Daily Inspiration Quote by Dennis Banks

The power in Banks's line is how quietly it smuggles in a reversal of expectations. "We were not prepared" isn’t just travel fatigue; it’s an admission that the mental map he carried - about who notices, who cares, who stands with Indigenous struggles - was drawn too small. Japan, in 1988, sits in the sentence like a plot twist: far from the U.S. arenas where Native activism is often flattened into local grievance or historical footnote, a foreign public offers something many activists rarely receive at home: uncomplicated attention.

"Overwhelming support" does a lot of work. It suggests scale (crowds, invitations, money, media) but also an emotional intensity that borders on disbelief. Banks doesn’t specify what the support looked like because the point isn’t the logistics; it’s the jolt of recognition. The subtext is a critique of American indifference without naming it. If Japan's response felt overwhelming, what does that imply about the baseline he was used to?

Context matters: 1988 lands after the peak visibility of the American Indian Movement and in the long hangover of state repression, internal schisms, and public misunderstanding. It’s also a moment when global civil society is tightening its networks - solidarity tours, human rights frames, activist celebrity. Banks’s intent reads like testimony: proof that the struggle was legible beyond U.S. borders, and that dignity can be restored by being seen, even when it arrives from an unexpected direction.