By: Keith Kappes
Columnist
Carter County Times
As the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was recruiting ICE storm troopers off the street with $50,000 sign-on bonuses, no one apparently provided those gun-toting, masked men with basic U.S. history.
Case in point – Among those swept up by ICE’s campaign of racial profiling in Minnesota were four members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. Three of them are said to remain jailed at an ICE detention facility at Fort Snelling, south of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
Surely the folks in DHS are aware that Native Americans are automatically U.S. citizens, a right solidified by the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, granting citizenship to all born within U.S. territorial boundaries.
Further, these individuals are established by law as dual citizens of their tribal nations and of the U.S. without needing to apply or renounce tribal ties, and this status cannot be removed by executive order.
There is another lesson of history either not shared or intentionally ignored because that same military post is where, in 1862, U.S. Army soldiers imprisoned about 1,700 Native American men, women, and children following the U.S.-Dakota War.
Many of those original Americans died of torture, starvation and disease. Their survivors were exiled to reservations in what now is South Dakota.
Fort Snelling is an especially painful legacy for Native Americans because 39 of their ancestors were hanged on a single day at that location in an order reportedly approved by President Andrew Johnson at the end of the fighting.
We should all remember that this country belonged to their ancestors long before the first boatload of white people landed on the East Coast. To me, it appears that ICE is determined to snatch as many bodies as possible in order to meet whatever goals have been set by the White House.
Sadly, this ridiculous detention of Native Americans in Minnesota is further evidence that the evil of white supremacy is alive and well in the hearts and minds of certain government insiders.
More and more, it appears that the political slogan of “Make America Great Again” has become nothing more than thinly-veiled camouflage for turning back the clock to the shameful days of widespread racial discrimination.
Contact Keith at keithkappes@gmail.com.
