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In Native Lights, people in Native communities around Mni Sota Mkoce - a.k.a. Minnesota - tell their stories about finding their gifts and sharing them with the community. These are stories of joy, strength, history, and change from Native people who are shaping the future and honoring those who came before them.
Native Lights is also a weekly, half-hour radio program hosted by Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe members and siblings, Leah Lemm and Cole Premo. Native Lights is a space for people in Native communities.
Native Lights: Where Indigenous Voices Shine is produced by Minnesota Native News and Ampers, Diverse Radio for Minnesota’s Communities with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage fund. Online at https://minnesotanativenews.org/
[Music: Native Lights Theme]
Robert Lilligren: One of the first guidance that was given to the community were these whistles, and we're just distributing them like crazy. I mean, 1,000s and 1,000s and 1,000s of them in these packets of Know Your Rights. Would that have a whistle in them? And the whistles draw other people right and make others in the area aware, and they disrupt the ICE agents, communications, their earpieces, they can't hear from them.
Leah Lemm: Boozhoo, hello. Welcome to Native Lights: Where Indigenous Voices Shine. I'm your host, Leah Lemm. Miigwech for joining me. Native Lights is more than a podcast and radio show. At its core, it's a place for Native folks to tell their stories each and every week, we have great conversations with wonderful guests from a bunch of different backgrounds, musicians, artists, doctors, educators, athletes, you name it. We have a wonderful mix of passions that join us, and we talk to our guests about their gifts and how they share those gifts with their community, and it all centers around the big point of purpose in our lives, and it is another day, another chance to amplify Native Voices. This week, we are taking a bit of a break from format to talk about what's going on in the Twin Cities in Minneapolis and even across Minnesota, as the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement surges in their operations, and it has affected Native American community in Minneapolis. So I'm taking time today to chat with Robert Lilligren, CEO of the Native American Community Development Institute, and we're going to focus on what they're doing, what Native leaders are doing, native community members are doing in the Twin Cities during the ice operations. So I'm just going to jump right into it with Robert Lilligren.
Aaniin, Robert.
Robert Lilligren: Yeah, Boozhoo, Leah, thanks so much for having me here today.
Leah Lemm: Well, thanks for that. And you know, we're just gonna get right into it. And maybe from your point of view, Robert, where you're sitting right there in South Minneapolis, can you tell me how you've seen ice operations evolve since they've arrived in December and into January? What have you seen on the ground? Right?
Robert Lilligren: Well, in December, you know, we thought it was bad enough, right? They were here, they were doing some actions and initiatives against our neighbors and friends. But since the murder of running good, it's just gone out of control, and they're rapidly evolving. They move around a lot, so it takes a lot of tracking. They're getting increasingly more violent and what seems more random, and I will say this when we were just talking about just came from a big community safety meeting just now, and it's undeniable that it feels like the Native community is being targeted, and we coexist with a lot of our immigrant neighbors and friends, especially east African immigrants and Latino immigrants. We share space, right? We share geography. But it really feels like native people are being targeted in this effort.
Leah Lemm: Well, what have you seen to say that? What have you witnessed?
Robert Lilligren: So the geography they're active in, right? And so who, folks who know Minneapolis, know that East Franklin, we call it the American Indian cultural corridor. There's a concentration of Native population, Native organizations, tribes, businesses, all along this particular corridor. And then there are these streets that feed on to that streets like Bloomington Avenue, for example, Cedar Avenue, Chicago Avenue, the ICE activities are really visible and concentrated in those areas. And then we have a very, very powerful residential community here called Little Earth of United Tribes, and they've shown up on Little Earth property, and around Little Earth property, they're harassing people on the streets around the native neighborhoods here. And I don't have to point out it's ironic, right? We're not immigrants. These are our lands, the historic lands of the Dakota people. And since we're tribal members. We are U.S. citizens as well. So we really don't fit into these criteria that the federal agents ICE and Customs and Border Patrol say they're looking for, right? We don't fit that.
Leah Lemm: Well, then that, of course, begs the question, Why are Native people being approached.
