Audrey Thayer

Local races in your counties-What is important.

2010-10-24T08:36:00.000-07:00

I am not out there to solve the world. Whining does come once in awhile but I really dislike negative campaigning against a person politically or in day to day life - it really does not accomplish much but a reflection on yourself.

My thought today is about our local political races. So many individuals say, I hate politics, they are not including this or that, my life is politically free.

Well - for me - I do think we are political in all we do and say from how you say hello in your community or to what you do in community.

Inclusiveness/exclusiveness is rampant in small communities and you can see it in large cities but far more understood but not necessary correct.

Local elections are important. From your County Board, City Council races, Sheriff's, Prosecutors, Judges and even that Auditor.

The cost of incarceration of a person in our local jails is about $29,000.00 minimally and United States is the number one country incarcerating people in the world.

To me this shocking. Yet - for those populations victimized by the powers to be they are the least informed about the electorial politics and the most informed frankly control the elections.

In my mind, we are in deep deep mud in this country but the least we can do is get informed, vote and yes - we all have a table full fo bills, mouths to feed, more than one job or none at all but lets grab that opportunity and cast the vote.

INFORUM | Fargo, ND

2010-08-31T05:27:00.000-07:00

INFORUM | Fargo, ND

A 2010 Spring Moment

2010-06-02T07:08:00.000-07:00

The announcements for northern Minnesota came out for political runs in local and state races. The political system is a difficult one with decisions being made that never make all happy. We would not have things different in America.

The difficult piece of it all is my time is spent with others that are on the "bottom of the barrel" some would call this. I would say this is the backbone of this country that "bottom of the barrel"!

I spend my time with the poor, the working poor who struggle each day to pay their bills, buy what they can for their children and watch the telly to be told what life is suppose to be.

This is America. It has been this way since Chris landed his boat here in 1492 with a dream of being rich. This seems to be many people's dreams - to be rich, have vacations and relax golfing every day....

I am not angry - I just wonder why the people in the country do not revolt. I wonder why people just give up and accept life as it is handed out to them.

With revolution there is sacrifice to change the direction of a country. Why are we not doing this now? We watch our water, our living beings that are dying in the oil that will destroy so much - we shake our heads and say this is so sad or just sit around and watch. What can we do? We can stand up - direct action not by a few but by many....just a thought for a spring moment in the year 2010.

Treaty of 1855 - May 14, 2010 event in Bemidji, MN

2010-05-09T06:31:00.001-07:00

I have little idea of the firm plan for the treaty 1855 events plans other than a solid brat roast at Diamond Point on May 14, 2010.

There is some discussion of people who will try to fish out of season off reservation to challenge the fact that nothing was ceded but land in the treaty of 1855.

If the DNR does give citations for those who are going against the state law this is what I understand a person may do.

1. Pay the citation fine
2. Go to County Court (county your received the citation)
3. Represent yourself or locate an attorney make a plea (Guilty,not guilty, request dismissed)
4. I personally can not instruct you what to do legally. As a White Earth member if I decide to fish on May 14, 2010 I plan on representing myself and ask the Beltrami County Court (if I decide to fish on May 14 this is the county I will do it in) to transfer my citation to tribal court or request Beltrami County Court to have it dismissed.
5. If they do not dismiss the citation or move it to tribal court I will then plead not guilty.

I then will seek assistance from Native Defense, or Anishinabe Legal Services and or any attorney that will handle the case to have it dismissed and hope for no costs.

After that is all completed, and my case is not dismissed I am going to contact ACLU-MN (they consider cases after the criminal case is completed) or National Lawyers Guild (do not know their process) or an attorney who is interested in treaty law to argue my case to have is dismissed or moved on the docket for arguement.

I will appeal anything that will place me in a position for having to pay a fine or plead guilty.

This is the only process I know personally. I am not an attorney just a person. "Ya know" this is new ground for this part of the country and who knows how this will all pan out (smile). My believe we have the right to hunt and fish anywhere. I do not believe we ceded those rights.

2010-01-05T10:46:00.000-08:00

This is a partial story written about my friend, Elaine Fleming who resides in Cass Lake, MN. It was written August 27, 2003 and printed in the Minnesota Women's Press (Changing the Universe through Women's Stories) written by another friend of mine, Winona LaDuke.

Since this article was printed - Elaine Fleming lost one of her twin daughters of a serious illness in 2009.

