By Winona LaDuke On the opening night of the Minnesota State Fair, I ate my approved amount of deep-fried goods and settled into my seat with a couple of friends to see my old friend Bonnie Raitt . As she carried a crowd of 12,000 or so through a wide-ranging set list, it was hard […]
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By Winona LaDuke It’s 2020 and the stakes are high. In every area of civil society, from the rights of women, the right to clean water, the right to security of home, immigration, and the right to a future, the American election in 2020 will count. Being president of the U.S. is like being president […]
By Winona LaDuke “There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.” – Howard Zinn I’m not the best on dates, so that Fourth of July can really creep up on me. This year marks my granddaughter Animikiinz’s third birthday, born on the Fourth of July. She gives me a […]
By Niharika Bhavsar “He’s on heroin, and there’Âs nothing I can do. His mom died of an overdose. You’d think that would make someone want to quit,”  said Greg Franson. Mr. Franson’s son had joined the over hundred Native Americans gathered near East Franklin and Hiawatha avenue in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Homeless, jobless, and hopeless, many […]
By Joe Hobot There is an encampment in Minneapolis populated by indigenous people – and it is growing. People who have gathered there are the displaced, the unemployed, the addicted, the battered, and the sexually exploited. They have come home. They have come home to the community that they are now counting on for help, […]
By CoCo Villaluz, Joanne D’Silva and Erin O’Gara Recently, our country has seen improved understanding of cultural misappropriation. Awareness of stereotypes, protests against racist mascots, and education that cultural imagery in clothing is not appropriate for costumes are just a few examples of changing sensibilities. As researchers and advocates, we have examined how American Indian […]
By Winona LaDuke Early July marked two very different approaches to justice. One towards Native people and another towards non-natives Steve and Dwight Hammond, who were convicted in 2012 of setting fires that spread on government-managed land near their ranch in Oregon. On July 8, Water Protector Red Fawn Fallis was sentenced for her involvement […]
By Mark Anthony Rolo While illegal immigration is not a pressing issue for the American Indian (when infact, it should have been as in why weren’t the Puritans vetted before landing on our shores?) the issue of separating mothers from their infant children is most certainly relevant. Recently, nationwide protests have erupted across this country […]
By Mark Rolo Thirty years ago, the U.S. Congress passed one of the most sweeping legislative acts in the history of federal-Indian policy – the Tribal Self Governance Act. The goal was to allow tribes more authority over their lands, people and affairs. To be sure, many in Washington, then and now, believe the right […]
BY MARK ANTHONY ROLO Even before the turn of the century the federal government and states routinely stole children from parents in Indian Country. After decades of an assimilation policy that ushered in what became known as the Indian Boarding School Era, one might realize that stealing Indian kids from their families was nothing short […]
BY MARK ANTHONY ROLO It wasn’t that long ago that a few Minneapolis cops would go rogue and spend their time on duty harassing the city’s American Indians. They would drive up and down Franklin Avenue on the south side looking for a few good, usually intoxicated Indians to shake down, oftentimes using senseless violence. […]
