raise the money.

I was so busy listening and eating, I failed to register the man who came in late, wearing a red t-shirt and a long ponytail. He found a chair in the corner, next to Westerman and ate hungrily. Finally, when his plate was nearly empty, he raised his head and I saw. I went over. “Dennis?” I asked.

He nodded, swallowed, put out a hand. “Looks like you got here before me,” he said. “Hear anything good?”

I handed my plate to one of the young women collecting them, moved my chair across the porch next to Banks, and asked him to tell me about his business. I’d looked for information on the Internet, but though the business has been running for nearly a decade, I found only two links — one a defunct website, the other a months-old screen that a new page for Dennis Banks Natural Foods Company is coming soon.

He shrugged. “We make over 150 gallons of maple syrup a year, also blueberry syrup, blackberry, cranberry, and chokecherry. There’s another one I call blue-maple, where I mix blueberries and maple syrup; that’s my favorite.”

“And your wild rice?” I asked. “Is it native or cultivated?”

He looked startled. “It’s real, native rice. I harvest about 15,000 pounds every year.”

“And where can people buy it?” I’d just eaten a large meal. Even so, blue-maple syrup sounded awfully good.

“Oh, you can’t,” Banks said. “This was a personal economic decision. I don’t sell in the U.S. because then the USDA would get involved and I’d have to pay for an organic seal. So I sell everything to Japan instead; that’s the only way to get the prices I want. And it’s easy because I have only one buyer: Masaou Yamamoto. He has a lot of restaurants in Tokyo.”

I blinked. At least, I suspect I did. “But what about Indian people? Aren’t the children suffering from rising rates of diabetes? Don’t they need natural foods more than restaurant-goers in Tokyo?”

“Everyone on Leech Lake can get rice and berries,” Banks told me. “It’s tribal land. If they want to eat good food, it’s there. But many of them don’t.”

“The reservations are like economic concentration camps,” Westerman added. “Unemployment and government-issue commodities. We need to educate our people to get off fry bread; but the taste for it is still there.”

What about other reservations? I asked. Pine Ridge, for example — where there are no lakes filled with wild rice.

“Uh, we’re doing the Longest Walk again next year,” Banks offered. “All the way from Alcatraz Island to Washington, D.C. That helps combat diabetes, too.” He spotted someone in the dimming light and turned to me. “Are we done? I see someone I should talk to.” I nodded, and he ambled off.

Westerman stayed to talk, and I moved closer. He has the long gray hair and mesmerizing voice of Willie Nelson, but a carriage and mystique that’s closer to some minor god. “There is a complete breakdown and failure of tribal governments to see food as a priority for children,” he intoned. “Bill Means tells a story about the advent of casinos. An elder said, ‘A shiny wagon was coming to town; it was pulled by horses and made of silver dollars, and it glistened in the sun. Then it got closer, and I saw there were people who were on it, and others who were trying to get on it but being pushed off. Children were crying on the wayside.’” He paused and nodded. “That’s what’s happening on the reservations. We’re leaving our children behind.”

I left dazzled by Westerman (I’m hardly the first — his charisma must have something to do with his success in Hollywood — but if the man told me to follow him into a sea of swarming locusts, I’d gladly do so), yet uneasy about Banks.

Once home, I told my husband the story. He and I had ridden our motorcycle through Pine Ridge and Rosebud just the month before, stopping in reservation towns along the way. There’d been some progress since my trip in 2005: a real grocery with canned fruit, milk, boxed macaroni and cheese — even a tiny coffeehouse with Wi-Fi in the city of Pine Ridge itself.

“How many people does Dennis Banks employ?” John asked me. “He’s not harvesting 15,000 pounds of wild rice all on his own.”

The following day, I met with my food-writing counterpart, Jeremy Iggers — as knowledgeable a food man as I know, and an ethicist to boot. I told him the story, and he asked the same question. “Sure, their ideal diet would be wild rice and game and berries. But you can buy a lot of lettuce and milk with the money from selling off your native foods.”

I called Banks the following day to ask how many people work for Dennis Banks Natural Foods. “Just four of us full-time,” he said and paused. “But about 60 during the riceing season. And at least eight during sugar bush time, which lasts three months.”

“And the land?” I asked. “Is it yours?”

“Oh, no.” He cleared his throat. “We have maybe 30-40 Leech Lake families involved. We’re buying the wild rice from them. This is a tribal business, for the whole reservation.” He waited a beat. “Anything else?”

I said no, but thank you for everything, breathed a silent apology, and hung up the phone.