May 29 Marches to Take Down the Fort

On May 29 and 30, protesters gathered outside historic Fort Snelling by Minneapolis, Minnesota. They protested the state & the maintenance of the Fort by the state, entering the grounds without paying the admission fee, by invitation from Dakota activists who passed freely by their rights under the Treaty of 1805.
Please read more about this long-running campaign at
http://www.takedownthefort.com/

Here I present the reflections of an observer.

There is a cycle to oppression and resistance. A cycle of give and take.
The cycle is like the oscillations of sound waves when people chant, sing, and pray together.
If it is steady, it has an effect; if the singers are disciplined, their song will grow and resound; if resistance continues no matter what sets it back, it will influence the whole world. Though oppression has been normalized, resistance is a part of all of us too; it speaks to each of us with relevance too.
It speaks even louder than fear to the wild core of our souls. It speaks with actions, and here I meekly summarize with words the way of human determination that will win back the world.
We will win because we must. Because the ecosystems must be restored, we must win back the planet with paradigms of Mother rather than of Lord.
he environment demands equilibrium again. This doesn’t come easy in the city, but suddenly the heat of the day is breezy as Dakota people gather and pray.
There was a prayer in the parking lot of St. Peter’s Church, before a group of Minnesota’s indigenous activists took up their signs and their staff, before they marched in a line over Mendota Bridge.
There was a prayer and a song that lifted their spirits and thanked Wakan Tanka for the day and their lives.
It was always said that Native American spirituality is incorporated in every aspect of life, like tobacco smoke permeating the smells of labor and cooking and cars and clothes.
It’s still true. Ceremonies and spirituality are still as important to culture as water is to the trees.
Yet I find myself in a culture somewhat drained, among the white American Left, a spectrum of people who shed religious and spiritual heritages, teachings, and hierarchies, like a porcupine sheds quills.
That is to say, we carry around both emotional baggage and spiritual confusion, though we don’t see it; when we feel threatened we do see it as our quills stand up, our baggage is apparent, and we throw off the spiritual and emotional inklings we carry like weapons against attackers. Our critiques of the spiritual and metaphysical are sharp and stinging.
The Left believes in hard work for justice, and when it sees neighbors pause to pray, it asks where divine justice was when we needed it.
Where was the Creator during the American genocide? Where was the Savior throughout over 500 years of colonization of the African and American continents? Where were the Spirits during China’s Great Leap Forward?
The refrain goes, ‘No, no, it’s not enough to pray. There’s a lot of work to do before justice has its day.’
So many arguments flit back and forth over this issue, which appeal to critical thinkers on an intellectual level but often surface because of the deep wounds where we stung ourselves.
The anarchist, anti-theist arguments drift away as smoke billows over the heads of activists and lifts up their prayers.
Today, May 29, 2010, a hot parking lot filled up with intention and power as indigenous people and allies came together: intentions to set things right, to remember injustices of the past, to let nature take its course with Fort Snelling.
The old military post at the confluence of Mississippi and Minnesota crumbles; large white families pour in for opening day of tourist season; the legislature allocates money to the Minnesota Historical Society for renovation and restoration of a most violent racist period.
Today white children picnicked in the shade of the Visitor Parking Lot with George Washington stickers on their T-shirts-- and observed native children carrying banners and clapping and shouting along with Dr. Waziyatawin
at the megaphone, in the shade outside the Fort.
Wandering white adults enjoyed Memorial Day weekend with a cigarette atop the Fort’s reinforced rotunda, looking down over the cheering and chanting brown people who came to meet them. Their stickers bearing dead presidents showed their casual monetary support for the Fort that was once the military’s defense of traders and settlers, against the Dakota people in its concentration camp downhill.
Tax-payer funding was challenged and, in a way, so was the entire consumer routine of our lives. Why continue rebuilding this model of the original foundation of Statehood? So that future generations can reenact settler life in elementary school, reenact the Civil War in middle school, tour Cold War sites in high school, and then enlist against the War on Terror??
Someone waved a sign that read, ‘They don’t have reenactments at Auschwitz.’
I’ve been to Auschwitz.
Rather than historical reenactments, I saw the words of Churchill greeting tourists: “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
In that way, history too has a wavelength. History is a turning oscillation of similar events. Only by learning—by Consciousness – do we get to higher planes called the future.
It takes discipline to learn, to open your mind, to change the song sung by the generations, in the same way it takes discipline to chant, to sweat, to endure these afternoons with messages for the masses while staying on your toes between barricading Sheriff cars and plain-clothes police.
How will Mnisota’s wheel turn now?
Will the big wheel of fear turn and grind us down, or will we switch gears like equal peers, leaving behind the racist fears?
Latinos and allies met the native marchers at the Fort to protest all the steps backward our nation takes. The Arizonan law against illegal immigration, SB1070, was heavy on the hearts of those who walked from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement building to Fort Snelling.
As speakers related at the megaphone, already their friends and family down south were being harassed & pulled over by cops in the state where brown skin is probable cause for suspicion of illegal immigration. The northern blue states would not be immune to this case of racial profiling; in the past legislative session a similar law was proposed for Mnisota. It had just a few sponsors—Congress people who we will not vote for again—but next year it will be reintroduced as if it made sense.
How will the wheel turn? When will we find the frequency of harmony and peace?
Maybe it can’t be found in this world of well-funded violence and state-supported ignorance—but it can be created by people, powerhouses of conscious energy that we are.
The sacred staff touched the Fort’s stone wall. The cheers rose up for one and all. People harmonized in solidarity: Dakota people, SEIU, MIRAC, First Nations United, and CUAPB. The chants grew louder:
‘Take Down the Fort!’
By their rights native people entered, presented the treaty of 1805, and invited everyone gathered to invade the Fort and educate from inside.
Within the visitor center and ‘historic’ re-creation, no marker mentions the imprisonment of displaced native people or the hanging of leaders.
With history preserved in a supposed moral vacuum, with costumed actors firing canons every day on site, dark days are ahead in the land of the free and the home of the hidden mass graves.
In spite of it all, these people standing up for their rights have an attitude of gratitude towards the spirits they thank. It sounds so cliché, but it’s what we need to have strength to fight another day:
an attitude of gratitude, humility, disciplined persistent positivity.
That’s how we can influence history’s waves so that they do indeed arc towards justice in the end.