In 2018, state highway officials began fencing off public areas in the Franklin Avenue corridor to deter homeless encampments near busy roadways.
Seven years later, with the fencing still in place, frustration is spilling over among those who use the high-traffic area and Native leaders who want to make it a cultural corridor.
Those concerns bubbled to the surface last month at a public safety meeting of the Metropolitan Urban Indian Directors (MUID), which brings together leaders of local Native-led organizations.
“The fencing is driving me crazy,” MUID Chair Robert Lilligren told Levi Brown, director of tribal affairs for the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT). “It feels like we’re living in a prison.”
Brown acknowledged that MnDOT had limited tools to address safety concerns along the corridor. In a follow-up interview, he said MnDOT is working on long-term engagement with the Native community and tribal government leaders for “community-led, community driven” solutions.
For many, those solutions can’t come soon enough.
The heart of the Native community
The first time Angela Two Stars turned the corner from Cedar to Franklin to go to All My Relations Arts gallery in 2017, the first thing she saw were murals under the Franklin Bridge. To her, it felt like a welcoming invitation into the heart of Minneapolis’ Indigenous community. “I thought, ‘Oh, here’s where my people are,’” she said. “‘This is my community.’”
The area no longer feels inviting, she said. “The first thing you see is all these fences, and it makes you feel like, ‘Oh, here’s where the Natives are. It kind of creates this feeling of, it’s dangerous, it’s not safe. And that’s furthest from the truth of what we’re doing here,” said Two Stars, vice president of arts and culture at the Native American Community Development Institute (NACDI) and the arts director of All My Relations Arts gallery, a program of NACDI.
In 2018, government agencies began fencing multiple areas along the corridor — between 11th Avenue S. to Cedar and Franklin to 26th Street — as a temporary solution to deter homeless encampments and large gatherings.
The fencing now blocks access to sidewalks, especially underneath the Hiawatha/Hwy. 55 overpass, forcing pedestrians to walk on the street or take a long detour to get from one part of Franklin to another.
One of the fenced-in sites is near where a highly visible and predominantly Native homeless encampment, named the Wall of Forgotten Natives, once stood.
In late 2021, Ojibwe artist Courtney Cochran started an art installation on the chain link fences “Never Homeless Before 1492.” The installation, which aimed to highlight the abuses and challenges Native Americans have faced and continue to experience, was in collaboration with All My Relations Arts gallery and received funding from the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT).
Four years later, the art installation isn’t there anymore, but the fences are.
‘A Band-Aid solution’
Last August, Lilligren heard about the newer, robust MnDOT fencing from community members. When he biked over under the bridge, he was floored to see the fencing, he said.
“It happened very, very quickly, almost overnight. Every piece of public right-of-way, controlled by different jurisdictions, was fenced, and it was hideous and ugly,” said Lilligren, who is also president and CEO of NACDI.
“I was personally complaining to these jurisdictions at MnDOT. They said, ‘Oh, we’re going to make some changes that we think you’ll like.’ And so in a short while, suddenly they had nicer fences. Those were the black ones. That was their improvement.”
The area in question includes city streets, county roads and state highways, making jurisdiction and any response to encampments or community issues more complex. Minneapolis officials say they have no fencing in the area. Much of the current fencing was installed by MnDOT, as bridges and highways fall under its jurisdiction.
Ryan Wilson, an area manager at MnDOT said that site-specific fences are installed “as a measure to find a safe solution, at least for a while.”
“It’s not our goal to have that fence in there long-term, or any of the other barriers or things that have been out on that site,” he said.
“Fences aren’t inherently bad,” said Sam Olbekson, founder and CEO of Full Circle Indigenous Planning and Design which has designed multiple spaces and businesses along the American Indian corridor like the renovation of the American Indian Center, the Native American Community Clinic which is being expanded, All My Relations Arts gallery as well as multiple affordable housing units and temporary shelters in the area.
But, they are a “Band-Aid” and “just a symptom of not having a better design solution,” he said.
“Fences aren’t architecture, and they’re meant to displace and keep people out, rather than a broader planning and design and artistic opportunity of revitalization, placemaking, and the type of economic and social infrastructure that truly promotes healing in our community,” he said.