Robert Lilligren: we're all kind of scratching our heads trying to figure that out. And part of it, why is Minneapolis? Why is Minnesota being so targeted here? This is the largest federal agent deployment in the history of our country, and it's happening right here in Minneapolis and in Minnesota, where we have a fairly. High percentage of immigrant and foreign born population, but it's still like 10% we're not anywhere near the highest percentage of immigrants or refugees or asylees, but for some reason, it's here, right? There's a sort of a line being drawn in the sand and a stake being put on the ground. And I think this relates to why native people are being targeted here. And this is a very successful state by just about every indicator. It's a great place to live, to raise a family, to work, to get an education. And also, I think there's a need for this administration to make us feel bad for that right, to bring us down some and and then I feel like in the native community, we really have it together. And it's beautiful. The response here how organized it is. We have our indigenous protectors. We have aim. We have NDN Collective as being active. We can organize, and we can take care of ourselves. And I feel like there's something in that that just bugs them, that bugs the fence. You know, they don't want us to be this good, but we are. But other than that, and Native people are brown people, right? And so there's that piece of it. And you know, tragically, the victim of the ice murder was a white woman. It was a tragedy no matter what color she was, right? But she was a white woman, but it happened in the heart of a very racially diverse area of the city and and this is the area where ice is most active.
Leah Lemm: Can you say more about how Native community in the Twin Cities in Minneapolis is responding?
Robert Lilligren: Oh yeah, it's very well organized. We learned stuff. We've learned stuff through history, but especially with the murder of George Floyd. You know, within the American Indian culture corridor and the footprint of the American Indian community in Minneapolis, we made the determination to protect ourselves with people and not board up our buildings and go inside, and so that really amplified, accelerated this kind of very ordered, organized protection. So when this happened, it felt like very familiar territory, and those who organized patrols came together very quickly at our building, we're in a little yellow building on Franklin Avenue East Franklin it houses power grounds. It houses our gallery, all my relations arts, and then our gallery director Angela two stars, made the gallery available to the community, to the protectors as a headquarters, and right away supplies were being delivered there calls them out for supplies. Became a strategic headquarters and a place for the protectors to get a meal. In our parking lot, there are two spirit fires that are going constantly, or more or less constantly. Aim stayed there last night and tended the fire all night. Ceremony. We had an incredibly beautiful ceremony on Sunday there. So ceremony, medicines are being collected and distributed there. And then patrols go out right and we're all on multiple signal chats right now. And there's ones that are very specific right the corner of 24th and cedar ice has someone down in front of a bus stop, you know. And people deploy very quickly to that. We're putting out information packets that include our whistles, you know. So we can whistle, which draws attention to the activity, but also interrupts ICE's ability to communicate. It interrupts their headsets, right? So, so that happens really, really quickly, we're training people. There's a training right now going on at the Minneapolis American Indian Center on East Franklin. Know your rights, right? And those are happening, I think, on a cadence of every night for the foreseeable future. There was one scheduled so popular. They put in three. Now they are just planning to do them every night. And so, wow. So it's getting very specific, with the goalie of keeping it peaceful, right? If this turns violent, it's catastrophic.
Leah Lemm: You're listening to Welcome to Native Lights: Where Indigenous Voices Shine. Native Lights is produced by Minnesota Native News and AMPERS, with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. Today, I'm speaking with Robert Lilligren, CEO of the Native American community Development Institute is also a citizen of the White Earth Nation. I mean, that's so helpful too to you know to have something to kind of inform yourself, something concrete that you can do and know to get through and guide. Is there outreach to unhoused relatives as well?
Robert Lilligren: There is, and this was a topic of conversation in this community safety meeting I just came from, and the area that we're talking about, the sort of identified native area in Minneapolis, also has a very high concentration of our unhoused relatives. Relatives, and they're not so much encampments, although there are a few spots that still feel like encampments, but there are clusters of our own house relatives, and so how do we keep our unhoused relatives safe and informed? And it's a bit of a challenge, right? It's a very shifting population, but we have a robust cadre of outreach, specifically from the Native organizations and some of our allies that do engage with their own host relatives, and so there's communication going there. I still think it's a very, very vulnerable population, but we're doing what we can. One of the attendees at the safety meeting I just came from said something like, we've been working hard to serve best support our unsheltered relatives, but she said, we can't solve the issues of our homelessness through this, but we need to really make sure we're putting specific strategies in place If necessary, to reach out to the community or on House relatives.
