Biography
Edward "Eddie" Benton-Banai was an Ojibwe-Anishinaabe spiritual leader, educator, and co-founder of the American Indian Movement in 1968. He was jailed at Minnesota's Stillwater Prison in 1962 following a manslaughter conviction, where he organized Native prisoners. He went on to found the Red School House in St. Paul and to author "The Mishomis Book," a foundational text of Anishinaabe teachings, and served as a Grand Chief of the Three Fires Midewiwin Lodge.
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A January 2021 Tribal Observer obituary by Levi Rickert, republished from Native News Online, identifies Benton-Banai’s earlier imprisonment as following a manslaughter conviction. Quoting Clyde Bellecourt’s autobiography, it relates the conviction to an incident in St. Paul in which Benton-Banai intervened when a man tried to force an Indigenous girl into a car; the man fell, struck his head and later died. This is Bellecourt’s account of the incident. The obituary supplies no admission date, physical release date or exact completed custody total.
