By Winona LaDuke
Napoleon LaDuke was my great uncle. I’ve always had a liking for that name. My great uncle was a brown man from the Northwoods who was in World War I and came back “shell shocked.” He wasn’t even a citizen of the US at the time but, nevertheless — like many Native people — went across the big water to combat fascism and more. Today, he is buried in a pauper’s grave at the former Fergus Falls Mental Hospital.
History teaches us if we pay attention. Napoleon Bonaparte, my great uncle’s namesake, was a megalomaniac who wanted to be Emperor of the World. He did his best but met his match in Russia in winter.
In June of 1812, Napoleon’s forces entering Russia exceeded 450,000 men, over 150,000 horses, approximately 25,000 wagons, and nearly 1,400 artillery pieces. More were added, then more., and it got colder and colder. They didn’t understand where they were, nor did they understand that trying to take a country like Russia in winter, if you were, from well, the south of France, wasn’t a sound idea. The surviving forces dwindled to 120,000 men (excluding early deserters), signifying a staggering loss of approximately 380,000 lives (dead or missing/prisoner) throughout the campaign, half from diseases.
Sort of like Minnesota in the Winter. The Trump Administration and Kristi Noem are dead set on forcing Minnesota to her knees. But, as wind chills drop well below zero, and the ICE troops amassed from various warmer locales face the rambunctious home team, things are more complicated. (The big right wing rally leader of the dud demonstration, Jake Lang, is from Florida.) That’s just an example.
The word is out that ICE agents don’t know how to walk on ice and don’t really like Minnesota. To address that, Trump wants to import some ‘paratroopers” from Alaska. According to news reports, at the time of this writing, 1500 soldiers are on standby from the Army’s 11th Airborne Division, which specializes in cold weather operations.
If Trump deploys active-duty military forces domestically for law enforcement or to suppress unrest, he would likely be acting under the authority of the Insurrection Act. That hasn’t been used for a hundred years or so. Regardless, as the brutal operation “Metro Surge” expands with 2000 ICE agents on the ground, child kidnappings and tear gas, this is a daunting challenge for us all- constitutionally and to our spirits.
Politics and Churches
To be clear, Minnesota with 130,000 estimated “undocumented workers” is not even in the top ten of undocumented workers states. Blue states like Florida (1.2 million) and Texas (l.9 million) and of course California with 3 million are home to many more. The assault on Minnesota is political. And tragic.
There’s also a complex background which has made Minnesota home to a very multinational refugee population. Consider that many of the “new Americans” were brought in by the Lutheran and Catholic Church agencies. Take Lutheran Social Services, now Global Refuge. The church-based organization has helped almost a half a million refugees to relocate- many political refugees from American wars, like the Hmong, Eastern Europeans and the Somalis.
From the Global Refuge website, “We have spent decades nurturing community-based initiatives to support refugees, and we lead the field in refugee resettlement because of the incredible support we receive from our community partners…” The fact is that those refugees need Lutherans to stand up, not stand back.
Minnesotans are Social
Trump faces a challenge of home team spirit. That’s evident in the Minneapolis Resistance. Here’s part of the problem: After killing lots of Dakotas and Ojibwes, Minnesota’s immigrants (many illegal) were plucky northern people, who it seems stood for good, except for when it came to the Indians. Minnesota has a long and proud history of social justice movements, which deserve credit for creating the Minnesota Spirit we know today.
From the Nonpartisan League to the MacDonald sisters, George Floyd and the Line 3 resistance, Minnesotans stand up for what’s right. Remember, many of the first immigrants, came from Scandinavia, and countries with free healthcare, education, and other goodness. And they are used to the cold.
Immigrants came to the north country with collective ideas. Cooperatives were the norm. CENEX, SAMPO, and even Land of Lakes are all cooperatives. Minnesotans also appreciated collective organizing, especially on the Iron Range, where strikes led by Finnish and Slovenian miners in l907 and l9l6 sought better conditions. To the west, the Non-Partisan League and Socialists were the government of Noth Dakota at the early part of the last century, leaving behind state owned banks, grain elevators and more.
And we are a sentimental bunch. Take Eugene Debs, Indiana State Representative, a socialist and five-time candidate for US President. There’s a town near Bemidji named after him, Debs. People who live in the far north are used to cooperation. This is about looking out for everyone, it’s a northern thing — that’s how we survive, we take care of each other. That’s a lesson from the cold.
A little local history: Meridel LeSeur, the prairie poet, spoke for farmers, women and workers. Born Meridel Wharton, she assumed the name of her mother’s second husband, Arthur Le Sueur, the former socialist mayor of Minot, North Dakota. Her best-known works include the 1932 essay “Women on the Breadlines” and the novel The Girl. Her stepfather Arthur Le Seur, after leaving his mayoral post, became the leader of North Dakota’s Nonpartisan League. Her great grandchildren and grandchildren are active today in the legal defense community, the Tilson Family.
The MacDonald sisters were four Catholic nuns—Brigid, Jane, Rita, and Kate—from an Irish farm family. They joined the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet in the 1940s and ’50s, and “did not lead lives revolving around rosaries,” but the teachings of Jesus. They dedicated their lives to peace, becoming prominent figures in anti-war protests particularly at the Honeywell Corporation. Sister Kate died in 2023, at 101. They are some of the founders of the social justice and peace movements of Minnesota.
