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Kevin Abourezk
ICT
WINNEBAGO, Nebraska – Standing before a pile of hot chocolate mix, N95 respirators, coffee, undershirts, hand and feet warmers, sterile gloves and snacks on her kitchen table, Keely Purscell lifted a black winter hat and held it proudly.
“It’s got the N,” she said, pointing toward a red letter N with two eagle feathers embroidered onto the front of the hat. “I’m pretty sure it’s for ‘Nebraska,’ but we’re going to say for ‘Native’ when we get to Minnesota.”
The Winnebago woman and several other Winnebago women are gathering donations to send to Minneapolis to support the Native activists protesting federal immigration enforcement efforts there.
Purscell, who has worked in emergency medical response, and her friends decided it was important to ensure Native people protesting the Trump administration’s surge in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minnesota have what they need to protect themselves while staying fed and hydrated.
But Purscell said she also wanted to ensure the American Indian Movement members patrolling the streets of Minneapolis had what they needed to stay comfortable.
Pow Wow Grounds coffee shop in Minneapolis can been in this Jan. 29, 2026. photo. The coffee shop serves as a gathering place and donation collection point for activists protesting federal immigration enforcement efforts. (Kevin Abourezk / ICT)
“The AIM guys asked for coffee and cigarettes and lighters,” she said.
In Native communities across the country, Native people have begun gathering donations to send to Minneapolis to support the efforts of Native activists, as well as community members who are scared to leave their homes and need food and household supplies in order to be able to remain at home.
Many of the donations being sent to Minneapolis are delivered to the Pow Wow Grounds Coffee Shop on Franklin Avenue in an area of the city where many Native nonprofit organizations and businesses, including the Minneapolis American Indian Center, are located. The coffee shop serves as a hub for donation collections, as well as a place where activists and allies gather throughout the day to organize their efforts and get a bite to eat.
Crow Bellecourt, executive director of the Indigenous Protector Movement and the son of one of the founding members of the American Indian Movement, surveys the donations on Monday, Jan. 19, 2026, at the Powwow Grounds Coffee shop, which is serving as a clearinghouse to help the Native community in Minneapolis as immigration raids continue across the area. Credit: Stewart Huntington/ICT
Little Crow Bellecourt, 53, Bad River Chippewa, serves as the executive director of the Indigenous Protectors Movement, a Native social justice organization based in Minneapolis. The organization was founded and is run by the children and grandchildren of the former leaders and founders of the American Indian Movement, including Clyde Bellecourt, Little Crow Bellecourt’s father.
Little Crow Bellecourt said donations have been coming from Indigenous communities in North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska, as well as from donors across the world and right in the Twin Cities.
Outside Pow Wow Grounds on Thursday morning, Cole Rademacher and several volunteers unloaded donations from an SUV like baby formula and dog food that were given by the customers of his business, Bevel Piercing.
“We’re all about the community, helping when they need help, making sure people are taken care of, especially in times like this,” he said.
Cole Rademacher (right), owner of Bevel Piercing in Minneapolis, helps unload donations that he gathered from his customers outside Pow Wow Grounds coffee shop in Minneapolis on Jan. 29, 2026. The coffee shop serves as a gathering place and donation collection point for activists protesting federal immigration enforcement efforts. (Kevin Abourezk / ICT)
Nearby, a Sicangu Lakota man named Wambli helped direct volunteers.
He said donations gathered at Pow Wow Grounds also go to recipients other than Native people, including Latinos and Somalians.
“We are here to stand in solidarity with our community members here, and we do appreciate anything that comes our way,” he said.
Little Crow Bellecourt said the outpouring of support that began after federal immigration enforcement agents began swarming the Twin Cities in recent weeks reminded him of the support the Native community received after riots erupted in Minneapolis in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd by a police officer.
But even before that, Native people began pulling together to fight slum lords and police brutality in 1968, when they formed the American Indian Movement.
“I don’t think the U.S. government knew who they were messing with when they decided to come to Minneapolis,” he said.
An SUV believed to have carried Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents is parked outside Pow Wow Grounds coffee shop in Minneapolis on Jan. 29, 2026. The coffee shop serves as a gathering place for Native activists and others protesting federal immigration enforcement efforts. (Kevin Abourezk / ICT)
On Thursday morning, three black SUVs with ICE agents inside pulled up in front of Pow Wow Grounds, eliciting a strong response from those at the coffee shop. People blew whistles. Some shouted war cries, and others shouted obscenities at those in the vehicles.
Bellecourt said ICE agents have routinely driven by the coffee shop, as well as past a largely Native neighborhood known as Little Earth. He said the federal agents are attempting to intimidate Native people.
In response, tribal leaders from other communities, including the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and the Three Affiliated Tribes of North Dakota, have sent staff members to help their citizens who live in the Twin Cities get their tribal IDs in the hopes that those forms of identification might protect them from being detained by federal agents. Little Crow Bellecourt said the Three Affiliated Tribes created and distributed 84 tribal IDs alone.
But even presenting tribal IDs hasn’t always helped tribal citizens confronted by ICE agents, he said.