Leah Lemm: What are people caring with them? You know, I saw kind of a light hearted post. Maybe you saw too, you know, how much
Robert Lilligren: I'm going to the grocery store, going to the corner, yeah?
Leah Lemm: Like I got my passport, I got my ID, I got right, I got my cedar and sage
Robert Lilligren: right, yeah.
Leah Lemm: Like, what are people carrying? And do you feel the need to carry identification or copies of identification as well, Robert?
Robert Lilligre: Yep. So people are carrying all of that right, and putting medicine cedar in their shoes and things like that. But I carry my tribal ID and a lanyard around my neck because I don't want to have to dig in a pocket or something if, if I shouldn't need it, and then pretty much everybody along the Avenue has a whistle, right? Two pieces of kind of standard gear now and and then, people are advised to at least carry copies of your passport, of your birth certificate. You know, I present very white, so I don't feel like my physical self is in as much of danger as some people, some of our darker skin relatives, but, but still, I mean, it's creepy. Going by an ice initiative. You know, when they're pulling people out of a car, or even today, we're in a staff meeting, and all of a sudden it came across the signal chat, ice is coming west on Franklin. They're about to approach the Indian Center. Bang. Everybody along the corridor is out blowing whistles. People are following them and honking, making community aware and and they don't like that. They don't like to be viewed, right?
Leah Lemm: Can you tell me about the whistles and the honking? I noticed a lot of that in the background of videos and stuff like that that are posted to social media. And me, you know, I'm, I'm in greater Minnesota, rural area, so I'm just curious, I haven't been witness to that. Can you talk a bit about the whistles?
Robert Lilligren: One of the first guidance that was given to the community were these whistles, and we're just distributing them like crazy. I mean, 1,000s and 1,000s and 1,000s of them have gone out of all my relations, arts gallery and others in these packets of Know Your Rights. Would that have a whistle in them? And you know, the whistles draw other people right and make others in the area aware that there's an ice thing happening. But one of the benefits of them is they're loud, they're shrill, and they disrupt the ICE agents, communications, they're they're ear pieces. They can't hear from them. I see when they're being whistled at like that, that's kind of the side benefit, right? And so anything happens, and man, people have their whistles out. They're blowing them. And often this gets to be hundreds and hundreds of whistles going up at the same time. Great.
Leah Lemm: And have you heard from kids or youth or like child care centers? I know there's, you know, some child care down there, but you know, how are the youth doing?
Robert Lilligren: You know, the youth are challenged. And one of our prominent community leaders here, Dr Anthony stately, who is the head of the Native American community clinic right there on East Franklin. He's the father of two young sons, two teen well, they're teenagers now, but he was talking about this impact on students, and how they're just kind of lost, right? They they don't really know how to respond. And young people can often be more volatile, respond more you know, Anthony was giving guidance on how to talk to your children, so they know what's happening, and they know how they need to behave, to protect themselves and to protect the community, as a lot of folks know, ice infiltrate. Did one of our high schools here in South Minneapolis, and it's one that happens to have a high concentration of Native students, and they were just traumatized. They would shelter in place in an off site location for safety. A young community activist who had said he just happened to be going by the school when this happened, he wasn't sure it was going on, but the students were weeping. You know, it's very traumatizing. And then, of course, as Native people, we carry our trauma very close to the surface anyway, and people are calling it blood memory, right? This historical memory of federal agents attacking native people was not that long ago, and that's very near the surface, and you can just see it in young people. It's so present
Leah Lemm: well, and you know how much youth and well, I guess all of us, are on social media. You know, witnessing these videos and photos over and over and over again can probably have an effect as well.
