An Indigenous Perspective on ICE Raids Across Native Lands (+ KYR for Tribal Members)

As ICE enforcement grows in scale and violence across Turtle Island, we know that many of our Tribal relatives in rural areas are scared and uncertain. Native Peoples are Indigenous to this land, and yet we are still being targeted by ICE. That’s because the ICE raids we’re seeing in Minneapolis and across Turtle Island are continuations of rampant colonial violence. This administration has never cared about who is “legal” and who isn’t. The goal is a white supremacist ethno-state, and our communities are a target.

As Indigenous Peoples, we are the last and strongest line of defense against unfettered resource extraction for capitalism and empire and the attempts to fully cement this so-called nation toward authoritarianism. The current administration knows this, and it is intentionally attacking Indigenous Sovereignty in an effort to undermine our relationship to the land and disempower our Tribes and communities to take action.

Indigenous Peoples are not simply an ethnic group within one country or another. In the so-called United States, Tribal Nations are considered a political group with specific and unique rights set forth through treaties and asserted through sovereignty. We have specific government to government relationships with the United States government set out by treaties. As Sovereign Nations, we exist independently of and in relationship with others across the so-called “Americas.” 

From the so-called United States, to Venezuela, to Palestine, to Mexico, to Cuba, these are ALL Indigenous lands. Borders and the policies that come with them have intentionally separated us from our relatives with whom we have married, prayed, traded, done ceremony, and were in relation with since time immemorial.  For Indigenous Peoples in the "United States” with tribal citizenship, we are in a unique position to leverage our political status and assert our sovereignty to advocate for and protect our other Indigenous relatives who are being targeted. Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples has and will always be our main principle. .

If we want to be Sovereign, we need to exercise our Sovereignty to its fullest extent. It is our responsibility to demonstrate our power at every turn, and we should not ever capitulate to the federal government. We should take advantage of every opportunity to strongly assert our sovereignty, especially in these tumultuous political times where efforts toward tribal termination are being advanced by both the federal government and the states.

The federal government is already using AI surveillance tools to monitor where we go, who we spend time with, and what we do online. AI-powered surveillance is fueling authoritarian violence around the world, from Turtle Island to Palestine.

ICE officers are using biased and unregulated facial recognition technology platforms to monitor and find our relatives for deportation. These tools cannot run without the massive amounts of processing power supported by hyperscale data centers that big tech companies want to build in and around Native lands. 

This isn’t new. Experimental technologies that rely on extraction are almost always built at the expense of Indigenous, Black, and Brown communities. We pay the price while tech companies profit and our relatives are kidnapped off of the streets.

This has all the hallmarks of fascism and authoritarianism: the silencing of dissent and erasure of dissenters, the restriction of access to education and information, and state violence with impunity.

We have rights guaranteed to us by our own Sovereignty. But we can’t expect colonial laws to protect us. We can only protect ourselves and each other by standing on our sovereignty right now, using Know Your Rights as a framework to guide us but not limit us to the confines of colonizer laws created to serve colonization, white supremacy, capitalism, and empire. 

We also must reckon with our own communities who internalized colonization and are willing to capitulate to the federal government, sacrificing our sovereignty for individual benefit

This is a time for us to stand up for each other, come together, prepare, and organize. We are more powerful when we work in community, and we can protect ourselves if we prepare in advance. Our fear will not protect us. But our readiness and bravery will. Rather than move from fear, we move like we are already free.