“We know that they are federal IDs,” he said. “They’re just as good as a state driver’s license and a passport.”
A volunteer at Pow Wow Grounds coffee shop in Minneapolis helps sort donations on Jan. 29, 2026, being collected to help Native activists and others responding to federal immigration enforcement efforts. (Kevin Abourezk / ICT)
Many of the donations gathered at Pow Wow Grounds are distributed to residents of Little Earth who are afraid of leaving their homes for fear of being detained by ICE agents and who are keeping their children home from school, choosing to have them attend online classes instead.
Marcella Torrez, 52, who lives at Little Earth, stocked and arranged shelves at Pow Wow Grounds on Thursday. She said the Native community at Little Earth has begun organizing its own patrols called the Little Earth Protectors, which works to ensure the neighborhood’s residents are not harassed or detained by ICE agents.
“It’s hard to see especially our children being scared to go to school,” she said. “Our kids shouldn’t be experiencing this. It’s heartbreaking.”
Robert Rice, owner of Pow Wow Grounds coffee shop in Minneapolis
Robert Rice, owner of Pow Wow Grounds, said he has worked to ensure protestors and other Native volunteers have food and coffee when they come to the coffee shop.
“One thing we’re doing is making a lot of soup,” he said. “Right now, we’re at about 250 gallons of soup that we’ve made and given away and over 1,000 pieces of fry bread and 300 gallons of coffee so far since January 8th.”
Keely Purscell said she and the other Winnebago woman collecting donations in Nebraska plan to deliver those items to Pow Wow Grounds over the weekend.
She said she is proud of her community for realizing how important it is to support other Indigenous communities that are experiencing hardship. She talked about elderly tribal citizens on fixed incomes donating warm boots and name-brand wool socks.
Keely Purscell sorts through donations on Jan. 29, 2026, that she and other Native women are gathering on the Winnebago Reservation in northeast Nebraska that they plan to deliver to Native activists in Minneapolis. (Kevin Abourezk / ICT)
She said some tribal citizens have even donated sound-canceling ear muffs to protect protestors from sonic weapons used by law enforcement known as LRADs, or long-range acoustic devices. But she was most amused by a woman at a local health facility who donated a bag of condoms.
“She said, ‘We don’t need any more protest babies,’” Purscell said, laughing.
Nearly 300 Winnebago tribal citizens live in the Twin Cities, a fact that further inspired her and others to gather donations, Purscell said.
“We must support these efforts because that’s us, our people,” she said.
The post From baby formula to wool socks: Donations flood into Minneapolis appeared first on ICT.
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Emptying supermarket shelves. Driving from store to store, hunting for milk, bread, and water. Ignoring the signs instructing shoppers to “Take one.”
It’s a song and dance consumers across the country typically engage in when confronted with an incoming extreme weather event, and a pattern we’re seeing repeated as images have circulated of grocery shelves from North Carolina to New York City stripped bare leading into Winter Storm Fern. Now, with a second major winter storm brewing, shoppers and retailers across the East Coast are bracing for another rush.
Experts warn that these stockpiling frenzies have lasting consequences — both personal and planetary. In times of turmoil, the irrational desire to overbuy things a household doesn’t really want or need can be difficult to distinguish from just regular emergency preparedness.
To some extent, according to Parke Wilde, a food economist at Tufts University, the pre-storm frenzy can be “a real nuisance, because people show up at the store and the shelves are already clear, or at the very least, there’s a sense of tension in the room, as you see unusually big crowds in the grocery store.”
On the other hand, Wilde continued, “the buying patterns are sometimes partly sensible.” Many people, in fact, are merely following federal and state emergency management recommendations to stock up on enough food to last your household anywhere between three days to two weeks.
Still, there is a big difference between buying what you need to ensure you and your family have enough to eat as you hunker down in extreme weather, and filling your cart with far more than that — especially when it includes fresh foods that just end up in the trash.
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Minerva Ringland, senior climate and insights manager at national food waste nonprofit ReFED, says that while she is unaware of any data that directly captures the effects of panic buying on food waste emissions, it “makes a lot of sense intuitively” that when emotion trumps rationale in periods of extreme weather, “it’s unlikely that what extra food you buy would be consumed in the appropriate amount of time.”
Researchers have discovered that this pattern of storm “stockpiling” applies to virtually all food groups. Bread and milk, however, tend to be first among what people regularly race to buy, particularly before a bout of extreme winter weather. And if electricity gets knocked out, like it did for more than 1 million U.S. households who lost power last weekend because of Fern, much of that perishable stockpiled food will surely end up in the garbage.
Americans already waste a staggering amount of food in fair weather. An analysis by ReFED found that of the around 70.7 million tons of “surplus” food generated nationwide in 2024, more than 33 percent was created by U.S. households. And nearly half of that food that went uneaten at home ended up rotting in landfills, where it produces methane — a potent greenhouse gas that accounts for about 11 percent of global emissions.
