From Standing Rock to Minnesota: Indigenous Resistance and ICE

For the first episode of this special guest-hosted series, Dallas Goldtooth welcomes Mark K. Tilsen Jr. a poet, educator, and longtime organizer from Pine Ridge whose work is rooted in resistance and liberation.

Dallas and Mark reflect on their shared experiences at the Standing Rock protests, marking a decade since thousands of Indigenous water protectors gathered to defend land, water, and sovereignty against the Dakota Access Pipeline. What came out of that effort was not only the largest gathering of Natives fighting against a pipeline, but a living blueprint for Indigenous resistance in modern times. 

From that foundation, Mark brings us into the present moment, sharing updates from the Twin Cities following the recent ICE surge—an operation that deployed thousands of federal agents, sparked widespread protests, and disrupted communities across Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Together, they explore how the lessons of Standing Rock continue to shape Indigenous resistance today—from frontline organizing to community care. This conversation centers the power of collective action, the importance of showing up for one another, and what it means to build toward liberation in the face of ongoing state violence.

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A/V Production & Editing: Pancho Sánchez

Music: Mato Wayuhi

Produced by Matika Wilbur

Episode Artwork: Kitana Connelly

Social Media: Mandy Yeahpau

Episode Transcript:

Hello, and welcome back to All My Relations. I'm Matika Wilbur, and today we have something very

special for all of you. We have Mr. Dallas Goldtooth beginning his All My Relations takeover.

Hello, Dallas. Oh, happy to be here.

Blows his own foghorn. Yes, that's my Indian name, actually. Blows his own foghorn.

Okay. So we're starting off with what we felt like was most urgent,

right? We said we have to do an episode about what's happening in Minneapolis. And this is where

the journey begins. So tell us, what are people going to hear today? We're talking a little about

Standing Rock. You're talking with Mark Tilson. Just break it down for us. First and foremost,

hello, everybody. I'm so excited to be here. I'm so excited to be doing a takeover of All My

Relations podcast. Oh, man, that's heavy. I feel the weight of the people.

I'm on my shoulders right now.

But it is a privilege to be here. Over the next five episodes, I really wanted to explore the

different aspects of who I am. A lot of people know me as an actor. Some people know me as an

organizer. Some people know me as a dad. Some people know me as a son. This whole plethora of kind

of who I am. and how it intersects with any country, I kind of wanted to explore that a bit by

talking about different subjects and topics with people I really cherish and care for.

In this first episode... Actually, originally we wanted to talk about Standing Rock. It's

interesting, Dallas, because we've never talked really thoroughly and in depth about Standing Rock

on this podcast. There could have been 20 episodes just for this. So maybe you can actually give a

little bit of context for people that don't know. Yeah. So it's 2026. The resistance movement

against Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock took place in 2016. So it's 10.

I can't believe it. Since then, there's been a whole range of other fights that have been ongoing.

And I wanted to talk about it. I wanted to have a conversation around Standing Rock and like

reflecting on what it meant for me personally, but also how does it impact us today?

And then there was this ice surge. in Minneapolis.

Immigration, customs enforcement, and there was this massive resistance movement to all that. There

was the killing of two relatives in Minneapolis, as well as the death of many other people across

the nation, whether they're in ICE custody or dealing with ICE agents. And I felt compelled to

connect the dots between my experience at Standing Rock with what we're seeing and what we saw in

Minnesota. Because for me, the connections were apparent.

I wanted to have a dialogue with one of my trusted relatives about that. And so this episode was

really started off with the idea of what does Standing Rock mean and how it impacted me. And it

kind of led us into how are we organizing today based on what we learned then? And what are we

seeing right now on the ground that is a reflection of years and years of organizing?

That's the part I'm really excited to talk about today.

A lot of people don't know that you were an organizer for many years. I mean, people that maybe they

just know you from television. You come from a legacy of organizers, right? I come from a long line

of chiefs all the way back to Paikia, the whale rider.

I love that. Some of you may not get that one. Some of you may not get that one. You know, some

context. If you don't know who I am, my name is Dallas Goldtooth. I'm an actor, writer, organizer.

I spent over 12 years organizing with an organization called the Indigenous Environmental Network.

My first campaign I was involved in was against the Keystone XL pipeline, which was a tar sands

pipeline project that we killed. We stopped it. It was a successful campaign.

I then became the Keep it in the Ground campaign organizer. I coordinated an international campaign

to stop the expansion of fossil fuels within indigenous territories and then came on to fight

against the Dakota Access Pipeline, which is commonly known as DAPL. Through all of that... I was

doing comedy on the side with the 1491s and using that as an outlet to process my grief,

my frustration, my anger, my joy, putting it all into one place and using comedy as an outlet was

immensely helpful for me. And then in 2020, my brother Sterling Harjo got the show Reservation Dogs

and I came on as an actor and then eventually as a writer for the show. So my journey,

it really depends on how you were introduced to me, the version of Dallas you get.

You know what I mean? Does that make sense? Right. Like, do you get the slapping medicine, man? Are

you getting Dallas, you know? All Chiefy Series Dallas. What's the hat I'm wearing that day?

Yeah. And you're also a family man. Like when I think of you, I think of Sonia and your kids

because of our time together in Standing Rock, you know, and when I've like been. to visit you,

I always think of you as a father. I'm a father of six. People are like, what? Yeah, I'm a father

of six. It's a huge part of my life. You know, I'm fairly involved in ceremonies in my community.

So there's a lot of different versions of who I am that I really wanted to talk about. And the

reflection on Standing Rock, I think it became really essential to start this series off. When I

see what happened in Minneapolis, what's happened across the country, I'm going to be honest.

There's a lot of triggering from my experience at Standing Rock that comes to the forefront. And so

I felt like it was just a natural bridge between me talking about that experience and what I'm

seeing on the ground and not only what is being perpetrated against peaceful people, but also what

peaceful people are doing in response to fascism. Taking a step back.

We're going to climb into the time machine to go back to 10 years ago.