Native stories take the stage

"It started with a class that I taught about storytelling," Fleming explained. "And we put on a play. There were theater classes at the college, and we opened it up to the community. There was a man who told me. "Indians are not going to act, not going to get up and perform.' But they have never been given a chance." So she started a program at the Leech Lake Tribal College, and the Native community came to the classes and came to the stage. The community had a chance to tell stories. "At one of the shows, we had people in the audience crying, we had people on stage crying," Fleming recalled.

Fleming has written and produced several plays at Bemidji's Paul Bunyan Playhouse, including Don't Dust My Wood Pile, KREZ Public Radio and Niwiijiwaagan (The One Who Walks With Me). I walked into the theater for an opening act to see my cousin Shirley LaDuke (a stunning woman in her sixties) dancing romantically at center stage, humming, "I want a man with a slow handŠ" The play was Niwiijiwaagan. And my cousin was dancing sensuously on her own, in front of the whole audience. It was amazing: all that residual Catholic stuff was nowhere to be found and somewhere I could sense that a whole audience of Native people was letting go and getting a little freedom to express themselves.

Playwriting became a collaboration. Fleming and her friends would gather to talk about what experiences they wanted to share. Some of the biggest challenges were a reflection of Native intimacy. "It was really different to write a love story. We struggled to find what love was, we had all experienced things, but we had a hard time with that," Fleming said.

Then there was the play about diabetes and the commodities. "We were going to have a female lead who went to prison," Fleming remembered. "Not because of alcohol, or because of abuse, but because she did something right. In this case, she had to heist the commodity food truck to do something about diabetes."

Audrey Thayer, who played the heroine in Niwiijiwaagan, has been in most of Fleming's plays. There is amazing relationship between Fleming and Thayer, a Green Party leader in Minnesota and a White Earth tribal member. She has twice run for Beltrami County Commissioner and is beginning, more than anyone, to bring out the Native vote in Cass Lake and Bemidji. Though Thayer wasn't elected commissioner, her efforts inspired her friend Fleming to try the political stage.

"I hated politics because my dad was in politics," Fleming recalled. "I always figured there was another way to get things done."

Then things changed.

"Last summer ŠI wrote this story about this Indian woman who was going to be in politics," Fleming said. "She went in front of the Chewakaegon store, she stood out there on her soap box and started telling the truth. Then Audrey Thayer ran for county commissioner up here. I thought that at this point in my life I could spend some time doing this."
In November 2002, Fleming became the first Green Party mayor in Minnesota.

Terror and hope

Fleming spoke at an anti-war rally in Bemidji organized by Audrey Thayer, 300 came out to march and listen to the speakers this winter. While George Bush talked about the war against terrorism, Fleming's words rang more clearly in the north country. She spoke out against the violence at home and the terror of living with toxic pollution. "This is terrorism, this is terrorism in our communities, and we will struggle against it," she said.

"The way I feel about the town is that that stuff is there, but there's really good people in that town, and that Indians are doing some phenomenal things about healing," Fleming said. "After Heather Casey and Faye Littlewolf died, we had a big walk. We walked right by that house where they found her, and the trailer house Faye was found in. I'm writing a play for the young woman. And we are going to have the young women work on it. And then we are dedicating a garden to the young women of our community in memory of Heather Casey. We want people to remember Heather Casey and we want those people in that house [to know] that we won't ever forget."

As for the Superfund site, the hearing process is underway, as are remediation plans. "I don't want to be a mayor who spends my time on people's water bills and street clean-up. I want to make a difference," Fleming said. That won't be easy. The only Native woman on the city council, Fleming often finds herself at odds with the non-Native business people on the council. "Their land and their businesses are on the other side of town. They get really angry with me," she said.

There are no easy answers in the north country. On June l7, Audrey Thayer's son, Cheyenne Devlin, fell to his death off the third story of the old Georgia Pacific site on the south side of Bemidji, another leftover from Paul Bunyan and the old logging industry; another tribute to environmental and social injustice. Devlin and his brother had been hired, along with other Native and poor boys, to tear down the building, which Fleming says had been declared another Superfund site. The employers provided none of the laborers with either harnesses or hard hats. Poor and Indian. Their mothers and their community are full of sorrow, but Fleming and her friend Thayer are organizing from the depths of that sorrow.