To put that into context, the amount of surplus food that ends up in U.S. landfills every year produces the planet-polluting equivalent of nearly 5 industrial coal plants, according to Ringland. “I, of course, would not advocate that someone not prepare themselves in these situations because they’re worried about their climate impact,” said Ringland, “but my personal opinion is that every decision that we make in our daily lives should at least have an awareness or a consciousness or consideration of what environmental impact that has.”
She also points to the affordability complex behind panic buying, as food prices continue to rise. According to a report from Democrats on the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, a typical U.S. family spent about $310 more overall for groceries last year as compared to 2024. “Wasted food in households is essentially like money that you are throwing out with the food. And so if we can be a little bit more conscious and careful about the food that we’re bringing into the home, you’re actually saving yourself money,” said Ringland.
What’s more, when people engage in fear-fueled buying sprees, accessing food and storm supplies only gets harder for lower-income households.
“Panic buying has a direct impact and an indirect impact for families that are in households that are experiencing food insecurity,” says LaMonika Jones, director of state initiatives at the Food Research & Action Center. “It makes it even more difficult for them, because when they do go to the grocery store, the store may not have had the opportunity quite yet to restock their shelves. Or when they do go to prepare, they may find out that their resources, their food items, are not available, so there’s nothing left for them to purchase.” And that struggle doesn’t instantly abate once the storm subsides, according to Jones. The remnants of the phenomenon means food-insecure people may then have to wait for stores to restock their shelves.
As the planet heats up, making extreme weather events more frequent and severe, the likelihood of panic buying may increase in tandem.
“Our food distribution system does not have a good braking mechanism to slow down and mitigate the panic buying,” said Seungki Lee, an agricultural economist at Ohio State University.
But the answer, according to Cony Ho, an assistant professor of marketing at Florida Atlantic University who has studied the psychological motives driving panic buying in periods of extreme weather, is not what we tend to see now: retailers attempting to control their stock by setting limits on how much of a certain product can be purchased. Doing so, said Ho, can actually set off a cycle of more panic buying, because it signals scarcity to already-panicked shoppers.
Whatever the solution may be, according to University of Central Florida disaster sociologist Fernando Rivera, it shouldn’t be the sole responsibility of individuals, but incorporated into how a whole community prepares for emergencies. “In the ideal world, people will have their disaster kits ready to go, instead of just reacting to the news two days or a couple of hours before the event,” said Rivera. “That would be an emergency manager’s dream.”
Ho agrees that clearer government-led communications could encourage people to buy more nonperishable goods in preparation for a disaster, which at least may help mitigate overstocking on food that quickly spoils. For their part, Ho says, retailers could better incorporate weather forecasting into their plans for inventory distribution.
By now, though, the impulse to rush to the store and grab as much as you can is a rather entrenched consumer pattern. So a quick or easy fix is unlikely.
“All of these different disasters are hitting these places back-to-back,” Rivera said. “We have been exposed in the last decade or so to crises that we never imagined were going to happen, right? And I think that might be testing our ability to respond to them in a very logical way.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Panic buying ahead of the winter storm isn’t preparedness. Here’s who it hurts. on Jan 30, 2026.
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Clayton Fulton
Indian Health Service Chief of Staff
The Indian Health Service is hiring!
As IHS chief of staff, I’m honored to share the exciting news that today, the Indian Health Service announced the launch of the largest hiring initiative in the history of the agency. With the full support of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., this unprecedented hiring campaign represents a historic investment in strengthening the IHS workforce to meet the needs of our relatives, tribal communities, and others that we serve. IHS has experienced a near-30 percent vacancy rate, and this initiative reflects the urgency for recruiting, hiring, and retaining qualified professionals for IHS — the 18th largest public health system in the country and among the largest health care systems serving rural America.
Our immediate focus will be on filling vacancies for critical positions essential to keeping our health care facilities operating smoothly, especially at our service units in rural and remote locations. Current hiring opportunities span a wide range of disciplines including:
- Physicians, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, and behavioral health professionals
- Public health, environmental health, and community health roles
- Health administration, information technology, and essential support services
In sharing this important announcement, I appeal to everyone to help us spread the word about professional opportunities that are available at IHS. Our relatives and communities deserve not only excellent health care providers who share our goal of raising the health status of American Indians and Alaska Natives to the highest level, but who are also committed to providing care that centers Native culture and the traditional practices that have kept our people healthy since time immemorial.
To succeed, we need your help.
Sharing information through networks, amplifying messages on social media, and supporting outreach efforts — particularly to tribal colleges and universities who play a vital role in educating and preparing the next generation — will be critical in encouraging recent graduates, early career professionals, veterans, and other service-oriented individuals to explore careers with the IHS.
It is an exciting time to work for the Indian Health Service. Ours is an agency where those seeking to serve Indigenous communities — while building meaningful, mission-driven careers — can thrive.
Since joining the agency as chief of staff last October, I have been profoundly moved by the dedication and generosity exemplified by IHS staff. From clinical leadership consistently developing innovative ways to deliver care to our people, to the visionary planning for future generations reflected in our proposed agency realignment, the people of IHS genuinely and passionately want to make a positive difference where it is most needed.