Robert Lilligren: And it is, you're exactly right. And so right now the Native community, and actually the broader community here in Minneapolis and we are really taking care of each other, right? And it's what we have each other, and especially in the native community, people just want to be in community the day of the shooting, I was part of a community meeting where we develop ways of caring for our unsheltered relatives and our substance using relatives. It's a subcommittee of our Metropolitan Urban Indian Directors here. We meet at all nations church. It's an Indian Church here, and it's usually pretty well attended. It's maybe 50, 60, 65 people or so on that day. And this is while it was unfolding. This murder, the shooting, it was the highest attended of these subcommittee meetings. And Leah, you could just see the first office trauma right there, but you could also see people's very, very strong need to be in community together.
Leah Lemm: I'm just thinking because I'm also in conversation with my dad. He lives in the woods in an undisclosed location, but he does ceremony and stuff like that. And he was saying some people are seeking ceremony outside the cities, like he said, some folks came up from the cities, and, you know, out of concern, right? So are you seeing people leaving?
Robert Lilligren: Not too much? At least, I haven't okay, you know, and we're very mobile population, right? So it doesn't surprise me to hear that people are seeking ceremony and peace outside of the city, but at least in my immediate community, not too much. And in fact, since the protectors are headquartered at our building with power grounds, all my relations, that's where NACDI these offices are. Our parking lot, people are coming to the city, you know, and this happened during George Floyd response as well. I think some 500 people came from outside of the city to support, to support the efforts, but that need for ceremony? Yes, and that came up at this community safety meeting. I was, where is ceremony happening? And where do I tap in and, and I will say there's a definite uptick in availability of ceremony. There's almost daily ceremony, I think, in our parking lot, where the Spirit prayers are and things.
Leah Lemm: So I wanted to explore more about how do you not give in to despair or like hopelessness and stuff like that. It sounds like ceremony is a big part of that.
Robert Lilligren: Ceremony is our traditional medicines. Being in community is a big part of that. But it's funny. Leah, how often people are asking that question, how you're keeping hope alive, you know? And with these spirit fires and things, and it's like constant smudging going on in the corridor and in our offices and in our organizations, you know. And then people are seeking something to do. We're being really clear. We're communicating. Here's where you can tap in. Here's what we need. Through our umbrella organization, the Metropolitan Urban Indian Directors, or MUD, we almost constant emergency meetings since the shooting and sort of you know this. Here's planning in this area. Here's planning in this area. Right now, we're focusing on food and food access, because that's been really interrupted, and people are afraid to leave their homes to go to grocery stores and things, especially elders or families with children, students relied on schools to. Provide meals, and some our city schools closed for several days. They're open again, but I don't think they're requiring students to be in school. And so now we're we did a quick asset map, who has what, who has vehicles, who has a fleet. How can we connect people to food? We threw money into a hat and hired a coordinator to help us do this work under the umbrella of mud. So, yeah, that's a big concern, that people are going to start going hungry.
Leah Lemm: Yeah, okay, and that was kind of my next question of the youth is, you know, are there population of elders? How are they doing?
Robert Lilligren: You know, they're frightened, like everyone is here. It's tense and uncertain, and they're vulnerable, right? And so there's some other people who are afraid to leave their homes, and I don't blame them. And we have these organizations that provide food meals.
Leah Lemm: Well, what about like medicine and doctor's appointments and things like that too?
Robert Lilligren: That is exactly it. And medical providers are setting up systems where they can drive and pick people up to their appointments and take them back. And you know that's a burden, a resource burden on our our health care providers, but it's what they got to do, otherwise people are not going to get their health care. We have a wonderful pharmacy right in the middle of the community here. It's called Mashkiki Waakaaigan, Medicine House. The Fond du Lac band runs it. It's this wonderful model where they've sort of taken the greed aspect out of the pharmaceutical industry, and so any tribal member or descendant pays nothing, right? I mean, I use my insurance, but no co pays. It's I really love this model. Anyway, I had to walk over from pow wow grounds today to pick up a prescription in one of the younger protector type activist said, Well, let me go with you. And I'm like, Oh no, it's right around the corner. I'm finally going, I'm going with you, you know. And it's, you know, I'm at elder status now. And, you know, I could tell it's like, great. This is, this is what they view their role as protecting an elder. Come on, let's go.
Leah Lemm: Well, that's great.
