Native Activists Launch Prayer Camp Outside MN Immigration Detention Center

"Migizi Spears, Red Lake Nation citizen and organizer for First Nations United, helped establish the camp, along with Dakota, Nakota and other tribal citizens. They raised four teepees at a place that the Dakota considered a creation site called Bdóte near the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers and within earshot of the Whipple Building."

"Spears said he felt it was time to take back the land that his ancestors lost and from which they were removed following the Dakota War of 1862, also known as the Sioux or Dakota Uprising. Following the conflict, 38 Dakota men were hanged in the largest mass execution in U.S. history."

""We are getting the land back for our Dakota people who were exiled out," Spears said. "Now they're imprisoning brown people and other Indigenous people in there. Now they're removing them too"

Native activists established a prayer camp at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, at Bdóte near the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers. Organizers from Red Lake Nation, Dakota, Nakota and other tribal nations raised four teepees to reclaim ancestral land where thousands of Dakota and Ho-Chunk people were once imprisoned. Fort Snelling was used as a concentration camp during the Dakota Indian Wars and later became associated with the largest mass execution in U.S. history when 38 Dakota men were hanged after the 1862 uprising. The camp sits within earshot of the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, a center for immigration detainment processing.

Read at Truthout