Dick Bancroft was a dropout from the University of Minnesota, an insurance salesman, then a Presbyterian missionary who lived in Nairobi, Kenya, with his wife, Debbie, and four children from 1966 to 1968.
But in 1970, he had a life-changing experience, meeting American Indian Movement (AIM) members. For the past 46 years he's chronicled AIM's causes as its unofficial photographer.
"I'm not a missionary anymore," said Bancroft, 88. "I'm an advocate for Indians."
The result of Bancroft's work is a trove of pictures he hopes one day will be housed in an AIM Interpretive Center. The center has a temporary one-room gallery at 1113 E. Franklin Av., Suite 103, in Minneapolis where most of the 150 photos on the walls came from Bancroft's camera. Hours are 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays.
There are photos of Indian children playing as others beat a drum, of a young Indian woman in tears as she listens to a United Nations report in Geneva about the forced sterilization of native women, and pictures of AIM activists during the occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters in Washington, D.C., in 1972.
Bancroft's AIM career all began quite accidentally. He was on a health and welfare committee with the St. Paul United Way when AIM asked the agency for $25,000 for some of its programs. The agency asked him to chair a committee to consider the proposal.
He spoke with AIM activists Pat Bellanger, Eddie Benton Banai, Clyde Bellecourt and Dennis Banks. His committee urged United Way to give the money.
Then in 1971, AIM staged an occupation of an empty building at the local U.S. Naval Air Station. The United Way, having recently donated to the group, wasn't pleased, according to Bancroft. So it sent him to meet with AIM to find out why they were doing it.