2015, the Dakota Access Pipeline at that time was called the Bakken Oil Pipeline. It didn't even

have a name. There was only a handful of us, me, my sister Joy Braun,

who was from Cheyenne River, who has since passed away, were one of the only few people who had it

on our radar to organize against. And we were meeting and organizing Standing Rock. The pipeline

was crossing the Missouri River, and it was threatening their drinking water.

It was threatening sacred sites. In 2016, early in the summer, there was youth who organized in

Standing Rock who were like, hey, we're going to do a run to raise awareness. That was a pivotal

moment because they ran. At first, it was like 60 miles around, did a 50-mile run. And then the

next time they ran to Omaha, which was like 300, 400 miles. And then to take it to the next level,

they're like, we're going to run to Washington, D.C. And they end up running to Washington, D.C.

And that's where it really sparked a lot of attention. What was your role when you were there?

First, some context. In the world of organizing or the practice of organizing, there's a framework

that we use called points of intervention. These are the different places where pressure can be

applied to stop a project or force change. It's based on the idea that power doesn't just live in

one place. So resistance to that power can't either. It's whether you're fighting a pipeline,

pushing back against deport. or organizing around police violence, the question is always the same.

Where does this system rely on cooperation and where can that be interrupted? That's government

permits, public opinion, financing, legal approvals, labor, media,

the physical ability to carry something out. These are all points where intervention can change the

outcome with something like Dakota Access Pipeline. The fight was never on one front.

It involved a legal strategy. It involved policy work. It involved tribal governance and tribal

sovereignty. It involved media, direct action, the public narrative, financial pressure.

Like every one of those was a point of intervention. And as a campaign organizer with the

Indigenous Environmental Network, DAPL was my primary campaign. I wasn't like a singular leader of

the movement whatsoever, but I was somebody helping strategy stay aligned across multiple fronts.

Being a liaison between grassroots leadership and tribal governments, that's the Standing Rock

Sioux Tribe and the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe primarily. It was also being an advocate organizing

support for folks. to engage with the Obama administration. In particular, I helped organize the

meetings with the Army Corps of Engineers, with the youth runners in both Omaha as well as in

Washington, D.C. A lot of my work also involved. Media strategy. I worked with amazing people,

rest in power, like Myron Dewey, who is a Paiute storyteller who used drones to help talk about

what was happening there in Standing Rock. What did it feel like for you, Dallas, to be there on

the front lines of it all? And, you know, how do you remember it all going down? A lot of it was

less dramatic than people imagined. It was trying to figure out if we had enough firewood, enough

food, enough people ready for the next action. It was waking up because there was people getting

arrested or because construction. had moved or because Mark Ruffalo came to camp.

It was all of it. It hasn't really hit me fully. That has been 10 damn years since the fight

against New Dakota Access Pipeline in Standing Rock. I haven't really fully processed it because I

don't think the world has allowed me in many ways to fully process it. But for me, when I think

back on it, I have so many damn good memories and I have some really... Really fuffy up memories.

Oh my God, Labor Day weekend, 2016. When I think back on it, I hear the TikTok sound of Thomas

Builds the Fire and all the Indians in the world were there. It was like, seriously, that's what it

was. I think about an auntie that told me one time to pick my tits up and get to work.

There was just so many moments that I think about when I think about Standing Rock and what it felt

like to be able to go to a water walking ceremony with Anishinaabes and then hear Haudenosaunee.

singing songs and then hop over this way and there's you know like pomos and bear dancers and then

you know you walk another hundred feet and there was I mean singers and cultural people and

activists from around the country that were all there it was so cool i loved it and i was certain i

was going to find my husband there it didn't happen but i know that you were active on the hunt

with me in that in that effort dallas so i appreciate you for you know for your help in that in

that moment

I raised my hands to you.

But tell me, like, you know, how do you think about it? When you look back on that moment, what do

you replay in your mind? All of the things, man. It was beautiful. I remember when the Comanches

showed up. I say that, like, the Comanches literally showed up. There was, like, buses of Comanches

that came in, and their princess that represented the tribe led them into the camp, and they were

honking the horns. I remember when Menominee Nation, Menominee showed up with these trucks.

Trucks, massive semis with woods just so the camps could have wood. The canoe journeys,

the folks that came on the canoes and coordinating with them. We had relatives from Ecuador,

from the Amazon who came up. Reverend Jesse Jackson, rest in power. He just passed away. I remember

him. Literally sitting on a horse at sunrise, surrounded by a bunch of Indians,

and somebody threw him a beaded medallion. So he's wearing a beaded medallion. And I'm like, what

is going on? What is this life that I'm watching Reverend Jesse Jackson give a speech on horseback

in front of a bunch of Indians in front of a blockade on the highway? Oh,

yeah. And that massive teepee. Remember that massive teepee? Yeah, the teepee was sent by relatives

from Cheyenne River, Rose. but had set up that council lodge. Yeah. That was cool.

I also remember watching my friends get shot. Oh, God. With tear gas canisters and rubber bullets.

I remember how the National Guard used LRAD systems where they project microwaves and they

literally heat up your body. They cook your body. I remember the sound machines that they used that

would, like, blow out your eardrums kind of vibe. I remember the helicopters, the drones, and I

remember the day of the dog attacks. The mercenary group, the security force that was hired by

Dakota Access Pipeline, used attack dogs on our people. I remember all these ways that the state

asserted its dominance over... peaceful resistance over people who are trying to protect their

water and their livelihoods, protecting the future generations. What it proved to me is American

Indians will always be enemies of the state. Even if we are peacefully protesting to protect water,

it just sort of reaffirmed something for me, which was that like, oh yeah, this war is not over.

Indigenous peoples and people of color. We've been in many ways armed resistance since

colonization. And that no matter what, the state will assert its dominance over you and do its damn

best to integrate you into the system. The current manifestation of the settler state of the United

States. of america is counter to the goals of indigenous peoples doesn't matter who's in the office

because our goals is free prior and informed consent our goals is to practice our own sovereignty

and self-determination on our own terms without qualifications yeah When oil started flowing

through the Dakota Access Pipeline, a part of me felt incredibly defeated because I feel like my

whole heart and soul felt committed to that movement. But I didn't know what would come afterwards,

which is that people would go on and establish camps in the Klamath River and we would successfully

see the undamming of the Klamath River. People would go on and start camps at Line 3 and in the

Arctic and so on and so forth. And you probably know better than I do, you know, how many water...

participated in that movement at Standing Rock and then went home to do the work of land and water

protection in their own homelands. I think about Standing Rock as though some might say, oh, the

movement was a failure, but others might say like, no, it was this great success because it showed

us that we can bring Indian country together. You're absolutely spot on is that,

you know, we lost that fight, but we were reminded. of what we are fighting for.