If service to tribal communities appeals to you, if working on the frontlines and witnessing the immediate impact of your contribution appeals to you, if knowing you are doing your part to support positive change in Indian Country appeals to you, then we need you at IHS. And we need your continued support in reaching qualified candidates as additional career opportunities unroll throughout the year. Together, we can make history, strengthening our ability to improve health care outcomes in tribal communities throughout the country. Our relatives deserve as much.
Additional information on open positions, early-career pathways, and veteran hiring opportunities is available on the IHS Jobs website and USAJobs.gov.
Clayton W. Fulton, an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, is the chief of staff for the Indian Health Service. He is also responsible for all delegable authorities, duties, and functions of the IHS director. In this position, Fulton oversees the coordination of key agency activities and supports the Office of the Director in a broad range of duties related to the development and implementation of IHS initiatives and priorities. Raised in Indian Country, Fulton has been shaped by the close connection between tribal communities and their lands. His work reflects a commitment to building strong communities and creating opportunities that grow from the ground up.
This opinion-editorial essay does not reflect the views of ICT; voices in our opinion section represent a variety of reader points of view. If you would like to contribute an essay to ICT, email opinion@ictnews.organd jourdan@ictnews.org.
The post In service to our relatives: IHS announces historic hiring initiative appeared first on ICT.
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Charlene Belleau, right, is pictured at an Esk’etemc celebration in 2024. Photo by Julie Elizabeth Photography
Former Esk’etemc Kúkwpi7 Charlene Belleau (Eaglestar Woman) has been recognized with an award for her work to support healing and justice for residential “school” survivors and their families.
The Elder was among seven people honoured with a British Columbia Reconciliation Award at the Government House in lək̓ʷəŋən territories on Thursday evening.
The award — presented by the Office of the Lieutenant Governor and BC Achievement Foundation — recognizes individuals, groups and organizations who demonstrate their commitment to reconciliation.
At the presentation ceremony, this year’s recipients were welcomed in behind lək̓ʷəŋən dancers as the Government House was rearranged to resemble a longhouse.
Jerymy Brownridge, executive director of Government House, acknowledged Belleau’s embodiment of “truth, courage, care” as she’s been dedicated to advancing healing and justice for survivors of residential “schools,” families and many communities across the province.
He commended her time as a First Nations liaison with the government where she ensured communities were met with respect, provided resources and allowed for accountability through her work.
Brownridge also recognized the importance of Belleau’s involvement with the groundbreaking documentary Sugarcane and the decades of leadership she has displayed through her time in her community and Indigenous healthcare spaces.
“Tonight we honour a leader whose integrity and lived experience continue to light the path forward on reconciliation,” Brownridge announced.
Belleau has been committed to helping communities through her time as a leader of her community and later as an investigator for the St. Joseph’s Mission — a residential “school” that operated near Williams Lake — which the Elder attended for four years.
“A residential school survivor herself, Charlene has been a leading voice in addressing the intergenerational impacts of colonial institutions,” says the award website.
“She has supported communities in collecting and protecting oral histories, accessing historical records, and creating safe spaces where survivors can share their truths with dignity and care.”
She was heavily involved in the Sugarcane documentary, through her work as an investigator and with firsthand experience at the “school,” using her knowledge to continue leading and helping others learn the truth.
In a past interview with IndigiNews, Belleau mentioned how it wasn’t until the documentary that her family became aware of how difficult her work was with the residential “schools,” but she remained committed to helping others and ensuring people continue to grow through their experiences.
“I’ve said before that I want our people to know that because of our resilience, that we’re stronger for what we’ve been through,” she said.
A lifelong advocate
Belleau accepts her award on Jan. 29. Screengrab via livestream
Belleau is described on the award website as a “lifelong advocate for truth, justice, and healing.”
She was appointed as a First Nations liaison in 2021 by then-Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation Murray Rankin. In this role, she is described as having provided “critical guidance to the Province of British Columbia in its response to findings at former Indian Residential Schools and Indian Hospitals.”
Serving as a liaison, Belleau maintained communication between Indigenous communities and the government to “ensure that communities receive the resources, respect, and support needed to pursue truth, healing, and accountability.”
Belleau also held previous roles as chair of the First Nations Health Council which represents the five health regions in the province and as Provincial Indian Residential School Coordinator.
Through her roles, Belleau has created safe spaces for other survivors to come forward and share their own experiences at residential “schools” where she helped collect the oral stories and create records of firsthand accounts.
The supportive environment Belleau provides extends to her roles in health and wellness and community leadership as well.
Fellow recipients of the award were: Kevin Borserio (Luu G̱aahlandaay), Deanna Duncan (H̀búkvs λamalayu), Aboriginal Housing Management Association, Honouring Our Elders Legacy Project Coordinating Team and the syiyaya Reconciliation Movement and Dwight Ballantyne who was the recipient of the first Phyllis Webstad Emerging Leader award.
To commemorate their efforts, the recipients received a print of a canoe paddle designed by artist Stephanie Anderson who is a member of the Likhsilyu “Small Frog” clan of the Wet’suwet’en Nation. They were also gifted an intricately designed orange scarf by Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw artist Carey Newman (Hayalthkin’geme).
