Kent Nerburn

Tomorrow I will be having a ZOOM meeting with a book club about Neither Wolf nor Dog, my most loved and most read book.  For those of you who don't know, Neither Wolf nor Dog, tells the story of Dan, a Lakota elder, as we journey across the plains of South Dakota together and he offers his thoughts on American culture, his people, and the values he thinks we all need to learn and share. Neither Wolf nor Dog won the Minnesota Book Award, was the South Dakota book of the year, and has become a favorite of people ranging from the singer, Robert Plant, to the editors of the American Indian College Fund.

 

As the author, I love the book, just as I love all my books.  They are my literary children, and they represent the best of what I can do with the skills that I have been given.  But I often wonder why Neither Wolf nor Dog, among all of the books I have written, has had such staying power and such influence.  Then I go back and read a few pages, as I am doing in preparation for tomorrow's book club, and I am reminded that it is Dan and his insights that give the book such life.

 

Here's Dan speaking on racism. Agree with him or not, he certainly gives you something to think about.

 

White people are afraid of everyone who isn't white.

 

Look at how you define Black people. If a person had one Black ancestor back somewhere, and you can see it, you tell them they are Black. You don't do that with Italians or Irish. But one Black grandma? Bingo, you're Black.

 

But the thing is, you're not really saying they are Black. You're saying they're not white.

 

But at least with Blacks you let them alone once you decided they weren't white. You just threw them in a barrel —black, brown, tan, whatever— and called them Black. But us Indians, you couldn't even leave us alone to be Indians once you decided we weren't white. You start dividing us up, calling us half-breeds, full bloods. Try calling a Black person with some white blood a half-breed. See how that goes over.

 

You've got all sorts of rules that you don't even know. Like, it's okay for white people to adopt Chinese kids, but it's not okay for Chinese people to adopt white kids. If a white man is with a Black woman, then he's liberal. But if a Black man is with a white woman, he must be a pimp. It's the same with Indians. If a white man is with an Indian woman, it might be okay. That's the way they like to do it in the movies. But if an Indian man is with a white woman, there's something wrong with her that she would choose to be with one of 'those people'.

 

I think it has to do with conquering. The white man has to be in control.

 

Unique place, America.

 

 

 

 

Art has a unique power to create social change because it can focus attention on an issue in a way that nothing else can. 

 

The iconic photo of the Napalm Girl by Nick Ut galvanized the consciousness of America against the Viet Nam war, because no caring human being could view it and not say, "This is wrong!  It must stop!"  

 

The photo of ChongLy Scott Thao, the Hmong elder being rousted by ICE, did the same for the invasion of the Twin Cities, as did the heart-rending image of little 5 year old Liam Ramos being kidnapped by Trump's ICE agents.

 

We never know when a song, an image, a phrase, will almost mystically capture the spirit of a moment, and all the anguish, struggle, and confusion suddenly finds its voice.  All we know is that art alone has the power to capture and coalesce that moment. 

 

It is not unreasonable to say that the photos of ChongLy Scott Thao in his blanket and Liam Ramos in his bunny hat marked the moments when indifferent or uninvolved or uncommitted America sat up and said, "This is enough.  This is wrong.  This must stop."  

 

Remember this, all you artists when you think you are not doing enough, and all you non-artists when you think  that art is a frivolity or a luxury and that it has no real place in the down and dirty affairs of the real world.  Art is mysterious and magic, and sometimes mystery and magic are what we need to keep our vision and our dreams alive.

 

 

I told you ICE was leaving, and I told you why. It has taken a little longer than I had expected, they are doing it with more cruel rear-guard action than I had anticipated, and it is not being done en masse. But it is happening. 

 

Now I want to tell you what I think "leaving" actually means, and what it portends. 

 

First off, it's important to understand that while the massed forces of the troops are gone, the policies are not. The Whipple building, where immigrants who are "captured" off the street as well as where ordinary resident immigrants must go to sign in periodically, is still a black box. The government keeps it off limits to ordinary observers. It is a detention center where detainees are denied due process, given inscrutable information written only in incomprehensible English legalese, kept from using their cellphones and made to sleep on the floor with only the notorious detention center tinfoil blankets, if they are given anything at all. 

 

I have a friend who drives legal immigrants to the Whipple building for their periodic reporting, and he has waited as someone he drove there failed to come out for her ride home, only to find that she had been taken out a back door and flown to a detention center in Texas where she is incarcerated for no legitimate reason.  This sort of terrorist detention and deportation is still happening every day, and it has the brown population of the Twin Cities living in fear -- afraid to leave their homes, afraid to go shopping, afraid to go to work, afraid to send their children to school.

