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NDN Collective prepares for D.C. rally
Cy Wagoner, Navajo and the creative resilience director for the NDN Collective, works on sewing a large banner for the Sept. 12 Washington D.C. protest for Leonard Peltier's freedom. (Photo by Amelia Schafer, ICT/Rapid City Journal)
Nick Tilsen, Oglala Lakota and the NDN Collective president and CEO, has spent his entire life rallying for the release of Leonard Peltier. As a child, he remembers sealing envelopes for the movement. Now, his organization’s rally will be the latest iteration in a long line of groups calling for Peltier’s freedom.
In 1977, Peltier, Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, was sentenced to two life terms in connection with the deaths of two FBI agents, Jack Coler and Ronald Williams, on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation two years earlier. Peltier, a member of AIM, had been part of the 1973 Wounded Knee occupation to protest the Oglala Sioux Tribe’s government and the federal government’s failure to honor treaties.
Now, nearly 48 years after he entered prison, the push for Peltier’s release has amped up. Tribal nations, Nobel Peace Prize winners, former FBI agents, U.S. senators and representatives, and the former U.S. Attorney whose office handled the prosecution have all called for Peltier’s release.
Amnesty International, which has long fought for Peltier’s release, has partnered with NDN Collective for a rally on Peltier’s 79th birthday, Sept. 12.
On Thursday, Sept. 7, a caravan of vehicles will depart from the Jumping Bull Ranch near Oglala on the Pine Ridge Reservation, where the infamous shootout took place, and head toward Rapid City.
The caravan will have three more stops before reaching Washington D.C. on Sept. 11: Minneapolis, Chicago and Pittsburgh. The caravan’s two buses will be full after stopping in Minneapolis, but individuals can choose to follow along in their own vehicles.
“There will be speakers, prayers and acts of non-violent political resistance,” Tilsen said. “Folks will dissent against (almost) 48 years of incarceration.”
Cy Wagoner, Navajo and director of the NDN Collective’s Creative Resistance Team, has spent hours working on banners, signs and other protest materials for the rally. Wagoner and his team designed unique slogans and phrases to help catch the attention of those who encounter the protesters at the National Mall and White House.
“We have to speak for those who can’t speak for themselves,” said Jaque Fragua, Pueblo Jemez and the Creative Resistance Team coordinator.
Fragua works on the graphic design element of the art building, creating the actual designs that will be featured.
Rapid City community members were able to come out to the NDN Collective building from Aug. 30 to Sept. 1 to help paint and build the protest materials for the estimated 200 protestors in attendance on Sept. 12.
“As Native people, we have had our expression taken from us in so many ways, this is now our traditional art,” Fragua said.
The largest banner will be unveiled on the Third Street side of the National Mall.
Creating art is an important part of a protest, Fragua said.
“If you don’t create any visual identity, then someone else will,” Fragua said. “It’s essential for (a movement) to have a stamp and an identity.”
This story is co-published by the Rapid City Journal and ICT, a news partnership that covers Indigenous communities in the South Dakota area.
Dateline:
RAPID CITY, S.D.