Nominations for the 2026 Reconciliation Awards are open until Feb. 15, 2026.
The post ‘Truth, courage, care’: Esk’etemc leader honoured with ‘B.C.’ reconciliation award appeared first on Indiginews.
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‘Blew us away’: Researchers find nitrogen boost spurs faster tropical forest growth
(news.mongabay.com)
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Graham Lee Brewer, Savannah Peters and Stewart HuntingtonAssociated Press + ICT
MINNEAPOLIS — When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement flooded Minneapolis, Shane Mantz dug his Choctaw Nation citizenship card out of a box on his dresser and slid it into his wallet.
Some strangers mistake the pest-control company manager for Latino, he said, and he fears getting caught up in ICE raids.
Like Mantz, many Native Americans are carrying tribal documents proving their U.S. citizenship in case they are stopped or questioned by federal immigration agents. This is why dozens of the 575 federally recognized Native nations are making it easier to get tribal IDs. They’re waiving fees, lowering the age of eligibility — ranging from 5 to 18 nationwide — and printing the cards faster.
It’s the first time tribal IDs have been widely used as proof of U.S. citizenship and protection against federal law enforcement, said David Wilkins, an expert on Native politics and governance at the University of Richmond.
“I don’t think there’s anything historically comparable,” Wilkins said. “I find it terribly frustrating and disheartening.”
As Native Americans around the country rush to secure documents proving their right to live in the United States, many see a bitter irony.
“As the first people of this land, there’s no reason why Native Americans should have their citizenship questioned,” said Jaqueline De León, a senior staff attorney with the nonprofit Native American Rights Fund and member of Isleta Pueblo.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to more than four requests for comment over a week.
Native identity in a new age of fear
Since the mid- to late 1800s, the U.S. government has kept detailed genealogical records to estimate Native Americans’ fraction of “Indian blood” and determine their eligibility for health care, housing, education and other services owed under federal legal responsibilities. Those records were also used to aid federal assimilation efforts and chip away at tribal sovereignty, communal lands and identity.
Beginning in the late 1960s, many tribal nations began issuing their own forms of identification. In the last two decades, tribal photo ID cards have become commonplace and can be used to vote in tribal elections, to prove U.S. work eligibility and for domestic air travel.
About 70 percent of Native Americans today live in urban areas, including tens of thousands in the Twin Cities, one of the largest urban Native populations in the country.
There, in early January, a top ICE official announced the “largest immigration operation ever.”
Masked, heavily armed agents traveling in convoys of unmarked SUVs became commonplace in some neighborhoods. By this week, more than 3,400 people had been arrested, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. At least 2,000 ICE officers and 1,000 Border Patrol officers were on the ground.
Representatives from at least 10 tribes traveled hundreds of miles to Minneapolis — the birthplace of the American Indian Movement — to accept ID applications from members there. Among them were the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Ojibwe of Wisconsin, the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate of South Dakota and the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa of North Dakota.
Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Chairman Jamie Azure speaks about an effort for tribal citizens to get tribal IDs at a pop-up event in Minneapolis on Friday, Jan. 23, 2026. (Stewart Huntington/ICT via AP)
Turtle Mountain citizen Faron Houle renewed his tribal ID card and got his young adult son’s and his daughter’s first ones.
“You just get nervous,” Houle said. “I think (ICE agents are) more or less racial profiling people, including me.”
Events in downtown coffee shops, hotel ballrooms, and at the Minneapolis American Indian Center helped urban tribal citizens connect and share resources, said Christine Yellow Bird, who directs the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation’s satellite office in Fargo, North Dakota.
Yellow Bird made four trips to Minneapolis in recent weeks, putting nearly 2,000 miles on her 2017 Chevy Tahoe to help citizens in the Twin Cities who can’t make the long journey to their reservation.
Yellow Bird said she always keeps her tribal ID with her.
“I’m proud of who I am,” she said. “I never thought I would have to carry it for my own safety.”
Some Native Americans say ICE is harassing them
Last year, Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren said that several tribal citizens reported being stopped and detained by ICE officers in Arizona and New Mexico. He and other tribal leaders have advised citizens to carry tribal IDs with them at all times.
Last November, Elaine Miles, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon and an actress known for her roles in “Northern Exposure” and “The Last of Us,” said she was stopped by ICE officers in Washington state who told her that her tribal ID looked fake.
The Oglala Sioux Tribe this week banned ICE from its reservation in southwestern South Dakota and northwestern Nebraska, one of the largest in the country.
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North and South Dakota said a member was detained in Minnesota last weekend. And Peter Yazzie, who is Navajo, said he was arrested and held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Phoenix for several hours last week.
Yazzie, a construction worker from nearby Chinle, Arizona, said he was sitting in his car at a gas station preparing for a day of work when he saw ICE officers arrest some Latino men. The officers soon turned their attention to Yazzie, pushed him to the ground, and searched his vehicle, he said.
He said he told them where to find his driver’s license, birth certificate, and a federal Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood. Yazzie said the car he was in is registered to his mother. Officers said the names didn’t match, he said, and he was arrested, taken to a nearby detention center and held for about four hours.