Commentary - July 3, 2009 on the Greater MN Racial Justice Project

2009-12-17T11:46:00.000-08:00

Continued: Wally Hilke: A patriotism that prejudice cannot deny
Featured comment: Minneapolis Star Tribune July 03, 2009
That's what this country means
Wally Hilke: A patriotism that
prejudice cannot deny

Many have noted that the modern
observance of Independence Day is not
much about independence from Great
Britain. July 4th celebrations do not feature
the burning of the Union Jack; the hanging of
King George in effigy; the marching of
shame-faced, shackled Redcoat reenactors
in parades, or the chanting of anti-British
slogans. One might argue that independence
never was the most important outcome of
the Revolution. It is what our forefathers did
with that independence that matters. Given
the same options available to all nation-
builders since 1776, they chose to found a
country based on the consent of the
governed and the promise of individual civil
liberties. They left it to future generations to
deliver on that promise.

This spring I was struck by a curious sight as
I drove through the White Earth reservation
in west central Minnesota. We passed a
Native American cemetery that had flagpoles.
Lots of flagpoles. In fact, many graves had
personal flagpoles installed beside them. My
navigator, White Earth member Audrey
Thayer, told me that the flagpoles are placed
next to veterans' graves so their families can
fly their loved ones' U.S. flag above them on

civic holidays. Thayer tells me that this same
pride of military service extends to White
Earth powwows. At the beginning of these
gatherings, members of the White Earth Band
of Ojibwe play four veterans' songs, talk
about their families' military service and fly
their veterans' flags. All veterans are invited
to dance in the grand entry, whether or not
they are Native American. So too the other
bands in the Bemidji area, Leech Lake and
Red Earth, play veterans' songs and fly
veterans' flags during their powwows.

The patriotism displayed in the forest of
flagpoles was a bit ironic, given my reason
for visiting White Earth. I had come to tribal
headquarters as president of the ACLU-MN
board to discuss the work of our Greater
Minnesota Racial Justice Project, founded in
2004 because Native Americans were not
receiving equal treatment in the Bemidji-area
criminal justice system. Indeed, when our
project started, Native Americans were four
times likelier than Caucasians to be
incarcerated in the Beltrami County jail with
similar ratios in neighboring counties. The
same citizens who take such pride in their
service to our country were being denied the
very rights for which they fought.

Things have improved some after five years
of concerted effort by our Bemidji staff and
dozens of volunteers led by Thayer, our
project coordinator. Our work has included
hundreds of meetings with judges,
prosecutors, community leaders and law
enforcement officials; thousands of hours of
courtroom observation, and hundreds of
monitored police encounters with Native
Americans. Yet, in the first quarter of 2009,
Native Americans still were twice as likely as
Caucasians to reside in the Beltrami County
jail. Other measures of justice confirm that
we face a steep climb ahead. The February
2009 Bemidji Study on Race Relations
published by St. Paul's Wilder Foundation
found that more than two-thirds of the
Native Americans surveyed reported that
they had experienced racial discrimination by
law enforcement in the past year.

Native American pride in serving our country
perseveres despite the lack of equal
treatment before the law. Native Americans
continue to enlist in the U.S. military at rates
higher than any other race. This tradition
goes back to World War I, when they served
at twice the rate of the general population
even though as many as one-third of the
enlistees were not considered U.S. citizens
and could not vote. During World War II, the
Saturday Evening Post opined that the
Selective Service would not be necessary "if
all volunteered like Indians." Various

Minnesota bands have flag-festooned
veterans' floats that they enter in community
parades, even though they do not always
receive a warm reception. Three years ago
some parade-watchers jeered the Mille Lacs
Band veterans' float, gave it the thumbs-
down sign and reportedly spat at it during
the Isle Days Parade in Mille Lacs County.
Undeterred, the Mille Lacs Band veterans
continue to appear in parades to celebrate
their service and their country.

Americans rightly thank all of our veterans
for their inestimable contribution to our
freedom and liberty. At home we best honor
their service by guarding the civil liberties
that they have defended abroad. Each of us
has a role in fulfilling our founders' promise
of civil liberties and equal justice. Please join
me this July 4th in identifying some action,
however small, to help ensure that
Minnesota's Native Americans receive the
same measure of civil liberties that the
majority of us enjoy as our endowment
flowing from the American Revolution.

Wally Hilke is president of ACLU-MN.

Audrey Thayer - Women's Press

2009-12-08T23:44:00.000-08:00

Justice for all
Activist Audrey Thayer’s grief fuels her battle against racism in “Birmingham of the North”

Elizabeth Noll
Assistant Editor

Thayer has traveled to Cuba and Mexico for the social justice group Witness for Peace. Courtesy of Audrey Thayer.
Audrey Thayer’s smile is wry and her brown eyes are warm. She looks comfortable, familiar and friendly. Her turquoise bracelet shines and her shell earrings flash in her short amber hair.