‘Feels dangerous to have to walk in the street’
On Franklin Avenue, the fenced-off sidewalks force pedestrians to either walk half a mile out of the way or walk on the road through the underpass. Many are forced to choose the latter, some stepping out into the street while pushing walkers.
Turner, who asked to be identified only by his first name, is a resident and works in the neighborhood, and has to walk on the street along Franklin Avenue every day with the pedestrian sidewalks fenced off.
“It feels really dangerous to have to walk in the street, and it’s a shame that we don’t have better solutions to make this area of the city more livable for everybody,” he said.
He added that the fences no longer feel temporary. “It seems like it’s been here forever.”
Wilson said that MnDOT is working to install a ramp in that underpass and put markers to create a makeshift sidewalk on the road by the end of the year. “We want the sidewalks, we want the roads, we want all of our infrastructure to be safe and usable,” he said.
At the Oct. 14 MUID meeting, Third Precinct Inspector Jose Gomez said the Minneapolis Police Department has stepped up its presence and enforcement in the corridor to respond to the community’s safety concerns and needs in the face of heightened opioid use and homeless encampments in the area.
Joe Hobot, president and CEO of the American Indian OIC, admitted that even though it is unsafe for his students to walk on the road, he said “that is far safer than having to walk through a crowd of folks that are seriously in the throes of addiction and mental health crises that have no qualms about physically accosting our students. So we chose the former over the latter. We prefer not to have any of it.”
He thinks that fences, even though “an eyesore”, are a “necessary evil” to ensure safety in the neighborhood. “We need a more cohesive plan to remove these encampments so they become a thing of the past, and once we get to there, then the next step would be taking these fences down,” he said. “But we don’t have that cohesive plan, and so fencing becomes a necessary evil.”
‘Contrary to sovereignty’
For Lilligren, the fences are more than just an eyesore or inconvenience. They have overarching historical connotations. “We were incarcerated, put into encampments, and so this feels very much like history echoing through the community today,” he said. “It’s exactly contrary to sovereignty.”
“It reminds me of the internment camp at Fort Snelling,” said Two Stars. “It sends a message to our youth that having fences up is normal for us, that we don’t get to have nice things, that this is how people fix things, without communicating with us, without asking for our input. It stinks of colonial racism, and that’s what we have to fight.”
Lilligren also stressed that the fences hinder the community’s vision of a cultural corridor along East Franklin Avenue, one that has been gradually implemented over almost 15 years. From art galleries to cafes, traditional Indigenous celebrations to a renovated American Indian Center, the aim, Lilligren said, is “for the community to express our connection to this very specific geography, and it’s an opportunity to invite people from outside the Native community.”
He describes NACDI’s role as the keeper of this vision of the American Indian cultural corridor, and for him, “the fences just obliterate that.”
“It’s hard for me to have a calm conversation about them,” he said.
Long-term, culturally responsive solutions
Lilligren, Olbekson and Two Stars said that the fences were put up by MnDOT without community input or engagement to come up with solutions.
“What surprised me, as someone who has been part of the government for decades [is that], it’s very difficult to get jurisdictions to cooperate on anything, but in a very coordinated fashion, every public sector and entity who controls property there, were able to coordinate putting up the fences,” said Lilligren.
“It doesn’t fix the problem,” said Two Stars. “It just moves it, it drives, pushes it down the street.”
Interventions need to consider not just safety but also cultural sensitivity, with solutions that center Native voices, Lilligren said. “These are issues that impact the Native community, hugely disproportionately, both unsheltered homelessness and opioid and substance use.”
“If you’re trying to close disparity gaps, go to where the gaps are the biggest, because that’s where your opportunity to show [where] the most progress is.”
According to Olbekson, long-term solutions include activating spaces in the neighborhood that invite people in instead of fencing people out.
Two Stars agrees, adding that artistic interventions, like a Native sculpture garden can help bring a sense of identity and community to the neighborhood. “I believe that good traffic drives out bad traffic. And if there’s like a rotating series or new art along that walkway, it beautifies it, but also prevents encampments,” she said.
“I don’t know how much those fences cost, but you give artists whatever money you spent on that, they’ll get you something beautiful,” she said.
