This article was first published on APTN News in North America.
Sophie Watson stands in a field and stares out at the Whipple Detention Centre just north of Minneapolis, Minn.
Just a month ago, she spent 48 hours inside of the centre. On Jan. 14, Watso was arrested by agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, better known as ICE.
It’s an experience that she’s still processing.
“When we would go to the bathroom, we would be led around in our shackles on our feet and on our arms,” she tells APTN News.
“It’s a concentration camp in there.”
The seven-story building is located on a site that has a bleak history with Native Americans.
Just a kilometre away, more than 1,600 Dakota were imprisoned here after the U.S. Dakota War of 1862.
“On my way being transferred to Fort Snelling, I sang a prayer song, one of the only prayer songs that I know fully by heart,” she says. “And the prayer is asking for help, you know, expressing my will to live. And I knew that my ancestors were where I was going at Fort Snelling.”
“I wanted to pray to them, and I wanted to greet them in a good way. And I really, really needed them to hear me, and I know that they did.”
Encampment set up to demand end to ICE operations
Watso, who is Mdwakanton Dakota, is back at the site to find community and healing. More than a week ago, community members set up an encampment facing Whipple Detention Centre. This is an Indigenous-led encampment. The movement demands both land back and an end to ICE’s operations.
Watso says the camp has been receiving donations from community members in Minneapolis. One of these donations is a bison hide.
“We are in the process of getting this bison hide ready for stretching and tanning,” says Watso.
“This is my first time handling bison … and it feels really good. It feels like I’m reconnecting to something that was already in me.”
Zachary White, from Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota, says he’s hoping the encampment will start a conversation with the state and federal governments.
“ICE was the last straw. I watched them terrorize my neighbours. I watched all these people come together and stand up against them,” he says.
In January, agents with ICE moved in and with brute force, arrested hundreds of people suspected of being undocumented in the U.S., including a number of Native Americans. The federal government says ICE has ended Operation Metro Surge.
In December, ICE began a directive sending a surplus of ICE agents in Minneapolis. Many Minnesotans told APTN they will “believe it when they see it,” referring to Operation Metro Surge ending. Others say ICE has now refocused its operations in the suburbs of Minneapolis.
Many Minnesotans are still on edge, feeling the fear and effects of ICE operations.
Erica Crazyhawk is with the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, about 620 kilometres southwest of Minneapolis.
“All this land down here belongs to us,” she says.
Crazyhawk played a role in establishing the camp.
“When these things started coming, it kind of shook up a lot of, you know, the people here. Especially the Dakota XL [Dakota XL pipeline]. Being forced out of our lands, being taken from our tipis and our bark lodges like that,” she says.
For Watso, the encampment is an important stand against ICE and the detainment of community members.
“We’re in prayer. This is not a protest camp, it’s a prayer camp, and the things that we pray for are for the safety of those people in [Whipple Detention Centre], everybody who’s detained, kidnapped, not only in that building but in this whole country,” she says.
By Savanna Craig of APTN News.