She doesn’t look like the enemy—but some white Minnesotans see her that way. She doesn’t look like someone to fear—but those who resist change might find her fearsome.

Thayer’s been an activist all her adult life, but when her 22-year-old son died in a tragic fall three years ago, she walked out of her day job and ultimately took on a project with the American Civil Liberties Union that would have many people quaking in their shoes: she now works to educate racists and eradicate racism in northern Minnesota.

The task is enormous, but it’s nothing compared to what she’s already lost, she said. Her son’s death galvanized her and gave her strength she didn’t know she had. “Women who lose babies—they’re the ones to be fearful of,” she explained.

By babies, Thayer doesn’t mean just diaper-wearing, milk-drinking tots—she means children, teenagers, adults; all of them babies to mothers whose grief can’t be measured. In northern Minnesota, they’re lost with heartbreaking regularity: to suicide, to murder, to abuse, to stupid accidents.

“I could easily be at two to three funerals a week,” said Thayer.

In Thayer’s opinion, the root causes of this tragic pattern are institutional: economic deprivation and racism are endemic, and young Native Americans struggle with being what she calls “bicultural citizens of an occupied nation.”

Thayer, who still has two children and four of her nine grandchildren at home, is doing what she can to change things. “I have to,” she said. “I can’t turn my back. I just can’t. After I saw my son in that coffin, at the young age of 22, who never had an opportunity in life, from a poor Native [American] family … if I can just make an impression on one person, when I die and lay in that coffin, I’ve done what I’m supposed to do.”

A restless spirit

Thayer was born in 1951 in Joliet, Ill., to Gladys Emery, an Ojibwe woman from the White Earth Reservation, and Gail Vernon Schultz, a farmer and labor activist whose parents had immigrated to Canada from Germany. She grew up in Wisconsin, surrounded by nearly 30 first cousins and sharing a home on and off throughout her childhood with the aunts and uncles on her mother’s side.

Thayer first got involved in the civil rights movement in 1968, at the all-black high school she attended in Milwaukee. She had the first of her six children at age 18 and two years later enrolled in college at her dying mother’s request. In 1972, she started working with the American Indian Movement. Over the next 15 years Thayer gave birth to four more children, adopted one and earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree. She worked as a health planner and a social worker, living mostly in Wisconsin, on and off the reservations.

Thayer returned to Bemidji in 1989. She took a job as a family therapist with Beltrami County and a year later bought her family their first house. At age 40, Thayer started working with the U.S. Indian Health Service—a job she would hold for more than a decade.

Stability didn’t bring complacency, however. If anything, Thayer became more focused in her activism: she brought to the small northern town a sophisticated ability to organize and the will to get things done. She co-founded a local branch of the Green Party and became co-chair of the party’s state coordinating committee. In 2002, she organized the Bemidji Peace and Justice Coalition to protest the invasion of Iraq and joined the board of the Anishinaabe Peace and Justice Coalition. She helped Winona LaDuke run a national vice-presidential campaign and she ran for local office herself.

Then Thayer’s life was shattered. Her 22-year-old son, Cheyenne Devlin-Staples, died after falling through a rotten roof his first day on a demolition job near Lake Bemidji. Like the rest of the crew, which included his 18-year-old brother, Charlie Thayer, he hadn’t been given any safety gear, even though the vacant wood-processing plant they were working on was three stories high in parts and eight stories high in others.

Wrote Thayer in an email, “According to OSHA standards, anytime an employee is up above six feet of ground a safety net was to be provided [plus] helmets, gloves and harness to hook to the frame of the building in case anyone fell. The only thing the supervisor told the employees [was] to stay away from the edge of the flat roof. They had only a stepladder to get up on the roof that did not reach the top of the roof. They had to pull each other up on the rotten, thin tin roof. No gloves, no safety equipment.”

The day after Cheyenne died (he’d been airlifted to a hospital in Fargo), Thayer and her family returned to Bemidji to find that another crew of young men was already working on the site—none of them with safety gear. Thayer called OSHA: representatives from the agency showed up that day and shut down the site and later filed a lawsuit against the construction company.

The injustice of her son’s death stabbed at Thayer: if he hadn’t been Indian and poor, would the company have paid a few dollars for safety gear that would’ve saved his life?

Soon after, Thayer walked out of her comfortable, well-paid desk job. She wanted to do something more meaningful with her time.

