Kevin Abourezk
ICT
WINNEBAGO, Nebraska – Standing before a pile of hot chocolate mix, N95 respirators, coffee, undershirts, hand and feet warmers, sterile gloves and snacks on her kitchen table, Keely Purscell lifted a black winter hat and held it proudly.
“It’s got the N,” she said, pointing toward a red letter N with two eagle feathers embroidered onto the front of the hat. “I’m pretty sure it’s for ‘Nebraska,’ but we’re going to say for ‘Native’ when we get to Minnesota.”
The Winnebago woman and several other Winnebago women are gathering donations to send to Minneapolis to support the Native activists protesting federal immigration enforcement efforts there.
Purscell, who has worked in emergency medical response, and her friends decided it was important to ensure Native people protesting the Trump administration’s surge in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minnesota have what they need to protect themselves while staying fed and hydrated.
But Purscell said she also wanted to ensure the American Indian Movement members patrolling the streets of Minneapolis had what they needed to stay comfortable.
“The AIM guys asked for coffee and cigarettes and lighters,” she said.
In Native communities across the country, Native people have begun gathering donations to send to Minneapolis to support the efforts of Native activists, as well as community members who are scared to leave their homes and need food and household supplies in order to be able to remain at home.
Many of the donations being sent to Minneapolis are delivered to the Pow Wow Grounds Coffee Shop on Franklin Avenue in an area of the city where many Native nonprofit organizations and businesses, including the Minneapolis American Indian Center, are located. The coffee shop serves as a hub for donation collections, as well as a place where activists and allies gather throughout the day to organize their efforts and get a bite to eat.
Little Crow Bellecourt, 53, Bad River Chippewa, serves as the executive director of the Indigenous Protectors Movement, a Native social justice organization based in Minneapolis. The organization was founded and is run by the children and grandchildren of the former leaders and founders of the American Indian Movement, including Clyde Bellecourt, Little Crow Bellecourt’s father.
Little Crow Bellecourt said donations have been coming from Indigenous communities in North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska, as well as from donors across the world and right in the Twin Cities.
Outside Pow Wow Grounds on Thursday morning, Cole Rademacher and several volunteers unloaded donations from an SUV like baby formula and dog food that were given by the customers of his business, Bevel Piercing.
“We’re all about the community, helping when they need help, making sure people are taken care of, especially in times like this,” he said.
Nearby, a Sicangu Lakota man named Wambli helped direct volunteers.
He said donations gathered at Pow Wow Grounds also go to recipients other than Native people, including Latinos and Somalians.
“We are here to stand in solidarity with our community members here, and we do appreciate anything that comes our way,” he said.
Little Crow Bellecourt said the outpouring of support that began after federal immigration enforcement agents began swarming the Twin Cities in recent weeks reminded him of the support the Native community received after riots erupted in Minneapolis in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd by a police officer.
But even before that, Native people began pulling together to fight slum lords and police brutality in 1968, when they formed the American Indian Movement.
“I don’t think the U.S. government knew who they were messing with when they decided to come to Minneapolis,” he said.
On Thursday morning, three black SUVs with ICE agents inside pulled up in front of Pow Wow Grounds, eliciting a strong response from those at the coffee shop. People blew whistles. Some shouted war cries, and others shouted obscenities at those in the vehicles.
Bellecourt said ICE agents have routinely driven by the coffee shop, as well as past a largely Native neighborhood known as Little Earth. He said the federal agents are attempting to intimidate Native people.
In response, tribal leaders from other communities, including the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and the Three Affiliated Tribes of North Dakota, have sent staff members to help their citizens who live in the Twin Cities get their tribal IDs in the hopes that those forms of identification might protect them from being detained by federal agents. Little Crow Bellecourt said the Three Affiliated Tribes created and distributed 84 tribal IDs alone.
But even presenting tribal IDs hasn’t always helped tribal citizens confronted by ICE agents, he said.
“We know that they are federal IDs,” he said. “They’re just as good as a state driver’s license and a passport.”
Many of the donations gathered at Pow Wow Grounds are distributed to residents of Little Earth who are afraid of leaving their homes for fear of being detained by ICE agents and who are keeping their children home from school, choosing to have them attend online classes instead.
Marcella Torrez, 52, who lives at Little Earth, stocked and arranged shelves at Pow Wow Grounds on Thursday. She said the Native community at Little Earth has begun organizing its own patrols called the Little Earth Protectors, which works to ensure the neighborhood’s residents are not harassed or detained by ICE agents.
“It’s hard to see especially our children being scared to go to school,” she said. “Our kids shouldn’t be experiencing this. It’s heartbreaking.”
Robert Rice, owner of Pow Wow Grounds, said he has worked to ensure protestors and other Native volunteers have food and coffee when they come to the coffee shop.
“One thing we’re doing is making a lot of soup,” he said. “Right now, we’re at about 250 gallons of soup that we’ve made and given away and over 1,000 pieces of fry bread and 300 gallons of coffee so far since January 8th.”
Keely Purscell said she and the other Winnebago woman collecting donations in Nebraska plan to deliver those items to Pow Wow Grounds over the weekend.
She said she is proud of her community for realizing how important it is to support other Indigenous communities that are experiencing hardship. She talked about elderly tribal citizens on fixed incomes donating warm boots and name-brand wool socks.
She said some tribal citizens have even donated sound-canceling ear muffs to protect protestors from sonic weapons used by law enforcement known as LRADs, or long-range acoustic devices. But she was most amused by a woman at a local health facility who donated a bag of condoms.
“She said, ‘We don’t need any more protest babies,’” Purscell said, laughing.
Nearly 300 Winnebago tribal citizens live in the Twin Cities, a fact that further inspired her and others to gather donations, Purscell said.
“We must support these efforts because that’s us, our people,” she said.