Stewart Huntington
ICT
MINNEAPOLIS – The middle-aged woman screamed up the avenue, blinded by tear gas sprayed in her face by federal immigration officers. Onlookers poured bottled water in her eyes to calm the chemical burn but couldn’t ease the deeper pain.
A pain that felt like heartbreak.
The wave of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers fanned out in and around Minnesota’s Twin Cities – and in other U.S. cities – is having what appears to be its desired effect: the sowing of fear and chaos in the hearts of the citizenry.
It’s a frightening and novel notion to many. But not in Indian Country where federal efforts at intimidation and eradication began with the founding of the nation 250 years ago.
“What we’re really seeing is a continuation of tactics that us as Native people are very accustomed to,” Rachel Dionne-Thunder, a Bigstone Cree Nation descendant and vice president of the Indigenous Protector Movement, told ICT. “But what is happening now that is different is out there now is that more American citizens are waking up to the reality of what it means to be existing under an authoritarian regime. We, as Native people, already know and understand that and have been fighting against it for generations.”
A day after federal officers shot and killed 37-year-old Alex Jeffrey Pretti in Minneapolis, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Sunday called for an end to the immigration crackdown known as Operation Metro Surge. He addressed President Donald J. Trump directly at a press conference. “What do we need to do to get these federal agents out of our state?” Walz asked. “You thought fear, violence and chaos is what you wanted from us, and you clearly underestimated the people of this state and nation.”
Walz was nodding to the widespread and largely peaceful response to the federal law enforcement surge in his state that included the incident with the woman teargassed Saturday on Nicollet Avenue, just a block from where Pretti was killed.
On Friday, an ICE Out rally and march held in downtown Minneapolis drew some 50,000 citizens who braved sub-zero temperatures to call for an end to the immigration crackdown.
Native people across the country see echoes of history resonating in Minneapolis – and beyond.
Credit: Stewart Huntington/ICT
“It’s a repeat of history, and it’s very unfortunate,” Eugenia Charles-Newton, a Navajo Nation councilmember, told ICT. Charles-Newton was touring the Powwow Grounds coffee house in the heart of eight-block American Indian Cultural Corridor.
The coffee house has transformed itself into the living, breathing center of the Native response to the federal law enforcement surge, primarily as a collection point and distribution center for food and supplies for community members afraid to venture from their homes for fear of being caught up in an immigration raid. “We’re in 2026, and we’re seeing this happening again today.”
But the connection to the present landscape and Native experience with oppressive federal policies and actions – and the long history of Native responses – was given center stage Friday at the ICE Out march in Minneapolis.
The march ended at the city’s Target Center arena for speeches. The Target Center portion of the event opened with two Native people, Dionne-Thunder and Nick Estes, a Lower Brule Sioux Tribe citizen and associate professor of American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota.
There are other elements of what is unfolding in Minneapolis with reverberations in history. Not only do heavy-handed federal actions feel familiar, but so do the Native reactions.
“All of you today are now feeling what we have been feeling for centuries,” said Estes to some 10,000 people in the arena. “This did not begin in December with Operation Metro Surge. This began centuries ago. … This isn’t something new or unique. This is a continuum.”
Minneapolis is the birthplace of the American Indian Movement, formed in 1968 to counter adverse experiences Native community members were having with law enforcement. The movement’s many successes – and second and third generation leaders – are informing a strong and organized response to the federal presence on the streets.
“Minneapolis isn’t like the rest of the world,” Mike Forcia, the Bad River Band of Chippewa citizen who is chairman of the Twin Cities Chapter of the AIM, told ICT. “We take this stuff seriously, and we’re not going to put up with” violence and degradation from the authorities.
Is it because of the Native presence in town?
“I would like to think so,” he said. “We are on the front lines, always.”
Attorney Chase Iron Eyes, Oglala Lakota, was more direct.
“There’s some sacred reason why fascism and those who would seek to do violence against peaceful American families are finding that they have met their match in Minneapolis,” he told ICT. “Because it’s where the American Indian Movement began. It’s because there are Native people here. We know what it’s like to be free. We know freedom in a different sense of that word. And all of America is welcome to know that freedom that we know.”
The Trump administration is not showing signs it plans to scale back its campaign of immigration enforcement that saw action in Los Angeles, Chicago and the District of Columbia and elsewhere before launching in Minnesota – and then spreading to Maine last week.
And perhaps the generations of experience in Indian Country responding to federal pressure can spread, too.
“I think what a lot of Americans are really shocked by, and a lot of the world is really shocked by, is how the United States is treating its own citizens,” Estes told ICT. “This isn’t just an Indian problem. This is all of our problems. It’s not new in the Indigenous community. We’ve seen this before.”
And that experience – despite all the heartache and trauma – sometimes breeds hope.
“They took our land. They took our spirituality. They took our culture. They took our family. They took everything away from us,” Forcia said. “But there’s one thing that they will never be able to take. And that’s our sense of humor.”
His message? Native people and Native nations are not going anywhere, backed up by a strength and resilience as deeply honed as any found in human history.
Just ask Navajo Nation Vice President Richelle Montoya. She came to Minneapolis to testify during tribal consultations for the Violence Against Women Act.
She told of seeing Twin City Navajo citizens living in fear.
“They can’t even go to the post office because ICE is there, and they’re afraid that they’re going to be targeted and detained for just being brown,” she told ICT. “It reminds me of what our ancestors taught us, not just as Navajo ancestors, but Indian Country ancestors. We all are supposed to be here for one another.”
Native people have been questioned or detained by ICE agents across the country, including Peter Yazzie, Navajo, two weeks ago. The agents detained Yazzie and ignored Yazzie’s direction to documents proving his U.S. and tribal citizenship.
“If Indian Country unites, we are strong,” Montoya said. “And that is what the United States government fears.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.