I think oftentimes the way we're portrayed, the way the left or those who are just considered

sovereigntists portrayed as, oh, they're fighting against this and they hate this and they hate

that. But really, no, what I saw as Standing Rock and all the fires and movements since then is

it's a movement of fighting for something. We're pushing for a future in which we determine.

the quality of our lives. We have an inherent power over the quality of our lives. And that's

something that's so inspiring to me. I have to say that it's because of Standing Rock,

I connected the dots between Indigenous resistance and the movement for black lives it's a it was a

it was because of standing rock i really became entrenched in the politics of what is a rights

-based approach to our organizing What do we have a right to and what is a privilege?

Because so often the settler state decides, oh, this and this and this is a privilege, but no, this

is actually a right. Water being of the utmost importance, connecting the dots between what was

happening in Flint, Michigan, and what was happening in Standing Rock was essential. We had

Palestinian relatives who came to Standing Rock and stand in solidarity with us just as much as we

were standing in solidarity with them. I met with folks who spoke Farsi from Iran who were there in

the camps, who were trying to connect the struggle. for self-determination and sovereignty from

within the belly of a beast of a fascist government. It was a moment of enlightenment because it

really brought together a lot of all these different fights into one. And now when we talk about

what happened in Minneapolis and what we're seeing across this country,

it's essential for us to connect the dots. When we were going to talk about ICE,

the favorite... fascist arm of the federal government, immigration and customs enforcement.

When we talk about that and we talk about the resistance to it, we have to understand where it

comes from. Over the past five months, Minnesota became the site of a large-scale federal

immigration enforcement operation. Public reports state that over... 2,000 to 3,000 agents were

operating in Minneapolis or the broader Twin Cities area. There were agents in my home communities

two hours outside of Minneapolis. They were out in the country taking people.

And during that same period, there were two people killed in Minneapolis.

Renee Good was shot and killed on January 7th by an ICE officer. A few weeks later, on January

24th, Alex Preddy was killed by federal agents. Mind you, there were also...

number of other deaths that have happened tied to ICE operations beyond Minnesota, including the

fatal shooting of Keith Porter Jr., a black man who was shot and killed by an off-duty ICE officer

in Los Angeles. The response that we saw in Minnesota and we're also seeing across the country is a

community-led, organized, but not centralized response. It's a response created through

relationships, through proximity, based on those who are local to your network. Really,

it's just people paying attention to what's happening on their street and talking with their

neighbors. It comes from the histories of organizing from a wide variety of communities, from

communities who often their greatest perpetrator was the state and is the state.

It's from those communities in which we see this foundation of community-led organizing that we're

seeing on the streets today. I want to acknowledge, first and foremost, the movement for Black

liberation, the organizing that led to Black Lives Matter, developed over years of confronting

police violence, documenting harm. That created so many strong networks of organizing that we can't

ignore it. We have to acknowledge the history of migrant justice organizing. Back in 2006...

There was these mass marches that brought together millions of people in the streets to protest

against the criminalization of immigrants and undocumented relatives. That was 2006. Millions of

people were in the streets fighting against this. Let's bring it home. Let's talk about indigenous

struggles and our resistance. Standing Rock was a pivotal moment. Dakota Access Pipeline.

We've had stories about how our people have come together and how our people is to do this. And

they formed confederacies that push back against the British and then formed confederacies to push

back against the Americans. You have all these long story tradition of resistance.

But what happened at Standing Rock was a retelling of that story on our own terms in our own modern

world. And that cannot be ignored. We're going to carry that story. No matter the outcome,

what happened, win or lose, a lot of us will remember and tell the story of those fires that burned

in those camps and how that fire still burns with us today. I literally have the coals from the

fires, like actually downstairs, like beneath me right now. I have a collection of the coals from

the sacred fire at the Oceti Shacoin Camp that we started. And the teaching and understanding is

that we took all the coals, me and a couple other guys, collected the coals and we handed them out

to different folks and said, you know, take these home and whenever you have a resistance camp of

your own, use these coals to start your flame. They literally come from the fire at Standing Rock.

The fires that we started there, even though they were extinguished and even though the Dakota

Access Pipeline was built and the camp was bulldozed and it was really painful. the fires still

continue. And I think that's what I carry right now when I'm seeing our streets become flooded with

federal agents who are attacking and disappearing undocumented relatives. When I see attacks upon

our indigenous communities for asserting their inherent rights and the community standing up and

pushing back. I see that fire. When I see people taking to the streets and disrupting ICE

operations, I see that fire. When I see folks speaking up for justice in Palestine against the

genocide of innocent peoples, I see the fire. And so I have grieved the loss against the Dakota

Access Pipeline, but I've also been inspired. And my rage has been fueled ever since by all the

beautiful moments of mobilization and unity that have come since then. We have rekindled the energy

within us to keep going and to be the proper models that our ancestors wanted us to be.

It's all connected. We're all related. All our relations. All our relations.

It's the name of the podcast. We connected it.

Okay. And who's Mark?

Who's your guest today? I wanted to take this podcast to Minnesota.

And the person that came to mind immediately was my brother, Mark Tilson Jr. Mark Tilson Jr.

is Lakota and Jewish. He's a poet, he's an organizer. He's someone I've known for years. Most

importantly, I've known him from Standing Rock and all of the tension and craziness. He was

somebody that would be willing to talk about tactics and strategy, but also have a conversation

about Conan the Barbarian in the Alien movie franchise. He was somebody that every time I saw him,

he was helping people. Not in a way that drew attention to himself, but in a way that made space.