“It’s an ugly feeling. It makes you feel less human. To know that people see your features and think so little of you,” he said.
DHS did not respond to questions about the arrest.
Mantz, the Choctaw Nation citizen, said he runs pest-control operations in Minneapolis neighborhoods where ICE agents are active and he won’t leave home without his tribal identification documents.
Securing them for his children is now a priority.
“It gives me some peace of mind. But at the same time, why do we have to carry these documents?” Mantz said. “Who are you to ask us to prove who we are?”
Brewer reported from Oklahoma City and Peters from Edgewood, New Mexico.
The post Fearing ICE, Native Americans rush to prove their right to belong in the US appeared first on ICT.
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In ‘Minneapolis,’ a protester confronts U.S. Customs and Border Protection (BCP) tactical officers on Jan. 16, a week after Renée Good, 37, was gunned down in her van by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer. BCP agents would go on to shoot dead another 37-year old, Alex Pretti, a week later. Photo courtesy of Chad Davis
Inuvik resident Harley Minakis was on his way home from visiting his daughter in Costa Rica last week — transiting via “Houston” airport — when a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer stopped him.
Despite having his Canadian passport, Indian status card, and Gwich’in tribal card, he found himself turned him over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
They held him in a room for roughly two hours, he told IndigiNews, with about 20 other detainees on Jan. 22.
“‘You’re staying here,’” he recalls the agent saying.
“There were a whole bunch of other people that were detained in there. They were all speaking Spanish, but they look like they’re Native.”
Minakis said an agent told him his three identification documents were not enough, dismissing his federally issued Indian status card.
“One guy’s like, ‘Well, I was in Canada and they give those out like candy,’” he recalled. “I’m like, ‘How can you say that? We have to go through hoops, especially to get Indian status.’”
Officers insisted that if he wanted to be released from custody, he’d have to prove his so-called “blood quantum” of Indigenous ancestry, Minakis said.
His experience served as a reminder of the high stakes and growing fears about visiting the “U.S.” — anxieties shared by a growing number of Indigenous citizens within that country itself.
Tens of thousands of people protest in ‘Minneapolis’ on Jan. 23 against the killing of mother Renee Good during U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s violent crackdown in the city. Photo courtesy of Chad Davis
‘I’m scared … I’ll be detained again’
With global headlines dominated by scenes of violent arrests of migrants, including children — and agents killing two citizens protesting their actions — Indigenous people are finding themselves increasingly in the crosshairs.
A growing number of First Nations members are also being apprehended by ICE agents, sending shockwaves of anxiety across the continent on both sides of the border.
Now, as tensions on the streets flare — and resistance grows to the aggressive crackdown — multiple First Nations organizations have issued travel warnings against going to the “U.S.” at all.
And for those who must cross the border, they recommend people carry not only up-to-date passports — but even long-form birth certificates, Indian status cards, and a “blood quantum” letter from their band or tribal council.
In 1794, “Great Britain” and the newly independent “U.S.” signed the Jay Treaty — officially known as the Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation.
The pact enshrined the inherent right of “Indians dwelling on either side of the said boundary line freely to pass and repass by land or inland navigation, into the respective territories and countries of the two parties.”
The 1795 Treaty of Amity, Commerce and Navigation enshrined the right of Indigenous Peoples to freely cross the border between the newly independent “United States” and British-governed “Canada.” Image courtesy of U.S. Library of Congress
But despite nothing in the treaty about criminal records or “blood quantum,” the “U.S.” insists that those exercising their Jay Treaty rights must prove at least 50 per cent “blood quantum” — a measure of ancestry not used to determine band membership or Indigenous identity north of the border.
“Blood quantum is a concept created by white settlers,” the Native Governance Centre states on its website, “that refers to the amount of so-called ‘Indian blood’ that an individual possesses … rooted in eugenics.”
During Minakis’s ordeal, the agents who detained him demanded more documentation, he said, before he would be released.
But he alleged the agents also told him they weren’t obligated to uphold the Jay Treaty at all.
“They said they don’t have to honor it, because some bands came after it,” Minakis said.
But as he frantically tried to comply with agents’ demands, an ICE supervisor then seized his phone.
Meanwhile, Minakis’s wife Aurelie sprang into action — having the Gwich’in Tribal Council draft and send a “blood quantum” letter urgently.
Thanks to their frantic efforts, eventually Minakis was released and reunited with his family, with just five minutes to spare before the gate closed for their connecting flight home to “Canada.”
“We ran like crazy … throughout the airport to get to where we were flying,” he recalled.
But the ordeal left him shaken — and reconsidering whether he’s ever willing to visit his daughter in Costa Rica again, even if he never transits through the “U.S.”
“I’m scared,” he said, “that if the plane malfunctions and goes down, I’ll be detained again.”
Gwich’in Nation member Harley Minakis, left, visits Costa Rica with his family from Inuvik earlier this month, before he was detained for hours by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. Photo courtesy of Aurelie Minakis/Facebook
‘Taken into detention for looking a certain way’
On both sides of the colonial border, tribal and First Nations officials have issued statements advising people to make sure their status cards are up-to-date, and to have other identity documents ready for ICE encounters.