Search for justice

Thayer lives in Bemidji, which sits in Beltrami County, in the heart of Indian country. The town is surrounded on three sides by reservations: Red Lake, Leech Lake and White Earth. In Beltrami, neighboring Cass County and many other rural Minnesota counties, there have long been claims of racial profiling. Data collected in 1999 showed that Native Americans are arrested at a rate that far exceeds their presence in the population: in Cass County, Indians make up 11 percent of the population but nearly 55 percent of the arrests. Twenty-four Minnesota counties had similar records.

In 2004, the year after her son’s death, Thayer took a job at the ACLU’s new Bemidji office to coordinate the Greater Minnesota Racial Justice Project. The goal of the project, according to the website, is to “eliminate racial disparities and injustices in Greater Minnesota” —a tall order for a part of the state that Thayer says some refer to as “Birmingham of the North,” after the Alabama city that was home to some of the most violent civil rights struggles.

Thayer’s job involves three areas: investigating claims of racial profiling by police, teaching both the Indian and white communities about their constitutional rights and educating public schoolchildren about racial profiling.

She says she’s experienced racial profiling firsthand. “[I’m] riding in vehicles that are designated racial profile cars in Bemidji and get pulled over for no traffic violations whatsoever, and then the officers are in shock to see me sitting there,” she said.

Law enforcement officials have denied that such profiling happens: it’s not their fault, they say, that so many Native Americans break the law.

The courts, on the other hand, are trying to improve their system, said Thayer. “The judicial system’s trying desperately to change things around now for us,” she said. “The judges have heard us, they’re seeing it, we have a court monitoring program now, a volunteer court monitoring program within one county, expanding to two others. We’re a presence there, we’re documenting those statistics.”

Thayer’s job also requires her to mingle with the other side: in order to educate white folks about Indians, she has to meet them where they live. In other words, she’s gone to her share of lutefisk dinners. And hockey games. And fundraisers. The world she finds there is shocking, she said.

“The racial overtones up there are very, very terrible,” she said. “They’ll smile at you and look like they’re agreeing with you and then they turn around and right away they’re not associating with anything that is pro-diversity whatsoever. And we’re not just talking racial justice, we’re talking gender issues, we’re talking anything that’s out of the norm of what’s American. It’s a very conservative area up there …. You’ll see a different population of people.”

Thayer’s had her tires punctured and she’s had so many hate calls—many from churches—that she laughs about them. “I’m used to the hate calls,” she said. “The churches will identify themselves and they’ll ask me to leave the area…or they’ll send me to hell.”

On the other hand, she said, some churches have welcomed her and she’s working with them to educate their congregations.

Stronger than before

In the last few years, Thayer has regained much of the momentum she lost when her son died. Though she’s no longer active in the Green Party (as an ACLU worker she’s required to be nonpartisan), she’s found plenty of outlets for her ceaseless energy. She teaches social work part time at Bemidji State University and narrowly lost a bid for a seat on the city council. She was appointed to the city’s parks and recreation commission, started the Bemidji Community Garden Project and has traveled to Cuba and Mexico as a spokesperson for the social justice group Witness for Peace. This year she helped organize a performance of The Vagina Monologues on the White Earth Reservation and the first-ever Northern Minnesota Indigenous Film Festival. In addition, she’s trying to get funding for an Indian center—a place where urban Indians can be, as she puts it, in their comfort zone. Nearly one in five Bemidji residents are Indians, she said, but the town lacks resources to help them.

“So we’re trying to build an Indian center up there so that they have a central base,” she said. “So the elders can go to a senior citizen program and they can have fry bread or they can quilt in a traditional star quilt or a nine-block Native design….”

Thayer’s also carrying on a drawn-out battle with the city for the piece of land where her son died: she wants to make it off-limits to developers and turn it into a community park. For now, the land sits empty, surrounded by a chain-link fence; but Thayer is undeterred. She knows she’s on the right track.

“We have a teaching that they don’t take you till you’ve done what you’re supposed to do in life,” she said. “I’m 55, so something must be right. I must be doing what I’m supposed to be doing.”

The profile appears in every issue of the Minnesota Women’s Press. It reflects our founding principle and guiding philosophy that every woman has a story. Readers are welcome to submit suggestions for profile subjects.