In this type of organizing in the world that we live in, and especially in situations like Dakota

Access Pipeline or what's happening in Minneapolis, that kind of presence really matters. And out

of his experience at Standing Rock, he went on to publish a book of poems. It ain't over until

we're smoking cigars on the drill pad, right? Yep. That was the name of his poetry book. After

Standing Rock, he continued work. He did some work with the Indian Collective. He organized a

teepee village in Rapid City known as Camp Mini Luzaha, which was a teepee village supporting

hundreds of unhoused indigenous relatives. He's currently organizing. around pipeline work with the

Indigenous Environmental Network, continuing the tremendous work of land defense and resistance.

And he also comes from a family deeply rooted in movement history. His grandfather, Kim Tilson, was

a prominent civil rights attorney. Mark's parents literally met at the occupation of Wounded Knee

in 1973. So I felt compelled to talk to Mark because he speaks about what's happening now and he

carries all that history with him. But he doesn't lean in on it for authority. He's not positioned.

himself as a strategist. He's not trying to be the voice of anything. He just shows up and he's

there paying attention, thinking deeply about what's happening and trying to understand how people

move, how power moves and what actually matters on the ground. And that's exactly why I wanted to

talk to him for this episode. Oh, many Oh's.

Very good. Let's get into it. I hope people like it.

Coming to you from the Indigenous Roots Cultural Center in the east side of St.

Paul, Minnesota, my homelands, the traditional territories of the Dakota, Ho-Chunk,

Anishinaabe peoples, and also the current homelands of settlers, other relatives, undocumented

relatives, refugees. There's a whole plethora of people who now call this place home,

but I'm super happy to call it my home. And this is... what has been a site of a lot of action in

the past two months. It is currently the end of February. It's February 22nd right now, I believe,

on 2026. And for the past two months, Minneapolis, as well as in the general Twin Cities area of

Minnesota, has been the epicenter of Trump's immigration surge to get rid of the illegals and all

the baddies and all this stuff. But we have seen a lot of violence. state-sanctioned violence

enacted upon communities here in Minneapolis, but we've also seen an immense surge of resistance to

protect those very same communities. I wanted to talk about it. I think that we felt for this

podcast that we have to have a conversation about this because one, it is so urgent. Two,

because at the epicenter of this resistance movement in Minneapolis, Native peoples have actually

been a major part of the organizing that's happening here. And three, This is all happening in our

homelands, and the whole narrative about who is illegal and who is not, what is illegal, who

belongs here, is the quintessential struggle of our resistance for the past 500 years.

I want to name as well that a huge part of my understanding about what's happening now...

was informed at a place called Standing Rock in the resistance movement against the Dakota Access

Pipeline, the largest mass mobilization of Indigenous peoples in the United States and Canada in

living memory. Everybody that lived there at its peak was the third largest city in North Dakota.

We had over 10,000 people who came out, allies, Native people, all standing together against this

oil pipeline. And to help me in that conversation, I want to bring in my brother, my Koda here.

Mark Tilson Jr. Mark Tilson is Lakota. He's a poet. He's an author.

He's a thinker. He's a strategist. He's a teacher, an organizer,

a rabble rouser, and also just a worker for the peoples. I've known Mark for many years,

and we were at Standing Rock, and I have appreciated his insights ever since.

Thank you for being here, Mark, and welcome to the podcast, and I pass over to you to introduce

yourself.

Mark Kenneth Tilson from Porcupine, South Dakota.

I'm Oglala Lakota. My teospray is the Oyukpe. Most of my life, I've either been going back and

forth between Pine Ridge and Minneapolis. You are Lakota. I'm Dakota.

We're the same peoples, different neighborhoods. Our people have been resisting, actively resisting

settler expansion for a long, long time. For my communities,

the Dakota communities, we would go back to 1862. We went to war against the Americans, what led to

a lot of our people being expelled from Minnesota. We have relatives in Canada. They're still

classified. in canadian law as refugees you know go farther west the lakota the lakota wars against

the americans if you haven't heard about them then you probably have not watched a single movie

with the indian in it because we are well documented and to now we live in a state in minnesota

that i'm really really really freaking proud in some ways that it is a very diverse state Minnesota

has one of the highest Southeast Asian refugee populations in the United States.

It has one of the highest Somali, Ethiopian communities in the United States. Specifically the name

is within the Southeastern Asian diaspora is Hmong community. The Cambodian, Laotian community is

really strong here. Also, we have a really strong Central American population here. A lot of folks

from Mexico that are relatives are here. And we bring such a unique perspective as the first

peoples of this land. now standing up to protect those very communities from being stolen and

kidnapped off the street and some people ask us why these people say oh you guys were the you guys

were against the illegals of uh of europe why shouldn't you be against them now i'm like this is

different right it is different and it's also like we have to recognize that there are people who

are indigenous to someplace else who are being targeted. Indigenous people are being targeted.

This brings up an interesting point to me. I want to hear your thoughts on it. It's a response to a

comment I see sometimes from within Indian country is, why should we care about this? Why should

Indian country fight ICE or care about this moment? That's a good question because it's possible

that Indian country will be punished for its resistance. And we have to accept that as just a

reality. Indian country should fight against ICE because it's the morally correct thing to do.

Because the exact same mechanisms that they're creating now are going to target us. And right now

they still, they currently are targeting us. If this was just about deportation, they would not be

building detention centers all across America and buying up warehouse spaces of creating an

additional largest prison system in the world. By per capita and by overall numbers,

America imprisons more people than anywhere else on the planet. We already have the largest prison

industrial complex that exists. And now it's for profit. There is going to be a profit incentive to

fill all of the detention centers that are going to be created. It's a business. And let's just cut

through the bullshit. At the end of the day,

ICE is our enemy and we are warriors and it is our duty. to fight them. It honors your ancestors.

We are the original people of the land. As the original people of the land, we give legitimacy to

the resistance and leadership to it. That's our role as Indigenous people.

One of the things that in this moment that I find again and again is it doesn't necessarily feel

like we're trying to do this for others. Like, this is our neighborhood. This is our street.

This is our block. This is our city. This is our community. This is our land. And it doesn't feel

like an abstraction or charity, or sometimes it does not feel necessarily even like solidarity.

