{"id":39742,"date":"2026-01-29T18:44:33","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T23:44:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/former-native-american-concentration-camp-lies-beneath-current-immigration-detention-center\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T18:44:40","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T23:44:40","slug":"former-native-american-concentration-camp-lies-beneath-current-immigration-detention-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/former-native-american-concentration-camp-lies-beneath-current-immigration-detention-center\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Native American concentration camp lies beneath current immigration detention center"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A young Dakota woman incarcerated at the Fort Snelling concentration camp is photographed in 1862. Survivors of the camp were sent via steamboat to the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota and the Santee Reservation in Nebraska. (Courtesy Minnesota Historical Society)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

If you know anything about Minnesota history, then you know about Fort Snelling, said Robert Rice, the owner of Powwow Grounds Coffee Shop.<\/p>\n

Fort Snelling was a concentration camp used by the United States during the Dakota Indian Wars to imprison thousands of Dakota and Ho-Chunk people in abysmal conditions.<\/p>\n

In early 2026, the Bishop Henry Whipple Building, located in Fort Snelling, Minnesota, emerged as a major center for immigration enforcement detainment processing, but the site has a much longer and more complex history.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security\u2019s Immigration Enforcement Control programs have long used the Whipple building as a headquarters for its operations in the Twin Cities.<\/p>\n

In 2019 local residents first raised awareness over concerns regarding its use for detainment.<\/p>\n

As historic immigration raids emerged in the city in early 2026, the building has once again become a center for the processing of detained immigrants and in at least two confirmed cases, detained Indigenous people.<\/p>\n

Jose Ramirez, Red Lake descendant, said he was held at the site for six hours following a confrontation with immigration officials resulting in his detainment.<\/p>\n

Most recently, a Dakota woman was held at the site, council members from the Oglala Sioux Tribe told ICT. Reports have surfaced that four Lakota men were detained and held in Fort Snelling, though the tribe has been working to verify the information.<\/p>\n

But prior to the building\u2019s existence in 1965, the Fort Snelling area has long been the site of both creation and genocide for Indigenous people, said Kate Beane, executive director at the Minnesota Museum of American Art.<\/p>\n

Bd\u00f3te, the place where the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers meet, is a creation site for the Dakota people, said Beane, a Mdewakanton Dakota citizen of the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe and a Muscogee descendant.<\/p>\n

But in 1862, during the Dakota Indian Wars, that site was also where the United States constructed Fort Snelling, a concentration camp used to house Dakota and Ho-Chunk people before they were shipped to reservations in South Dakota and Nebraska.<\/p>\n

The Whipple building, a federal administrative building in Fort Snelling where United States immigration agents have been holding individuals for processing and detainment, sits on that former site, Beane said.<\/p>\n

The building was named after Bishop Henry Whipple, a vocal opponent of Dakota removal and genocide and religious leader during the 1800s.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been in a different state of consciousness,\u201d Beane said. \u201cThis is a space that\u2019s so important for us. This is a place of love and beauty and our very makeup of who we are as humans, as people. Our grandparents were murdered there, we were imprisoned there, and now we\u2019re worried about our family members being imprisoned there again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beane grew up hearing about how her great-great-grandfather, Cloud Man, or Ma.p\u00edya Wich\u00e1\u0161ta, was killed at Fort Snelling. Cloud Man, a significant Mdewakanton Dakota chief, died during the winter of 1862-1863 from the conditions at Fort Snelling.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know where his remains are,\u201d she said. \u201cThe place is literally scattered with graves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, Fort Snelling houses the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport, Fort Snelling State Park, several federal buildings including the Whipple building and the recreation of the historic Fort Snelling. The Whipple building is less than a mile from the Historic Fort Snelling complex.<\/p>\n

The physical fort was built by the United States in 1805 in an effort to \u201cstop fighting\u201d between the Dakota and Ojibwe people, but that wasn\u2019t the truth, Beane said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we know today is that that military fort was put there to steal our lands,\u201d Beane said. \u201cIt was put there as a place to assert power and to essentially have a central operation of a space to exert power. It was put there as a place to assert power and to essentially have a central operations of a space to exert power, dominate, and inflict genocide amongst Dakota people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just under 60 years later, thousands of Indigenous people would be imprisoned at the site.<\/p>\n

Famine, disease and malnutrition killed approximately 300 Dakota prisoners, a majority of which were women and children.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s interesting is that what we\u2019re seeing is history repeat,\u201d Beane said. \u201cAnd we know that history is a series of patterns. We as Dakota people know what this site has stood for since time began. We also know what it represents to the American government.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beane said she felt as if a blanket were dropped over her, covering her senses, when she first heard that Fort Snelling was being used as a detention facility. She felt numb. And she\u2019s not alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what they did with our ancestors, put them in that concentration camp,\u201d Rice said, who is White Earth Ojibwe. \u201cAnd they\u2019re sending people there now. There\u2019s just nothing you can say about that. It\u2019s terrible. It\u2019s inhumane.\u201d<\/p>\n

The past few weeks have been traumatic for the community, Beane said. Aside from the knowledge that the former Fort Snelling grounds once again were being used to imprison Indigenous people, Beane said there\u2019s an added sense that Native people in the Twin Cities are being hunted.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re constantly on alert,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have to carry documentation. We don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen. Our people are targeted. And for us as Indigenous people, the immigrants who are being detained within that space are our neighbors. Those are our relatives.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Indigenous people, the land is a moving living being, Beane described. Dakota people have been in the Minneapolis area for thousands of years, it\u2019s one of their sites of creation, but that site isn\u2019t exclusive to just the Pike Island area where the two rivers meet, she said. The whole area has been the site of Dakota life since time immemorial.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s [detainment] not the integrity of this site,\u201d she said. \u201cThe land is hurting, the land itself. She is who we were put here to protect. And as Dakota people, we\u2019re never going to stop doing that no matter what.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amelia Schafer is a multimedia journalist for ICT based in Rapid City, South Dakota. She is of Wampanoag and Montauk-Brothertown Indian Nation descent. Follow her on Twitter @ameliaschafers<\/span><\/p>\n

The post Former Native American concentration camp lies beneath current immigration detention center<\/a> first appeared on Native Sun News Today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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A young Dakota woman incarcerated at the Fort Snelling concentration camp is photographed in 1862. Survivors of the camp were sent via steamboat to the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota and the Santee Reservation in Nebraska. (Courtesy Minnesota Historical Society) If you know anything about Minnesota history, then you <\/p>\n

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Shared by Native Sun News Today<\/a> January 29, 2026<\/p>\n

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