Update: As of Friday afternoon, March 6, the tipis and the tents have not been removed.
Three weeks after a group of Native activists set up a prayer camp of tipis at Coldwater Spring within sight of the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, the National Park Service and a group of tribal leaders are asking them to leave.
NPS employees distributed a notice to those at the camp on Wednesday, giving them 24 hours to clear the site. That followed a meeting between tribal leaders from Minnesota, North and South Dakota, and camp occupants, where leaders explained the sacred nature of the site and asked for them to take down the camp.
The tipis went up the week of Feb. 9, with activists at the time expressing concern about the hundreds of immigrants being detained at the Whipple Building, near Fort Snelling, which once held an internment camp for Dakota people.
Since then, nine tribal nations — including four from Minnesota — have sent letters to the National Parks Service urging Matthew Tucker Blythe, superintendent of the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, to “take immediate and appropriate action.” A joint statement from the tribes called the camp “an unlawful encampment” by “an informal group of individuals.”
“We understand that a group claiming to represent the Oceti Sakowin has gathered at Mni Owe Sni and is demanding that the land be turned over to them,” Grant Johnson, president of the Prairie Island Indian Community, said in the statement. “These individuals do not represent our sovereign tribal governments and do not speak on our behalf.”
In its notice to vacate, NPS cited environmental, public health and natural resource protection reasons. “Failure to comply may result in enforcement actions,” the notice from the Department of the Interior said.
Following the conversation with tribal leaders Wednesday, some activists vowed to stay at the camp. The group also sent out a call on Signal for volunteers and legal observers to protect the site if law enforcement moves in.
“This ain’t for political views, this ain’t for the monies,” Cordney Locke, a Minneapolis resident and a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe told Sahan Journal. “This is actually for spiritual enrichment, cultural practices, restorative for our cultural and spiritual practices where we can connect back with the Earth.”
He said that the group at the encampment has been hosting sweat lodges as well as hoping to teach the younger Native population in the Twin Cities about Native traditions and culture. “All that is no reason to come down and show animosity and negative behaviors and to think it’s a political thing when it’s not.”
Dina Johnson, who is from Northern Cheyenne Nation and Pine Ridge Lakota, was there to support her daughter who believes the tipis should remain. “If we really say we’re all related, which we say that a lot in our ceremony ways, we have to start standing and really speaking that and really bringing it to the heart,” she said. Johnson added that there’s always been a risk of being arrested by ICE or the police. “It’s just that was said by our own people,” she said.
The tipis were erected by a multi-tribal group who told Sahan Journal at the time that they were negotiating for Fort Snelling State Park, and historic Fort Snelling itself, to be returned to the Dakota people. The tipis stand at Coldwater Spring, also known as Mni Owe Sni, a sacred Dakota site near Fort Snelling known to be a traditional gathering place for Native American tribes of the upper Mississippi that used the springwater for specific ceremonies. It was also recognised as a Traditional Cultural Property (TCP) on the National Register of Historic Places in 2023.
“Current actions by those in the encampment disregard established preservation protocols and threaten the integrity of a site that holds deep spiritual and cultural significance,” the joint statement from the tribal nations said.
A letter to the superintendent, signed by Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, Crow Creek Sioux Tribe, and Spirit Lake Tribe, also cited concerns about ecological damage to the site owing to the fire pits and the tipis and tents erected. It said that such actions are a “serious risk of irreparable harm to potential archaeological resources and directly undermine ongoing restoration efforts intended to preserve native plant life and protect the broader ecosystem of this culturally significant landscape.”
“The current “land back refuge” occupation directly jeopardizes the integrity of the site’s setting, feeling, and association,” a separate letter by the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes said.
Locke said that those maintaining the camp want to “hear directly from the elders” and “sit traditionally and talk to them and where we can reestablish if that’s something that we can do.” Asked on what might happen next given the 24-hour notice to evacuate, he said that “we’re going to have to see what options there is and how we can just remain standing.”