It feels like this is simply self-defense. We have to go out and confront the fascists because it

is self-defense. Goddamn, Mark. Good one. I could see people taking your approach at times as

nihilist. It's almost past that into more of an absurdist. Yes.

In which you exist, right? Do you feel that? Like, why? I chase ice out of my neighborhood? It's

like, because when they run from you, your brain gives you dopamine. And there's this little monkey

inside your skull that says, I want to chase the thing that's running from me. And it feels

powerful. It feels powerful. These armed men, I got a goddamn whistle and a class four level plate,

and I'm chasing away armed men who mean to do my neighbors harm. Good. That's cool.

Sometimes it can even be fun. Exactly. What I'm speaking to is when we talk about the opposition,

it is so easy to end in the realm of nihilism. To say, what's the point? They're so well-armed.

They're so well-trained. There's too many of them. What's the point? The system's not going to

change. It's capitalism. It's not going to go away. But I feel like one step past that is where I

am. I'm like... Yeah. If it doesn't mean anything, just do it all. Liberation comes from that

realization of like, okay, if what's the point guides you into that frame of mind, then yeah,

what is the point of holding yourself back and dreaming for something good? What's holding you back

from saying, I don't care how crazy it is. I don't care how realistic it is. I want to make sure my

people can not only dream of a future. in which they thrive, but also can take steps in that

direction. And if that means chasing down fascists from out of my community, then I'm going to do

that. There's folks who have like kind of put... long-term planning on pause for the duration of

what's going on here. And I think that's really inspiring to see is because like we have to kind of

recognizing that our long-term survival is also wrapped up in having a successful resistance

against capitalism, a successful resistance against the forces of this like globalized right-wing

fascism. I want to establish, Mark, you come from a family that has a long history of involvement.

And also you moved here recently, but your family's from here. here and has lived here in

Minneapolis for a while now. Yeah. Yeah. My mom, she was at the occupation of Wounded Knee in 73.

I think she was still in high school back then. She's an Amster and went on to be a pretty

effective environmentalist fighting against weapon testings in the sacred Black Hills, as well as

against uranium mining. My granddad... you know, rather famously, was one of the American Indian

Movement lawyers and was one of the lead folks on the Wounded Knee Legal Defense Offense Committee.

And he was one of the attorneys for Bob Rabideau and Dino Butler,

who were accused of killing FBI agents over at the Jumpin' Bull Ranch in the 70s.

I've known you, I'll say, for a while. In the Oceti Sakoyi camp... at Standing Rock against the

Dakota Access Pipeline. It was actually the first moment, I think, where we really developed a

relationship, and then along with other folks. Yeah, it was amazing to see the camp starting out

just on, like, LaDonna, Brave Bull Allard's land, that kind of being established as sacred stone,

and then the camp going across the river and onto Army Corps of Engineer land,

and then that was started off as the overflow camp. And then became established as the Oceti Shako

'i camp. It's been 10 years now since the mobilization. Actually, starting on April 1st is when the

first camp went up. A lot happened to you. A lot happened to me. A lot more happened to a bunch of

other relatives who are not in this room. We have also learned a lot from then to now. And so I

guess, how did that moment change you at Standing Rock, the fight against Dakota Access Pipeline?

Before Standing Rock, I never really considered myself a leader in any significant way. And I've

never really considered myself all that brave. Like before Standing Rock,

I was a school teacher over at the Red Cloud Indian School. What were you teaching? English. Do you

always want to be a teacher? No. It's literally something I just ran into. One of the things that I

do reflect on a lot is what is it like to tangle with billionaires who have a militarized police

force against you? Like you got to protect your eyes. Like have good protective goggles.

If they're like the cheap ones, make sure that they're sealed so that they can protect you against

both tear gas and ballistics, less than lethals that are going to go at your face.

You don't need to use Maalox when you're washing out people's face from pepper spray.

It does nothing but identify you to the cops being like, that guy covered in Maalox is probably one

of the people we pepper sprayed. So there's like... little, like every bit of the little

practicality that we've learned about. And it was like, don't use Israeli surplus masks because

they're old as hell and they crack and their seals aren't ready. Go use the new ones coming out of

Croatia. The 3M painter masks do nothing. But if you get the ones with the paint cartridges and the

combo filters you can slap on after that, you're in the clear. As well as the use signal.

You're going to have to teach your uncle how to use signal.

And that's why I want Mark Tilson on this podcast to deliver us the learnings from the ground here.

Now, I always knew you from the very beginning as a poet. You're a writer. Yeah. You wrote during

your time at Standing Rock. A handful of poems, mostly Facebook posts. You have a book,

though. I do. Super long title. It ain't over until we're smoking cigars on the drill pad. I

remember you had a post with something about freedom. You could taste it or...

the poem? Oh, yeah, a poem called Camp Life. It's not that we were free,

not really, but on a clear day, we could see what freedom looked like. Yeah.

That was probably one of the first and maybe a handful of times in my life I was able to actually

feel that. It's right there. You can see it of what being free looks like.

You have like a core political struggle, but there is a heart, there's a spiritual essence to the

struggle that we're tapped into. And that drew people there. In my head,

I have this 10 years, I almost have like a matrix of what does successful resistance against

pipelines look like? And part of the things that you look for is like, are the people resisting

spiritually grounded? Do they have a cultural foundation that they're basing their resistance on?

And when the answer is yes, it's like, all right, that is a solid foundation and build. And it

increases the probability of success. Yeah. So transition to now. Yeah. You live in Southside

Minneapolis. You were here when Trump announced the surge for federal immigration to move into the

city, into the area. It wasn't just in Minneapolis. The immigration surge here. was across the

whole state, but it was concentrated in Minneapolis, the Twin Cities area, St. Paul, Minneapolis.

For folks that don't know, Southside Minneapolis, it's historically been where a lot of Native

community lives. The Franklin Corridor is an avenue street that's on the Southside of Minneapolis

that has a lot of Native businesses. The American Indian Center is there. What became the

organizing hub for a lot of the community protection was there. Power Grounds is right there in

Southside. What was it like when that surge hit? Our assumptions and tactics were immediately

wrong. In what way? We believed that they were going to do these large style raids and get a big

wind-up punch. And they're going to throw 30, 40 agents at one business. And everyone's going to

be able to mobilize quickly. And we're going to have 10, 20, 30 minutes to move around.