Nations in “North Dakota,” “South Dakota” and “Minnesota” have hosted pop-up identity document clinics in the Twin Cities area, too.
The Native American Rights Fund (NARF) issued a fact sheet and a know-your-rights flyer.
The organization reminds Indigenous people of their right to remain silent during encounters with law enforcement — urging them to stay calm, tell the truth, and not be seen to obstruct or resist ICE agents.
If targeted, however, NARF recommends people state they do not consent to being searched, and to ask agents if they are being detained or free to leave.
Rosanna Berardi, a lawyer with Berardi Immigration Law in “Buffalo, New York,” was previously a border immigration inspector.
“At the beginning of my career, which was 25 years ago, there was always confusion about the Jay Treaty,” she told IndigiNews. “some officers didn’t understand what that meant … it appears that there’s still that confusion.
“The issue with crossing the border is you just don’t know who you’re going to get and what level of experience they have.”
She advised that people can ask to speak to a border agent’s supervisor if the officer appears to not understand the Jay Treaty.
Although she acknowledges some have called for the historic treaty to be overturned, they haven’t succeeded.
“Presently,” she said, “the Jay Treaty is alive and well.”
Brad Regehr, a member of Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation and a Sixties Scoop survivor, is a partner at the Indigenous-owned Maurice Law in “Winnipeg.”
He said the ICE crackdowns have seen due process and rule of law “tossed out the window.” That makes crossing the border risky, despite First Nations members’ rights.
“Given the current administration, I don’t think it’s a very friendly time for Canadian First Nations or other Indigenous people to be going into the States,” Regehr said.
“My fear is that they would just be subject to the same discriminatory practices that we’re seeing — where they might say, ‘Well, you’re a Canadian Indian, you have no right to be here,’ and then, throwing them into the facility and eventually deporting them back to Canada.”
Regehr said, as a First Nations person from “Canada,” he’s opted not to travel across the border.
“It appears that the risks are just too great,” he said. “You get arbitrarily taken into detention for looking a certain way.”
A candlelight memorial is seen in ‘Minneapolis’ for Alex Pretti, a man shot dead by ICE agents on Jan. 25, with a sign that lists ‘warning signs of fascism.’ Photo courtesy of Chad Davis
Writer and organizer Harsha Walia, author of Undoing Border Imperialism, said the ICE raids have shone a light on state violence against immigrant and BIPOC communities.
In an interview with IndigiNews, the “B.C.”-based South Asian author said many people mistakenly think about immigration enforcement “as a kind of non-Indigenous, settler issue” — in either country.
“But Indigenous people from these lands on Turtle Island are some of the communities who are most impacted by immigration enforcement,” she said. “That is literally the imposition of colonial borders that divide people on their own territories.”
She described border policing as “part of the same system” of restricting people’s freedom of movement, including for Indigenous communities.
“The way that immigration enforcement is all about telling migrants, ‘You can’t be here, you can’t live here, you can’t do that,’” she explained, “comes from the same ideology of settler-colonialism — of telling Indigenous people that they could only live on reserves and reservations.”
‘It’s too dangerous’: A rez at the borderline
The colonial border isn’t always a straightforward divide for Indigenous nations.
For instance, Northwest Angle #33 First Nation, in “Ontario,” is so close to the “Manitoba-Minnesota” border that people must enter the “U.S.” before they can reach the nearest “Canadian” highway.
Community members who reside on one of the nation’s reserves do not have a year-round road, and depending on the season must travel by ice, boat or air.
And to access many off-reserve services such as shopping, school, or doctors, they have to transit through the “U.S.”
“I’m advising our members not to cross the border at this time,” the First Nation’s Chief Darlene Comegan wrote on Facebook on Jan. 15.
“It’s too dangerous. Someone’s brown and red status card was confiscated and not returned to them by ICE.”
Grand Council Treaty 3, which includes Comegan’s band, issued a statement confirming that “some First Nation citizens have experienced increased scrutiny, questioning, or enforcement” by ICE while traveling.
The council advised people to reach out to regional offices of Indigenous Services Canada who may “assist with prioritizing urgent cases related to cross-border travel, employment, or safety concerns.”
More than 35,000 Native Americans live in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-Saint Paul.
“This is the heart of the Native community, but we also share our community with more recent immigrants,” said John Dionne, a member of Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians in “North Dakota,” in a Jan. 17 video posted to Facebook by the NDN Collective.
“When they [ICE] got here, they started really targeting everybody, including the Native peoples, and a lot of our Native peoples were living scared.”
His own family spans the colonial border. His wife, Rachel Dionne-Thunder, is a nehiyaw iskwew from Bigstone Cree Nation.
He recounted how she was nearly captured by ICE agents outside Pow Wow Grounds, an Indigenous-owned cafe in “Minneapolis.”
Up to 1,500 Native Americans live in the coffeeshop’s Little Earth neighbourhood, which hosts the first subsidized public housing project aimed at Indigenous people in the country.