In 1968, the American Indian Movement was born in Minneapolis, brought about by the dire conditions and repression facing many Indigenous people who had been forced to the Twin Cities by the theft of our lands and territories. Police brutality, including a practice of throwing Indian men into the back of police cruisers was met with opposition by founders like Pat Ballenger, Dennis Banks, and Clyde Bellecourt — Anishinaabeg from the White Earth and Leech Lake reservations. The American Indian Movement grew nationally and remains both an advocacy organization with many established institutions, including the Heart of the Earth School, Little Earth Housing, American Indian Opportunities and Industrialization Center (one of the largest Indian job training programs in the country), and Indian Legal Rights Centers.
The Honeywell Project, formed in the late l960s to the l990s, focused on peace through corporate accountability. Honeywell, Minnesota’s largest military contractor, made cluster bombs and more, which maimed innocent Vietnamese people. Marv Davidoff, project founder, was a friend of mine and an inspiration, the “Peace Guru.” Every week, there was a vigil outside of Honeywell offices, and on the bridge. On October 24, l983, 574 people were arrested, including Erica Bouza, the wife of then-Minneapolis Police Chief Anthony Bouza.
Honeywell officially stopped manufacturing cluster munitions and other banned weapons like anti-personnel landmines and chemical/biological weapons, stating it as a policy in their official defense fact sheets. But its former defense division (now Alliant Techsystems, ATK) is still doing rotten things.
The Willmar 8 were eight female employees of the Citizens National Bank in Willmar who went on strike on December 16, 1977, over charges of sex discrimination. The tellers and bookkeepers were repeatedly asked to train junior male employees who would then be hired over their heads. Although their actions did result in a National Labor Relations Board decision in their favor, only three of the women returned to the bank.
The General Assembly to Stop the Powerline (GASP) was a coalition of farmers who did not want a big 400KW line to cross their land in central Minnesota. The farmers began their opposition to the line by appearing at governmental hearings and in court proceedings. When those methods proved unsuccessful, farmers moved to more confrontational methods. Although the farmers did not ultimately win, they fought for a long time. Once the towers and lines were installed, they became targets of vandalism. At least 9,500 insulators were shot out. Vandals found that they could cause towers to fall to the ground by cutting tower legs. From August 1978 through August 1983, sixteen towers were toppled.
The Northern Sun Alliance was a coalition of anti-nuclear groups active from 1977 to 1989. Their efforts were largely focused on the Prairie Island Nuclear Plant, located on the Prairie Island Dakota reservation. Proposals for more on-site storage of nuclear waste in the Mississippi River flood plain were met with tribal opposition and community opposition to what was then Northern States Power, now XCEL Energy. As a result of this struggle, XCEL is mandated by the state of Minnesota to fund renewable energy projects in their territory.
Minnesotans do not approve of police brutality. That’s clear. The killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin, witnessed by three more police officers, was filmed. The Minneapolis Uprising began on May 26, 2020, and the rage continued for several weeks. In response, Governor Walz activated the Minnesota National Guard, the largest deployment of the state’s forces since World War II.
And Line 3. Minnesota’s last occupation by a paid military was during the construction of Enbridge’s Line 3. The state deployed about $8.5 million worth of police financed by the foreign corporation Enbridge. Despite massive opposition to the pipeline (70,000 people testifying against Line 3, and 4,000 in favor), the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission gave approval, and then Enbridge gave lots of money – almost $3 million to the Minnesota DNR for enforcement, and a lot to local police forces in Cass County, Hubbard, and more.
Minnesota arrested over a thousand people; most of those cases were dismissed. Tragically, the pipeline went in, but alliances were born, and institutions like the Giiwedinong Museum, dedicated to the story of the Water Protector Movement and Anishinaabe history remain. The museum is in the former Carnegie Library-turned Enbridge office in downtown Park Rapids, Minnesota.
Of the 1,000 Line 3 arrests, the last legal case just had a hearing in Minnesota this January. To put it simply, Minnesota is indeed used to conflict and standing up for values.
In the Deep North
Here in the Deep North, towns like Park Rapids and Moorhead have had robust turn out for No Kings Day, and to support all the neighbors. Lyn Pinnick from Moorhead is a veteran of the Line 3 Battle. And, since 2016, has been working with Indivisible, organizing her neighbors and more. Hundreds of people are turning out, thousands, in these small northern towns, and on the bridges over the Red River. That’s the work of a lot of community people, meetings with coffee and lemon bars, and support systems for neighbors. Then there’s recovering Republicans like Scott Erlenborn from the Park Rapids area who posts on Facebook. “I am the person that has been protesting with the upside-down flag for the last two weeks at the highway 71 and 34 intersection. I am not immature, confused or caught up emotionally in some false narrative from the liberal media. I know world history. I understand the grave danger this nation is in at this present moment with this president.”
Tribal governments are speaking out about ICE, from the Oglala Lakota who had four of their tribal members kidnapped by ICE, and were faced with demands by Kristi Noem, the former well hated governor of South Dakota, to turn over access to the reservation to ICE. Farron Jackson, Leech Lake Tribal Chairman, and Red Lake have taken strong stands, and most recently, Mille Lacs band stopped allowing ICE to stay at their hotels in Minneapolis and St. Paul.
There’s a lot of things that the new Wanna be Emperor doesn’t know about my territory. For Trump and Noem, this may be their Russian Winter. We will see and, and like Napolean’s crusade, it is certainly cruel. My great uncle Napolean LaDuke rests under a blanket of snow but reminds me always of the price of empire and the value of knowing history. And, in the meantime, I want to thank all those courageous and principled Minnesotans who sing, sled, and stand for our neighbors and our territory. Continue. History is being made.
For more info on the Global Refuge, see: https://www.globalrefuge.org/who-we-are/where-we-work/fargo-welcome-center
For information on Indivisible, see: https://indivisible.org
Information on the Giiwedinong Museum is at: https://giiwedinong.org