Because we saw that twice. Before the surge hit, there were two large-style raids where people

were able to mobilize, and those were in St. Paul. Almost never was repeated that same way. What we

saw was individuals being snatched off the street on street corners. as they were going to work,

we saw the reaction time needed dropping to 60 seconds instead of 20 minutes.

The reaction time for people to intervene. Yeah. Like again, how quickly can ICE actually grab

somebody? Unless you're there on site in those two to three minutes, they're already gone. What the

early days was, was literally a lot of tracking down rumors, tracking down ghosts,

hearing reports of like people of different vehicles coming out of Whipple. And then seeing a lot

of people with a really great organizing skill later on kind of coalescing and systematizing a lot

of the rapid response. But first on, it was literally just a handful of people every day out there

looking for ice and trying to do interventions. For a bit of a context, the ICE is currently

headquartered out of what they call the Whipple Building. Most people talk about the Whipple

Building, but it's actually part of a greater complex of buildings around what is called Fort

Snelling. Yes. Fort Snelling is the original name of the American fort that was placed here on what

was then, quote unquote, the frontier. to settle this area to be the forefront of settlement of so

-called Minnesota. Yeah, and it was used as an artillery battery to suppress indigenous

insurrection and control river traffic on the Mississippi. So that is where ICE is based right now.

And it was used as a concentration camp. Yes. In 1862, the Dakotas went to war against the

Americans, and at the tail end of that, they forced... Dakota people into a concentration camp at

Fort Snell and down in the River Valley, where many people died and then were forcibly marched and

removed from the territories to move down west. Yeah, pretty on the nose there, guys. I couldn't

help but notice what came about relatively quickly. It seemed like there was a pretty sophisticated

response system. that was developed here in the cities. Yeah. The primary mechanism of why any of

this has worked is there's been a lot of people who've been trained in what they call legal

observation, which is simply showing up and recording ice as they're moving around.

One of the main mechanisms that ice uses is they move very quickly and in secrecy. They're often

masked and they disappear people. And so getting people into this place where they're actually

documenting ice has been a huge part of that legal observation. And the other part was the

whistles. When we first heard about them and saw them used was in Chicago, coming out of like

Protect Rogers Park. And the mechanism is really simple. If you see ice, blow your whistle. So what

this meant is wherever ice was and the whistles were blowing and people were honking their horns,

ice would very quickly lose control of the situation. And I think there's been more disruptions of

ice abductions by neighbors than any of the rapid response that we did. Because no matter where

you're at in the city, it's going to take you minutes to get on site. But if you're lucky, when you

show up, there's already 10, 20 neighbors there already out in the street. Like sometimes there

would be this one or two ICE moments and the rapid response crew is the one who's bringing the

noise. And then once the noise is there, the neighborhood comes out to confront ICE.

And that's what gets them moving. And that's what scares them off. And that's what shuts them down.

One of the things that's really curious is the people who are buying groceries and dropping off

groceries for those folks in hiding had to have tighter security culture than those who are chasing

ice. Why? Higher risk for the more vulnerable population. Like they would have addresses written

down on pieces of paper with instructions to eat them if they got pulled over by ice. They're being

followed in grocery stores if it looked like they were buying a full cart or, heavens forbid, more

than one cart.

The reason why is we don't want any of our systems of resistance to enact more harm on the

vulnerable population. So people have been very, very careful. I have to admit this.

This is like a truth here. This is me, Dallas, airing it out. I follow right-wing media accounts

because I want to know what they're fucking saying. One of the most scary but hilarious things I've

seen is this whole narrative like, oh. They're so organized. The left is so organized.

They must be super well-funded. Someone must be bankrolling these people. They have an

infrastructure behind them. They don't recognize that what we're seeing and what you're speaking to

is because of years of mobilizations in the past. For us, as Native people,

we call back to what happened at Standing Rock as a key moment. I've seen some young people with

lockboxes who are protesting at the University of Minnesota because the University of Minnesota has

allowed ICE to stay at the Graduate Hotel, which is one of their properties. And they were using

lockboxes and nonviolent NVDA tactics. And I was like, what a throwback.

It's like 2017 again, guys. This is great. I remember that. But the thing is, this is something

that's really, really different. Like there's way more organic. Like there are people out there who

are doing commuting and hopping on a call for rapid response and probably have no training

themselves whatsoever. Other than literally just showing up and they're willing to like confront

ICE. And so as much as we like to say like, yeah, there has been nonviolent direct action training.

What we're seeing mostly is people who are not coming out of just like a training type of

infrastructure, but literally neighbors looking out for neighborhoods. Like there's folks who,

hey, I'm probably never going to be at a protest, but. When I walk my dogs,

I'm going to look out for ice and I'm going to have my whistle and I'm going to be ready to defend

my neighbors. I think that's the part that I feel like it doesn't get enough love is the organic

aspect of how communities here in Minnesota, but also other communities who are modeling after what

they're seeing here, just the organic act of just being good neighbors, being good relatives.

I was saying, hey, we don't know the answer. We don't know what we're going to do, but all we know

is that we've got to protect this block. We're going to protect the block next to us. We want to

make sure our relatives aren't getting stolen and taken. What has been your role? My role?

I'm just a guy helping out on my block, on my street, and in my neighborhood. And I'm not a leader

in this moment. And it kind of feels pretty good to not be. And it's amazing to see so many people

who are leaderful. But in a lot of ways, having being part of this movement that is so

decentralized, there are not really identifiable leaders, which is one of the teachings we learned

from Standing Rock. Because if you have identifiable leaders, they can be targeted, they can be co

-opted, they can be arrested, they can be jailed. And it's almost like the ecological equivalent is

having biodiversity versus a monocrop of just one type of GMO corn. But if you actually have a wild

prairie, a prairie is incredibly resilient and can't be systematically targeted. Where are we at

now? There's been a declaration that the surge has ended. Bovino, who came in as the head honcho

for the ICE agents here, he's out. They brought in Homan, who was actually a holdover.