Dionne-Thunder described her encounter with ICE agents at a Jan. 9 press conference of the Metropolitan Urban Indian Directors.
She said she was targeted by ICE agents while observing their operations on a Minneapolis street, as part of Indigenous Protectors Movement (IPM) patrols.
“ICE attempted to detain me,” the IPM co-founder said. “ICE was at my windows asking me to roll my windows down, to unlock my door, to show my ID.
“And I was not going to do any of those things. They were ready to break my window.”
Dionne-Thunder has proud Indigenous resistance in her blood; she descends from a line of American Indian Movement activists.
Outside the Indigenous-owned Pow Wow Grounds Cafe in ‘Minneapolis’ on Jan. 11, community members sing the American Indian Movement song and offer prayers for those impacted by the government’s violent crackdown in the city — including for Renée Good, a mother shot dead by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent. Video screenshot courtesy Lakota People’s Law Project/Facebook
Before the “Minneapolis” crackdown — known as Operation Metro Surge — began last month, Dionne-Thunder and her husband had already led ICE-monitoring patrols since June, when she believes the force was “testing the waters of community response.”
“Ever since then, we have seen this escalation to where now we’re in this full occupation of the Twin Cities in Minneapolis.”
On Jan. 19, IPM posted a statement on Facebook stating that ICE agents’ “morale is low” and confidence eroding as a result of local communities uniting to monitor and document their actions.
“What we are doing is making a difference,” the organizers wrote. “They are being witnessed. They are being documented. And they know the community is organized, present, and unafraid to care for one another.”
And the group vowed to continue its efforts “regardless of what comes next,” it added.
“We protect our people. We care for our neighbors. We stay grounded in love, discipline, and collective responsibility.”
‘I’ll never forget the fear that we both felt’
Although the Trump administration has faced resistance in cities across the country, Operation Metro Surge is the largest ICE mission so far in “U.S.” history, involving 2,000 federal agents.
One of the citizens swept up in its aggressive crackdown was 23-year-old Nasra Ahmed, who was born and raised in “Minnesota.”
Agents violently arrested and detained the Somali-American for two days, after she witnessed officers pursue what appeared to be two Somali men.
She spoke in the Minnesota State Capitol at a press conference on Jan. 21, wearing a black hijab.
She told reporters she wasn’t given any reason for her apprehension — but alleged that agents called her the “N-word.”
She said she suffered a concussion and a deep cut from being assaulted by multiple ICE agents.
Ahmed recalled being held in a cell with a Native American woman.
“They shattered her windows,” she recounted. “She had blood on her jeans … and she was crying because she was so scared.”
In particular, Ahmed said the woman was distraught that officers separated her from her dog.
“She was so scared that her dog got hurt,” Ahmed said. “She was so scared for her life.
“We were both crying together. We were holding each other tight, and I’ll never forget the fear that we both felt in our hearts that day.”
ICE detained the pair in the Bishop William Whipple Federal Building, the controversial detention centre that’s become a flashpoint for protests and federal violence.
It’s not the first time in history the government used the site to incarcerate people.
A lithograph from 1883 depicts the execution of the 38 Dakota men in Minnesota, Dec. 26, 1862. Archival image courtesy of U.S. Library of Congress
The facility sits on the same land as Fort Snelling. In the harsh winter of 1862, it was once a concentration camp for more than 1,600 Dakotas — including Elders, children and women — amidst the “U.S.”-Dakota war.
It was also where two Dakota men were later hanged as part of a wave of dozens of executions after the government’s war against Indigenous tribes, the largest mass execution in the country’s history.
The federal government placed an Indian agency near the fort.
But to Dakota, it’s a sacred site, part of the nation’s creation story. Located where the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers meet, Dakota call the area Bdoté, “where two rivers come together.”
On the city’s Franklin Avenue — a hub for the Indigenous community — Dakota Elders have offered prayers and support, including a pipe ceremony, four days after Renée Good was shot to death by federal agents in her van.
The location has also become a supply and food depot for those affected by the ICE raids, and a staging ground for the community patrols tracking and documenting agents’ actions.
“We have our legal constitutional rights … we have the right to legally observe, we have the right to legally record these active ice abductions,” Dionne-Thunder said.
“We have the right to safely follow ICE vehicles and to report to community members where ICE is known to be; we have the right to blow whistles; we have the right to have our freedom of speech to actively speak to those agents during these abductions.”
She said that by coming together, local communities are demonstrating how ordinary people can stand up together against injustice and violence — regardless of whether it’s against immigrants or Indigenous peoples.
“When we are on patrol,” she proclaimed, “we’re acting as the eyes and the ears — boots on the ground.”
A person wearing a helmet observes a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) vehicle emblazoned with the slogan ‘Defend The Homeland’ on Jan. 8, part of a growing groundswell of public opposition to and witnessing of the federal agents in ‘Minneapolis.’ Photo courtesy of Chad Davis
The post Across the border, Indigenous fears spike amidst ‘U.S.’ immigration crackdown appeared first on Indiginews.
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