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One of the first organizations Audrey began a relationship with...Aug 2004

2009-12-08T23:30:00.000-08:00

ACLU targets Indian civil rights with new office in Bemidji
by Tom Robertson, Minnesota Public Radio
August 30, 2004

Audrey Thayer, left, was hired by the American Civil Liberties Union to run the ACLU's new satellite office in Bemidji. Thayer is collecting reports of alleged racial profiling and injustice in counties surrounding northern Minnesota Indian reservations. Thayer is talking with people at the People's Church in Bemidji. (MPR Photo/Tom Robertson)

Minnesota court records show Native Americans living in some northern counties are arrested at a rate far higher than any other race. That's got the attention of the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota. The ACLU has had a presence in Minnesota since the 1950s, and its work has been focused mostly in the Twin Cities. Now, the ACLU has opened a satellite office in Bemidji. Organization officials say they'll target what they view as racial profiling against Native Americans. But not everyone agrees racism is to blame.

Bemidji, Minn. — Crime statistics in northern Minnesota are alarming. In Cass County, for example, American Indians make up only about 11 percent of the population, yet in 1999, they accounted for more than half the arrests.

If you break it down by specific crimes, the disparities are even more apparent. About 70 percent of people arrested for assault and larceny in Cass County were Indian. Indians accounted for nearly 80 percent of those arrested for vehicle theft and vandalism.

Audrey Thayer

Officials with the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota say the arrest numbers show law enforcement agencies in Cass and other northern counties are unfairly targeting Indians. Chuck Samuelson, who heads the St. Paul-based organization, says the statistics clearly show racial bias.

"The statistics just reek of wrongness. It's one of the biggest disparities in the whole country," said Samuelson. "That Minnesota would be worse off in terms of race relationships than places like Mississippi or Alabama is -- it should be, no matter what political party you're in -- if you're Minnesotan, it ought to be appalling. But it's the facts."

That's why the ACLU is targeting counties surrounding Minnesota's three largest Indian reservations -- Red Lake, Leech Lake and White Earth. The effort is called the Greater Minnesota Racial Justice Project. The goal is to educate minorities about their civil rights, and -- if necessary -- to sue governments that violate those rights.

Audrey Thayer of Bemidji has been mingling with the Indian community all summer. The Ojibwe woman was hired by the ACLU in May to collect stories of alleged injustice.

Sharon Smith

Thayer is in the basement of the People's Church, where a mostly Indian crowd gathers for lunch. She's talking to a woman who feels her home was illegally searched by local police. The police were looking for the woman's son.

The woman didn't want to share her name for this story. She says Indians living in poverty in northern Minnesota have had few places to turn when they feel they've been wronged by law enforcement.

"Who's going to help the Natives and the blacks up here? Who? Who are they?" asked the woman. "You'll get no help up here. You'll get help down in the cities if someone's done you wrong, yes you will. Not going to get it here. These are the good old boys up here. We might as well be in Montgomery, Alabama up here."

Outside the church, Thayer checks in with Sharon Smith, who has filed several complaints with the ACLU already. They involve repeated police searches of her home. Smith thinks it's because she's Indian.

To make an assumption that because we have a disproportionate amount of minorities in our jail, that law enforcement itself is responsible for that, I think is looking for a very simplistic answer to a very complex problem.
- Beltrami County Sheriff Keith Winger

"They came into the house and went from room to room with guns drawn, and they had an assault rifle. And it was real scary," said Smith. "They've done this to me at least three or four times before, involving other people who were supposedly at my house who weren't at my house, but they came in to search anyway. And I just get real sick of it because I feel like they just single me out, and I don't know why they do it."

Such allegations by American Indians against the justice system in northern Minnesota go back decades. And law enforcement officials have for years echoed the same refrain. They deny racial profiling.

Beltrami County Sheriff Keith Winger says his department has nothing to hide. Winger is in a tough spot. He says it's not politically correct to say what he believes -- that Native Americans are being arrested more because they're committing more crimes.

Winger and others in the justice system says it's important to consider the deep social problems within the Indian community. There's widespread poverty, high rates of alcoholism and drug abuse, and too many broken, dysfunctional families.

"To make an assumption that because we have a disproportionate amount of minorities in our jail, that law enforcement itself is responsible for that, I think is looking for a very simplistic answer to a very complex problem," said Winger.

Winger says he doesn't have the answers. But he's tired of law enforcers being blamed.

"What it gets down to is that there may be a lot of reasons, but you know, I'm a cop, and that's what I have to look at," said Winger. "If you commit a crime, I have to hold you accountable for that. When you do your best to enforce the law fairly and impartially and without regard to race, and then you are constantly accused of being racist over and over again -- it does wear on you. And it's not a good feeling."