He worked under Obama's immigration process. He's now taken over. Both sides are claiming a win in

some weird way. Both sides being, I'm talking about state officials and federal officials. But on

the ground, people are like, this is not a win until they're gone. Yeah. One of the things I do

want to state is like, Chasing over 2,500 federal agents out of the Twin Cities is a victory.

And that was done because they were entirely demoralized. ICE has one of the largest budgets,

the equivalent of the eighth largest military in the world. And they sent everybody they possibly

could into the Twin Cities. rotated people in, rotated people out, put every piece of equipment

they had that they could muster into the field, and simply continuous resistance from the cities

forced them out in a handful of months. They literally took their best shot,

and they lost control of the situation in the narrative. Trump wanted obedience.

He wanted the city to lie down. And when that didn't happen, he sent in all of the troops that he

possibly could. And they ended up killing two people. And he believed the nation would back him and

saying these killings were justified. And they tried. They literally tried to label Renee Goode as

a terrorist. They tried to label Alex Preddy as a domestic terrorist and assassin.

And it didn't work. So I believe that ICE left because they lost the narrative and were unable to

sustain this level of deployment. We've always been fighting a game of story. And I see that.

playing out now i think this kind of comes down to the new old border czar holman he led the

largest mass deportation in u.s history under barack obama and he did it without any of the

stormtrooper tactics like the cartoon antics of bovino wearing a nazi long coat with surrounded by

bortac units with m4s to their chest doing 20 vehicle caravans up and down lake street Homan

doesn't need that. He doesn't want that. He wants the surge to end because he deported more without

a surge under Obama than any of the work under Trump. You said earlier, they had over 2,000 agents

here and they were arresting 60 people a day. Yeah, I think that's the number that we were

clocking, 60 people a day at the height of the surge. And now it's 20. And they have far less.

Incredibly less. That's not a good thing. They're still getting 20 people are getting stolen. In

some ways, it's actually worse because it's happening invisibly. There are less people who are part

of rapid response. They're not going where there's established rapid response networks. They're

specifically targeting rural communities, communities that have fewer eyes on them, communities

that may not be prepared or ready or think that it's somehow unlikely or maybe even feel safe

enough to start returning to normal life. And that's the thing. And that's the trick. That's what

Holman is offering people is like, things are going back to normal now. You can come out. And it's

like, no, there's still 500 goddamn agents taking 20 people a day and they're being sneaky about

it. And they're evolving their strategy and their tactics. And this is why like the whole banality

of evil kind of comes up because Holman, I don't think he's a fascist by anything other than shape.

The idea that states somehow need to be subservient to the feds, we could care less about. And even

when Sheriff Witt was like- Sheriff Witt for, who's the sheriff? Hennepin County. Okay. Yeah,

she was actively contemplating whether or not her deputy should take over the role of ICE in order

to deescalate the violence in the charge of the situation. And for Holman, he says,

I already have ICE agents. Why would I need your deputies? All of the practical concessions that

were given up by Walds and Fry that we know of are entirely symbolic.

Walds is the governor of Minnesota and Jacob Fry is the mayor of Minneapolis. Yeah. What Trump

wanted from them is to roll over and show their bellies. Because you got to remember, Fry was like,

ICE needs to get the fuck out of our city. That was great. It was incredibly defiant. He didn't

really do anything to protect people at all during that time. But open defiance was actually

helpful. Open defiance is part of not complying with fascism. It's part of not complying with

Trump's authoritarianism. It's what's actually needed. And they...

gave up their defiance in order to have the appearance of peace. Anybody in Movement Works knows

that there's the active peace, which is the presence of justice, versus the dead peace,

which is the removal of violence. And again, we're not really even removing the violence. We're

spreading it out, and we're decreasing the overall number, and we're lengthening the time. So what

you're going to see under Holman... And this non-surge is probably numerically more people taken

with less confrontation. So what do we need to learn from that? You have to change the game and you

have to change the narrative. We're not going to stop resisting until ICE is out of the city.

We're not going to stop fighting back against this dictatorship, which is a dictatorship, until we

win. And for folks that are not here in other places, what is the lessons to be learned?

to build a successful resistance. Use wistels and you actually physically have to stop abductions.

Physically step out your comfort zone. Step in the way of something. Yes.

It's daunting. Yeah. But also I feel so much energy right now.

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back to the show.

Okay, one of the things I want to say about this movement is how accessible it is to basically

everybody. Yeah, tell me about that. We had the first general strike that I can think of anywhere.

It was only one day. It's very symbolic. But all of the unions actually got on board with it.

Organized labor held a strike and 100,000 people poured out in the streets to celebrate it.

The cold is hell. Oh, negative 20. Yeah, it was negative 20 that day. Again, you have folks who may

not be... of mutual aid networks or doing rapid response who flooded the streets with bodies.

And this is one of the things that I want to say about accessibility. Shout out to Smitten Kitten

over in Uptown. It's a sex shop that became a hub for mutual organizing.

And Pow Wow Grounds became a hub for people who needed free food,

coffee, supplies, whatever, to keep going. Minneapolis really turned up and turned out.

I remember hearing this story about a guy who his contribution to the entire movement was doors.

When ICE would go break down a door, him and like some retired carpenters and framers would

literally go find a nice door and replace what ICE destroyed. There's a couple of businesses that

are towing people's cars for free. so that the family can have that vehicle or if the person ever

gets back out of detainment and reunited their vehicle is there ready waiting for them free of

charge there are people who are painting who are creating art builds and creating new graphics and

new imagery there are people who are showing up as dancers and they're literally dancing sometimes

in front of whipple sometimes in like for mourning for the people who have been lost sometimes as

part of protest you got Tufuan and Ozuya who were out singing Dakota songs and Lakota songs for

people to help them mourn and encourage their spirits. So it's like wherever you are at and

whatever your skill set is, you can literally bring that part of this movement.