Robert Lilligren: It was, it was. I mean, it made me build an old it made me feel safer, right? Yeah, so he waited outside and walked me back.
Leah Lemm: Wonderful.
You're listening to Welcome to Native Lights: Where Indigenous Voices Shine. Native Lights is produced by Minnesota Native News and AMPERS, with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. Today, I'm speaking with Robert Lilligren, CEO of the Native American community Development Institute is also a citizen of the White Earth Nation. I do want to hit on a little bit like going back to the question of not giving into despair, because even though, you know, I'm in Grand Rapids, but I've seen photos. I've seen video of people still like smiling and laughing and like joking around, and humor can be a good source of healing and connection and stuff like that. Or do you feel like people are keeping up their humor?
Robert Lilligren: Yes, and especially in the Native world. I mean, laughter is medicine, right? And every conversation I mean gathering. I mean at least one at one point, there's laughter, and it feels very sort of indigenous to make sure that we're emphasizing that. And you know, in the beginning of this latest federal administration, you know, I made a determination, and I know a lot of other people that did things like this but I'm not going to let this administration steal my joy, right? So it gets trying at times like this, but it's not going to happen. And so as a community like we were at this very tense safety community meeting, and a community just now, there's probably a close 75 people or so in the room, a bit more, but someone, one of the native women in the room, made a very funny comment, and the whole room just burst out laughing. And I'm like, Yes, this feels good. This is medicine for us. So, so I think it's, you know, staying in community, staying really, really true to our indigenous values. That humor part, you know, it's got to be there.<
Leah Lemm: And how about after you leave the Ave and you get home and it's quiet. You know, what goes through your mind? How do you keep that perspective going?
Rbert Lilligren: There's almost constant communication going on right now, but I try to protect my protect myself. And you know, at our organization, NACDI, our approach has been since covid, an indigenous approach where we care for ourselves, first our family second, and then our community third. And this has had a transformational impact on our work at NACDI. And the productivity is just off the charts. People come to work, they're taking care of their families are and they can focus 200% on caring for the community and and so I take that to heart and try to practice that myself. And I will say, looking at some of this young leadership that is really stepping forward at this time, this kind of next generation leadership, and these are Native people who have been raised with such a strong sense of themselves, their histories, their cultures, their languages, they are just on such solid ground. And I am really impressed with how they're making sure to carve out that time to care for themselves and to care for their families, you know, one, one young leader said, he said, You know, I can work from 7am til 7pm and he said, but that's what I can do, you know, then I have to stop. Oh, when I was your age, I wish I would have had that wisdom, doing it until I dropped or till I burnt out. You know, so so so people are taking care of themselves and taking care of each other. A lot of hugging right now, which, which I like.
Leah Lemm: But are people staying healthy?
Robert Lilligren: So far, it seems like it, you know. And the other day, we had a big thing going on at NACDI. We had that press conference, and so was just a lot of logistical stuff going on helping out there. And one of my young staff co workers said, did you eat today? No, I haven't. You know, let me get something to eat. You know. So people are taking care of themselves and taking care of each other well.
Leah Lemm: As a storyteller, as a story sharer, what can I do better? What can folks like me who try to hold witness and amplify Native voices, Native community voices? What can we do to help?
Robert Lilligren: I appreciate that question so much, Leah, and I think you do a lot. This is helpful. I really don't think the outside world understands quite how bad it is. This is an occupation. It feels like an occupation. It looks like an occupation. So the more that we can tell that story to the outside world, as the awareness grows, then I think the concern will grow here. It's not happening everywhere, right? It's happening in our community. It's happening in communities with certain profiles. And so if the broader community can understand more and more how bad it really is, that's helpful.
Leah Lemm: Chii miigwech, Robert Lilligren, CEO of the Native American Community Development institute. If you are looking for more information, resources, legal resources, or crisis help, you can find that on the Metropolitan Urban Indian Directors website. That's MUIDMN.org, I'm Leah Lemm. Miigwech for listening. Giga waabamin.
You're listening to Welcome to Native Lights: Where Indigenous Voices Shine. Native Lights is produced by Minnesota Native News and AMPERS, with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.