In November, 1862, following a bloody conflict with white settlers and soldiers in southern Minnesota, more than 1600 Dakota women, children, and the elderly were imprisoned in a concentration camp at Fort Snelling. The fort was built at the confluence of the Minnesota River and the Mississippi. The Dakota call this place B’dote, “where two waters come together.” For them, it has always been a spiritual area, the place of their creation. Conditions in the concentration camp were horrific. Over the course of the next winter, an estimated 150-300 people died from ill-treatment and disease.
Fort Snelling is now the site of another imprisonment, one involving well-documented abuses by those in authority. This time the incarcerated are people arrested in ICE raids in the Twin Cities. Native people in Minnesota—Dakota, Lakota, and Anishinaabe—are being caught in the sweeps of ICE and incarcerated. They don’t look white, and because they are citizens of sovereign nations recognized by the government, they don’t generally carry citizen papers, which makes them easy targets for harassment and arrest by ill-trained federal agents.
Yesterday, I joined hundreds of others in a rally organized by All Nations Indian Church to protest this imprisonment on land that had been granted to Native people in an invalid treaty which the United States proceeded to use to steal Dakota land and starve the Dakota people, leading to the conflict of 1862.
The rally was peaceful. The air was filled with the cleansing scent of burning sage. There were Native dancers and singers. Prayers were offered. We placed thousands of prayer ribbons on the fence outside the detention center in remembrance of the 4,000 people arrested by ICE. Then we began to peacefully disassemble.
That was my experience. You may have heard from news sources that the demonstration took a violent turn, eventually leading to the arrest of more than 40 people. This happened later and was spearheaded by a separate group, gathered to protest both ICE and the nearby presence of far-right agitator Jake Lang, who had come to counter our peaceful gathering. And the action that caused the arrests? The throwing of sex toys and ice chunks at law enforcement vehicles. No significant injuries resulted on either side.
In every way possible, with our Native brothers and sisters, with immigrants who have been our good neighbors for decades, we in Minnesota will continue to stand firm against the invasion by the federal government. My own pledge is to remain peaceful in this effort, to raise only my voice and not my fists.