And I'm not sure I've ever seen a movement like this accessible before. And it's built largely off

of mutual aid networks that were built by Black folks who went through that experience,

who showed that example, who showed incredible leadership during the George Floyd uprising. The

city... experience of being abandoned by the police, abandoned by the city and the state,

and having and forcing us to look out for each other. Right now, there's still mutual aid networks

out there raising money for people who have been in hiding who can't afford rent. And so rent is

still being paid because people are organizing around it. You're a poet, man. You're an artist.

What does this moment mean from a perspective of art? It's actually poetry that inspires me forward

and the words of our ancestors. It's really weird to say, but I've spent 10 years almost not

afraid. I think that's because I'm a little bit crazy, but I've tangled up with the dapple goons

and oil mercenaries and squared off with riot cops again and again and again, and I've never quite

been... afraid as i have in these moments especially early on it felt like i was going to go to

prison or i was going to be killed simply by being part of my community who's looking out for our

neighbors and part of that is just kind of again having to lean into our warrior tradition and

being like that's a possibility i remember the words of little crow he says You can't hear the

words of your chief, you young men, but they will be on you like the wolves during the hungry moon.

And he says, but ta oyate duta is not a coward. I will die with you.

And he went and fought a whole war, even though it was against his intellectual judgment,

even though he thought it was actually impossible to win. Yeah. That was actually one of my

grandfathers. His sister was my grandmother. And in that speech,

he also acknowledged, I've been to D.C. There are more of them than leaves on the tree.

I know what we're up against, but I will stand with you. And it was the people that incited him to

stand up. They're like, we need a war chief. We need someone to stand with us. And he called them

to arms, and they rose up against the Americans. What I hear out of that is Native people, we're

not surprised at how the state is asserting its...

asserting its status, because we've already been through it. Yeah, I enjoy being right. So the very

fact that there's this fascist state that's unleashing masked thugs out on the public is like,

yeah, I saw that coming, man. I've been trying to tell you. I've been trying to tell you for years.

And they're working with, they're using artificial intelligence to track you. I was like, yeah,

they are. I love the usage of the word unprecedented. I've heard that a billion times in the news.

You got to read stuff. You just got to read stuff from before and then currently.

And then you kind of make connections in your head from the things over there to what's going on

now. It's fascinating to me, the people who are waking up to all of our systems of governance and

laws is made up. Natives, we could have told you that a long time ago.

Whenever you're dealing with mass mobilizations of people, whatever we collectively agree is real,

is kind of real in the moment. From traffic laws to like organizing canon to whatever world we're

trying to create, our limitations are only our bravery and creativity. And I truly believe that.

This is the All My Relations podcast. What does All My Relations mean to you? I have so many

relatives. I often don't get along with my relatives. Even with the disagreements that I have with

my relatives, we are bound by blood, by love,

by family, and that we share a collective fate. And as you expand on who you call your relatives,

let's say using Rosalie Little Thunder's cultural map, would start with yourself,

your spirit as an individual, your and then moving to your ,

to your , to your , which is your people, your nation, and then moving out into the greater part of

the world of humanity. And then when we say all of our relations, we also mean the relations that

we have with the land and the spirits of the land and the animals and the spirits of the animals.

And with the cardinal forces of the universe that we are in relation to all of this.

And so when I say all of my relations, I think of myself as an individual first, but an individual

who is inexorably interconnected to all other living things and all other people to not be too

grandiose. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, brother, for being on this podcast. Thank you for bringing

your truth through the space. For all my criticisms about what we do, what we don't do, what this

world is doing, where we're going, I truly believe in the capacity for us to build something

better. I truly believe in the capacity for us to enact the love that we need in the moment as well

as for tomorrow. I think you said something earlier about unprecedented times and sometimes going

into nihilism, cynicism, nihilism, and then finding joy and absurdity. And it's like,

You know, you and I are probably halfway through our lives, like, literally middle-aged.

Based on statistics, we're about three-fourths way there. Yeah, statistically, I'm an elder as an

Oglala. But, like, again, we're halfway through our lives, and we've seen two unprecedented

moments. Like, we've experienced two life-altering, once-in-a-lifetime moments twice.

And once at Standing Rock and another here in the Twin Cities. And so we have to understand, like

it's often quoted in anarchist communities, but the divine right of kings used to be the normative

way of understanding the world. And right now, again, you got to look at the anarchist. Not only is

another world possible on a good day, I can hear her waiting to be born. And when we feel like very

limited, I actually look to our anarchist brothers and sisters for inspiration and seeing how

they're operating, like coming down with tools and tactics. Like, you know, over on the south side

for a brief while, we had these little filter blockades that would just show up and create

temporary autonomous zones where people would go into the middle of intersections and create little

roundabouts. where everyone would have to slow down and they could identify all of the ICE vehicles

that were coming in and out of their neighborhood and work with all of the other rapid responders

to get these guys moving out of these areas where there's vulnerable people. What was kind of

hilarious about that, I think the first one lasted for 12 hours before the Minneapolis PD and SWAT

came and cleared it and had dump trucks available. And then the next one lasted for six hours and

then... It got to the point where people were using it as like a really cheap way to get rid of old

furniture.

It's economical. By the way, you want to stop ice and you have an old couch? Come on down to 31st

and Cedar.

How can people follow you if you want people to follow you? Or can people look to your wise, sage,

elder wisdom? Don't follow me on Facebook. M Tilson on Instagram.

Appreciate you. Thank you so much. I want to give a shout out to all of our relatives who are in

the streets right now, near or far, who are not only fighting against the disappearance of

undocumented relatives, but also who are fighting a plethora of issues to make our world a better

place. Whatever it may be, I truly believe that only we can make ourselves free and liberation is

found through connection. relationship and networks and that any chance that we build silos between

each other is a path towards our own doom Thank you for all the listeners for this episode,

this special episode here in the homelands of my peoples. Appreciate you for following along. I

want to give a shout out to Matika and Temeris as the hosts for all my relations. Shout out to the

folks at Tidelands. That's Mandy and Pancho. Shout out to Brandon here at the local crew helping me

document and record this podcast. Thank you to all the folks on Patreon,

all our folks and followers of this podcast. Keep tuning in. Share with your aunties, share with

your uncles. We got more to share.