 

Just the other day I went to get my hair cut and the shop had its door locked because one of the barbers is Hmong and he fears that ICE might break in and take him.  Likewise, at the little tire store I patronize customers are let in only upon visual recognition because most of the workers are Mexican, though the sad truth it that few of the workers dare come in at all because the shop is a target, and few are needed because most of the customers are immigrants and few dare to come out to shop. 

 

Likewise restaurants are shutting their doors because their workers don't dare come to work; ethnic restaurants are even afraid to open.  School attendance is down because parents fear their children will be grabbed from the classroom or while waiting for the bus.  Homes and buildings are not being cleaned. The whole service economy is under siege and in danger of collapsing. 

 

Understand -- this is not an unexpected byproduct of the occupation. This is the new face of ICE:  no longer a hammer, but a shiv.  It has retreated and is operating on the principles of a terrorist enterprise -- make everyone afraid because no one knows where it will strike next.  This is a classic technique of asymmetrical warfare:  if numbers are not on your side, control by fear not by force.  The IRS has operated on this model forever:  compliance is created by the fear of the unknown, not by any certainty of direct confrontation. It is brutal and it works.

 

Overall, ICE is following a textbook model of pacification and control in Minnesota.  It replaced Bovino, its little tin pot general, with Tom Holman, a more corporate-looking leader in a suit who speaks in more measured tones, albeit with a threat always just beneath the surface. It has gaslighted a retreat into a change of policy supposedly based on Minnesota coming to its senses and agreeing to work with the feds on reasonable immigration policies-- essentially declaring victory, normalizing the appearance of things, and operating with cruelty and stealth under the cover of darkness.

 

Simply put, the general populace has been pacified (or, at least, exhausted), the black and brown people are still living in fear, and a model of soft occupation has been put in place.  Minnesota's economy and the emotional well-being of its children have been the casualties, but that was and remains of no concern to the federal government.   

 

But here is the real issue:  in terms of a tactical operation, this was an apparent failure for the feds -- a failure that they are attempting to gaslight out of existence.  But on a strategic level, this was a success.  It was a Dieppe-level operation undertaken to assay the feasibility and process of resistance to a federal government takeover of state and local systems of operation and enforcement.  (The Dieppe landing, for those who don't know, was an invasion of the French coast two years before D-Day where the Canadian troops were essentially sacrificed in order to test the feasibility of an invasion strategy and to assay the power of the Germans to offer resistance to a full Allied invasion in the future.)

 

Minneapolis is the federal equivalent of a Dieppe invasion of an American city --a trial run of federal efforts to wrest control of governmental and legal structures from states and municipalities. Can a federal para-military police force override and control local law enforcement?  Will courts be able to offer resistance to illegal federal action?  How resistant and compliant will the local population be?  What will the long term shape of a pacification take?  How much will this cost and how is it to be pulled off logistically?

 

Minneapolis was the feds test invasion and they got the information they needed.  What they will do with it remains to be seen. I, personally, think it was both a chance to test the limits of the American legal system and a dry run for on the ground control of the 2026 (and probably 2028) elections.  At the very least it was a chance to test some real world techniques of citizen control.

 

The real question is what is behind all of this?  What is the end game?  It's becoming more and more clear that Trump is simply a useful idiot in a larger plan to reshape the entire American governmental structure.  He is the perfect lightning rod because he is such a magnet for attention and will do almost anything to keep people from finding out the truth of his unholy dealings with young girls through his friends, Maxwell and Epstein.  You can just leave it at that or pull on some conspiratorial strings that lead back to the Kremlin and Russian control and rumblings about a Manchurian candidate, or to some unnamed trans-national capitalist cabal with a Bond-villainesque dream of world domination and control.   But I will leave that to the conspiracy folk.  All that matters to me is that there are forces invested in modifying our American form of government, that overriding existing legal controls is part of that modification, and that Minnesota and Minneapolis were and are integral pieces in determining the efficacy of certain tactics and practices dedicated to achieving that end.

 

Minneapolis was a temporary check on the chessboard of governmental modification and control.  Whether it was an initial move toward an ultimate checkmate or just a necessary move in response to a decoy feint by larger forces with a larger agenda remains to be seen. 

 

Stay tuned, stay watchful, and don't bet the farm.  This is the long game and we are only at the beginning.