Prayer camp established at Fort Snelling near federal detention center

Native activists have established a prayer camp at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, near the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, a center for immigration detention processing, according to ICT. The site was used by the United States as a concentration camp during the Dakota War of 1862 to imprison thousands of Dakota and Ho-Chunk people. Organizers raised four teepees at Bdóte, near the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers.

Migizi Spears, a citizen of Red Lake Nation and organizer for First Nations United, helped establish the prayer camp with Dakota, Nakota and other tribal citizens. “We are getting the land back for our Dakota people who were exiled out,” Spears was quoted as saying. Wasuduta, Dakota, said the prayer camp is intended to hold the federal government and the state accountable. Organizers said the prayer camp will remain despite changes in federal immigration enforcement activity.