In 1969 Dick Bancroft was involved with a council that made recommendations for funding to the United Way. At this time he met American Indian Movement leaders, Clyde Bellecourt, Eddie Benton-Benai, and Patricia Bellanger.
"What do I do to help? I asked Pat Bellanger. She said, "What do you do?" I told her that I took pictures. "Well then," Pat said, "take picures." Pat and Vernon Bellecourt were the two who encouraged me to do this."
Dick Bancroft came out of World War II with conservative views. But the more concerned he became about social justice issues, the more involved he became. He began to listen to people who were being pushed around.
Dick spent two years in Africa, and when he left the U.S., he supported the war in Vietnam. He had the luxury to observe the U.S. from a distance, and he returned home with strong anti-Vietnam sentiments. He photographed peace marches in Washington, D.C., and New York. "The marchers were everybody's neighbors. They were just people who were fed up, hundreds of thousands of them," Dick said.
“I worked with the squatters in Nairobi,” Dick says. “It was a profound experience. A concept struck me: I cared about issues involving people. With a camera, I could portray the people in the issues. The camera could tell other people what I was experiencing.”
His photography with AIM includes the faces that created or reflected history from the 1969 occupation of an abandoned building at the Naval Air Station, the Trail of Broken Treaties caravan that traversed the country, The Longest Walk to Washington, D.C., and conferences and summits in the United States and beyond.
“I’ll go anywhere with a camera,” says Dick, who has traveled with AIM to destinations from Nicaragua to Northern Ireland, and Libya to South Africa. (He’s not the only traveler in a family that includes daughter Ann Bancroft, the polar explorer.)
His photographs of The Longest Walk from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., were exhibited at the Gallery of the American Indian Community House in New York in 1981. Since then, his work has been seen in Los Angeles; at Resource Center of the Americas and the Minnesota American Indian Art Gallery, Minneapolis; and Central Lakes College, Brainerd, Minnesota.
The Indian community was not getting any press when Dick met them in 1969. He became a participant and a recorder. He was an Indian advocate who used a camera.
"My exposure to Native American people for the last 35 years has had a profound effect on my values and quality of life, and for this, I am grateful."...Dick Bancroft
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