Sheriff Keith Winger

Some in the Indian community aren't convinced. Bob Shimek lives near Bemidji. He's a member of the Anishinaabe Coalition for Peace and Justice, a local activist group. Shimek welcomes the arrival of the American Civil Liberties Union in northern Minnesota.

"There's now some civilian oversight in terms of what's going on in the area. The dynamics have changed. It's a different paradigm now. There's a third element here. It's no longer just us and them," said Shimek. "The Native community has been invisible in most respects for a long, long time around here. Start shining the light on these communities. It's critically important at this time."

Right now, complaints collected in northern Minnesota are sent to ACLU lawyers in St. Paul for review. But the organization is considering opening a litigation office in Bemidji.

Meanwhile, ACLU officials plan to monitor the courts in northern counties. They're organizing get-out-the-vote rallies. And they plan to expand their role of educating Native Americans on basic civil rights.

Sesquicentennial missed reconciliation

2009-12-02T09:54:00.000-08:00

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Commentary: By Audrey Thayer on Sesquicintennial
Commentary: Sesquicentennial missed reconciliation
Audrey Thayer, Bemidji Pioneer

Published Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Bemidji was one of the five honorary locations that celebrated “Capital for a Day” and the 150 years of Minnesota statehood which was called “Minnesota’s Sesquicentennial.”Being indigenous, I thought what an opportunity to attend at least a couple of the state’s presentations on the history of great things that have happened since the “arrival of the immigrants” to Minnesota which was Dakota Territory and then later home to the Anishinabe people.

Looking at history, you might even consider the “arrival of the immigrants as being illegal immigrants” as permission was never questioned but assumed when treaties were signed that these documents were correctly honored and the right to use the Indian land in our state was appropriate.

I was disappointed in the “Capital for a day” in Bemidji and disturbed by the approach toward the Minnesota’s Sesquicentennial in this state.

It was clear our friends who joined us in sharing of the land now called Minnesota basically have not learned much in the past 150 years in cultural understanding.

Many of the cities’ ceremonial activities were planned extensively. I wondered how many of the honored cities directly asked local native groups to assist in planning the events. It was clear, not many.

The native Americans were overlooked, in some cases not included, in events throughout the state.

Celebrations focused on the immigrant who arrived in this state, leaving out the indigenous peoples who had a rich history here prior to the arrival of our guests and a depressive history during the 150 years of Minnesota Statehood.

This is sad as the Indian population was the original keepers of this land, the landlords, always treating this sacred land with respect.

Unfortunately, the true history of the 150 years of statehood from 1858 to 2008 was genocide, dishonesty and bad mission work when it came to the native American.

It can be difficult to include these facts in any historical celebration but this is part of our history and if we want to reconcile with the native American, it must be included.

It was tragic one of the Sesquicentennial events on May 11, at Fort Snelling, located outside the Twin Cities, resulted in native peoples arrested trying to bring to light public education of what really happened when the wagon trains rolled into the state of Minnesota 150 years past.

The history of Minnesota’s influential leaders in government toward Indians was genocide.

It allowed the stripping of the native culture, bad land deals clearly knowing without the resources from the land the native lifestyles depending on it encouraged a loss of identity, which is part of the historical trauma for native people today.

For Bemidji’s capital for the day, I felt like it was a rushed sideshow with a lot of military pomp and circumstance, throwing in a respected native drum, a prayer from a well-intentioned priest whose church had a history of destructive mission work and this was Bemidji Capital for a Day.

I think the little dab of including something native American missed the mark for this day.

The Diamond Point Park dedication in Bemidji included for the list of events was important.

The event reflected hard work by good citizens in this community but lacked real substance to the history of Diamond Point Park.

On that day of re-dedication, the emphasis of the Diamond Point Park history could have been presented in more detail instead of the quick speeches congratulating on the upgrades to the park.

The history of this park is gone without a whisper of why to the public.

At the end of the day and all is said and done, I brought my granddaughters to the premier of “Bend in the River” a historical production produced by a local theater company.

The production was presented twice in Bemidji, the night before and at the very end of the Bemidji Capital for a Day.

It offered a real descriptive and sound history from the indigenous history to logging not to forget the Paul Bunyan mythology.

The “Bend in the River” should have been presented when the large crowd gathered to celebrate the Minnesota Sesquicentennial and dedication of the Diamond Point area.

