‘Commentary’ Archives
War on Humanity
from the series Something I Said... Dwight Hobbes By DWIGHT HOBBES Correlations between Donald Trump’s presidency and his hero Adolf Hitler’s regime continue. Dachau and other early concentration camps included abandoned factories, breweries and warehouses. These are places you stock and store materials – things, not human beings. ICE had such plans for migrant detainees. Until community unrest and state lawmakers put a halt to them. A vacant commercial building on Emery Way in Shakopee was going to hold up to 1,500 people. The local developer, Opus, decided not to finalize a lease. In Woodbury a half-million- square-foot facility off I-94 was in the works but has not panned out. The Department of Homeland Security had, in fact, reportedly targeted several industrial properties for Trump’s mass deportation goal, but hell raising locals scuttled those sites as well. Yet again, Minnesota’s resolve is not in the Third Reich playbook. On all fronts, fromguerilla [...]
Preservation to Restoration
By SHELLEY BUCK - Tinta Wita (Prairie Island Indian Community), president of Owámniyomni Okhódayapi For many Minnesota relatives, preservation of our natural resources is woven into our lives. It’s something we are proud of. For me as a Dakota winyan, a Dakota woman, preservation goes beyond that general sense of preserving a landscape. It means protecting the language, culture and lands of the Dakota people so they continue to exist for future generations. This is something I have dedicated my life to. To do so, I have to walk between two worlds — the white world and Indian Country — and the differences between our world views are vast. One world is rooted in Dakota teachings that have guided our people for countless generations. The other is the modern systems of government, planning, engineering and law that shape nearly every decision about land today. Those two worldviews often approach the same place in profoundly different ways. One [...]
