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A group of Indigenous people has set up tipis less than a mile from the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis to protest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The building has been used as a holding facility for people apprehended by immigration enforcement during Operation Metro Surge.

Photos of four canvas tipis set against the backdrop of the 7-story federal building appeared Monday on social media. Erica Crazy Hawk is among the people who set up the camp on Monday.

“A collective of the Dakota exiles has gotten together and decided that we wanted to start, have a prayer camp in solidarity with the nations,” said Crazy Hawk in a phone interview with MPR News.

Crazy Hawk lives in Minnesota and is a tribal member of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe in South Dakota. The Crow Creek reservation was created for Dakota people ordered out of Minnesota by President Abraham Lincoln following the U.S. Dakota War in 1862.

Crazy Hawk said she felt immigration enforcement echoed the violence experienced by Native Americans at the hands of the U.S. government, stretching back several hundred years and including the interment of Dakota people in the stockade at Fort Snelling in the winter of 1862-1863.

“You know us as being taken from our parents, you know, forced into boarding schools, forced into these religions that weren't ours. We’re standing here and honoring the land that our ancestors stood and fought so hard for,” Crazy Hawk said.

prayer camp is located on land owned and managed by the National Park Service

 near a site sometimes referred to as Camp Coldwater.

In 2023, the site was added to the National Register of Historic Places and was designated as a Traditional Cultural Place, according to a National Park Service website.

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The latest on ICE in Minnesota

Melissa Olson

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A Dakota prayer camp has gone up across the highway from Whipple Federal Building to protest U.S. immigration enforcement. Organizers draw connections between current practices and historical injustices.

Indigenous group speaks out against immigration enforcement with prayer camp

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