If I had not attended this play I would have truly missed one of the most important events for Bemidji Capital for a Day and Minnesota’s Sesquicentennial celebration.

I want to thank the individuals that were in this production for giving of their time and energy to show history.

In closing thought, the 150 years Sesquicentennial for me was a strong reminder of the history of destruction and stealing of land from the original people who lived in this state.

I am glad I supported the events that tried to grasp the concepts of the past 150 years but I fear people missed an opportunity for reconciliation with native people and the word exclusion comes to my mind.

Audrey Thayer is coordinator of the Greater Minnesota Racial Justice Project of the American Civil Liberties Union-Minnesota.

Tags: aa11, Commentary: By Audrey Thayer on Sesquicintennial
Posted in OPINION & COMMENTARY |

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 5th, 2008 at 8:25 pm

Bemidji - What are you afraid of?

2009-11-10T08:09:00.000-08:00

For the past five years I have had the opportunity to work on racial justice in a seven county focus area in Northern Minnesota that includes the City of Bemidji.

It has been a challenge to address racial justice as it seems this is just not a topic individuals want to sit around the kitchen table to discuss except for those who would rather complain about the injustice and not do anything about it - like speak up, file written complaints, etc.

From what documented intakes have stated, I understand there are some serious problems that our community must understand.

For Northern Minnesota we are dealing mostly with Native Americans on racial justice issues. But,there is still an increasing amount of complaints from the black communities that is growing in the Bemidji area and from people who are just plain different.

Racial injustice issues has been real for the Native American communities with a history dating back since Chris arrived on the boat on our eastern shores, about 1492, it has brought such things as discrimination, historical trauma, being denied their culture, mis-understanding of what the Native American truly is about and poverty.

Now, in today's world, a person's criminal and civil history is on the internet for public access. This brings the opportunity for landlords in the Bemidji area and employers as well to deny Native Americans the opportunity to live and work in the area by citing their record.

It appears no consideration is given that a person can make a mistake, or made redemption that leads them perhaps to get involved in the criminal system. It just reflects their history.

For example, my day job, at the Greater MN Racial Justice Project (ACLU-MN), over the years, the office has received complaint after complaint of landlords not renting because of race.

In 2009, Northern Minnesota a change happend that affected the renting world which included the Bemidji area.

The public had to deal with the Enbridge Corporation bringing an oil pipeline across private land, tribal land, and state forest land.

There has been protest by the environmental factions and tribal people expressing the damage this pipeline will do to our mother earth. (I will address this sometime in another post.)

Not mentioned publically, has been the native families, those who did not have a lease, that were evicted by the landlords, so that the landlord could get a better deal financially from the pipeliner's coming to town needing a place to live.

Not mentioned, publically, but evident, has been the low income rentals being all snapped up by the pipeliners. Which the area has been limited in rental housing anyway for the poor due to our beautiful local Bemidji State University.

Not mentioned is the difficulty over the years, by landlords, to rent to Indians.

In fear, that their rentals might get damaged, over ran by extended family members moving in and the worst stereotype - drinking.

In the today, November 10, 2009, it had a article about pipeliners being in court for fighting and severely beating another pipeliner in a home.
Most likely, a rental.

Recently, a Minnesota Public Radio, well written story by, Tom Robinson on the benefits to Bemidji by pipeliners, was the amount of money being spent in the bars in the Bemidji area.

There are hundreds of stories by natives that felt focused on by law enforcement with drinking and driving, filling our courts and paying their fines.

When are the law enforcement going to focus on the pipeliner who according to the MPR story are buying rounds in the bars drinking and driving?

It is a common fact that these pipeliners are driving home after consuming way to much alcohol without designated drivers.

Why are we not seeing these men on the court rosters (which is public information) charged for drunk driving?

The article on November 10th, brought to light an interesting thought.

Landlords were evicting the poor, mostly natives, for the almighty dollar.

Now some landlords are complaining that their places are getting destroyed with the pipeliners drinking and fighting.

The story in the Bemidji Pioneer is just an example of the truth that these tenants may be worse than the natives!

I think some landlords have made some horrible decisions in evicting.

It is sad, the evictions, it feels racially motivated but was it? I know the Native American person feels like it is?

And once again, why, are we not charging these alcohol drinking pipeliners?

Is it because of that all mighty dollar is more important in this community and they are looking the other way?

I need some help on my email spell check

2008-12-04T14:02:00.000-08:00

My spell check corrects in french on my emails - I use microsoft office - what do I do?