Nika Bartoo-Smith
Underscore Native News + ICT
PORTLAND, Oregon — Organizers from “Declonize. Heal. Resist.” held an event on the south waterfront on Tuesday, Sept. 30, for an Orange Shirt Day vigil and solidarity walk to Portland’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.
By 10:15 p.m., at least three protesters, including one of the organizers, who is a minor, were detained and taken to the ICE facility. Two other organizers, mother and daughter pair Angela Foster and Ash Carlson, were both maced directly in the face.
Throughout the night, demonstrators were shot with pepper balls from federal officers standing on the facility’s roof, stun grenades were used to clear the crowd and multiple times throughout the night dozens of federal agents marched outside the building.
A few counter protesters were seen throughout the night as well, including a man with a white power symbol tattooed on the side of his head, who grabbed a flag out of one of the ICE protesters’ hands.
“Our ancestors are giving us that strength to be here, and so it’s important for us to have that past strength from our ancestors and bring it to the present, because it’s still happening today,” said Foster (xulxiyut), Klamath Tribes and adopted Warm Springs, part of “Decolonize. Heal. Resist.”
Earlier in the evening, around 50 people gathered at Elizabeth Caruthers Park, holding space for the community to share stories of relatives who survived, and those who did not survive, residential and boarding schools.
“We’re still fighting a continued genocide, and we’re still fighting internment camps for Indigenous people and people of color and so many people who are demonized by colonization,” Foster said. “And we just want to make sure to call attention to that and to continue our ancestors’ fight for everyone to be sovereign and free.”
The National Day of Remembrance for Indian Boarding School survivors and children who never made it home coincides with the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada, also known as Orange Shirt Day, and is observed on September 30.
At the vigil, organizers created a space to honor survivors and victims of boarding schools while drawing connections to similarities with what the United Nations has declared a genocide in Gaza, as well as individuals and families targeted by ICE.
Around 8 p.m., following the vigil, many attendees joined the planned march to the ICE facility a few blocks away. There, they joined other protesters already out front.
Once there, organizers from “Declonize. Heal. Resist.” set up a tipi, using a large canvas cloth that attendees of the vigil helped cover with orange handprints as the tipi cover.
“My first thought with the handprints and the tipi was because I knew it was a big canvas, and I know that there’s 1,200 people who are missing from Alligator Alcatraz, and the handprints are representative of missing Indigenous people in our culture,” Foster said, standing in front of the tipi.
“That was really important to us to recognize and to call attention to the missing people from Alligator Alcatraz, people who are basically put in an internment camp, just like our people in boarding schools. To be assimilated, to be erased, to be genocided, and to be forgotten about,” she added.
At 9:45 p.m., demonstrators poured water mixed with red acrylic paint along the sidewalk outside ICE’s facility, in front of officers, as they chanted “the blood of children is on U.S. hands.”
By 10:15 p.m., at least three protesters out front of the facility were detained by federal agents, including a person who was dragged on their stomach into the facility by ICE officers. At the same time, a white van that came out of the facility scooped up a 17-year-old minor, before taking them into the facility.
“They like to grab the Indigenous people. One of the people that we know from down here, they have grabbed her at least 10 times,” said Ash Carlson (tunustenmi), Warm Springs, blinking away tears after being maced by ICE officers.
“It’s like they’re like ‘anyone in regalia,’” she added.
Moments before, Carlson and Foster, her mother, were maced at close range by ICE officers. Foster and Carlson appeared to be following orders from the officers and were standing on the sidewalk recording when mother and daughter were maced, as witnessed by Underscore + ICT reporters on the ground.
The two come out to protest outside of the ICE facility several times a week.
Protesting outside of ICE
Around 50 people gathered at Emily Caruthers Park for the vigil at 6 p.m. As the music died down, five speakers took turns sharing their relatives’ stories and calling for Indigenous solidarity across the globe.
“These are not unrelated issues. What ICE does to children, what was done to children in boarding school, what’s being done to children in Gaza. It’s all colonization,” said Tracy Molina, who grew up in Siletz and has ancestry from central Mexico.
Molina has been protesting outside of ICE off and on since Trump’s first presidency. The camp outside the ICE facility that began in January 2025 was originally started by Molina and other Native people, she said.
At the vigil, cries for solidarity were echoed in flags and signs all across the square. Messages included “My Grandma survived residential school — many did not,” “No human is illegal on stolen land,” and “Indigenous Solidarity, Land Back,” written on a Palestinian flag.
As speakers shared their stories and calls to action with the crowd, people passed around a bowl of smudge.
Foster reflected on being the first in her family to not attend boarding school, reminding the crowd that Indian Boarding Schools are not part of the distant past, but a trauma that descendants of survivors continue to carry on.
“We’re out here to recognize our ancestors who had to give so much in order for us to be here now, to practice this, the traditions that we practice, to practice our religion, basically to be connected to the land, to take care of future generations,” Foster said.
For her, part of taking care of future generations means organizing and protesting along with her daughter.
The pair helped lead the march to the ICE facility — walking with flags and their fists in the air as they walked to the beat of the American Indian Movement song.
‘Use your voice for the ones who can’t’
Across the train tracks from the ICE facility in Portland lies an ever-growing memorial. A wreath of foliage, flowers, stuffed animals and handwritten letters circling flickering candles. Hanging from the eaves of the covered train stop are dozens of medicine ties filled with tobacco and rows of little orange ribbons.
“We’ve hung tobacco ties on the fence. We’ve danced, we’ve prayed. We’ve had sacred fires down there,” Molina told Underscore + ICT.
Outside the ICE facility, demonstrators blasted music through the speakers. Some danced, some cried, some yelled.
The scene was mulit-generational. Bonita Leonard, Warm Springs, brought her 5-year-old son, Little Bear, with her to the vigil and the march to ICE.
September 30 was her second time at the protest outside the ICE facility, and the first bringing Little Bear in tow.
“I believe our voices are important. I bring my child so that he can understand that when something ain’t right in your heart, that you take a stand and you use your voice for the voiceless,” Leonard said, before she left early during the ICE demonstration. “You use your voice for the ones who can’t, such as the kids in here, such as Palestine over in Gaza.”