Who Does the
USA Belong To?

Chapter I - The Peoples

Who Lived Here
Before

Minnesota has eleven federally recognised Indigenous bands and communities. Four belong to the Dakota (Sioux) nation - the first known inhabitants, with archaeological evidence placing them here 9,000 to 12,000 years ago. Seven belong to the Anishinaabe–Ojibwe (Chippewa), who migrated from the Great Lakes and Canada.

The Sioux are the 5th largest tribe active in the US today. The Chippewa are the 4th. Together they form the core of Minnesota's Indigenous identity - yet both were subjected to systematic removal, legal dispossession, and cultural suppression across the 19th century.

Chapter II - Dispossession by Law

The Treaty Era
& Land Removal

Before European arrival, Native Americans numbered up to 10 million across the continent. By 1900, European colonisation had reduced that to around 300,000 - with approximately 130,000 in Minnesota. The Trail of Tears (1830–50) alone displaced around 60,000 people.

The U.S. government used the ideology of Manifest Destiny to justify westward expansion - centred on the subjugation and expulsion of Native peoples from their lands. Treaties were the legal instrument of this dispossession. In 1851, Dakota leaders signed at Traverse des Sioux ceding over 24 million acres. Many later said they had not understood what they were agreeing to. Secondary documents - appended after signatures - stripped the promised annuities. Within months the treaties were already broken.

Chapter III - 1862

The U.S.–Dakota War

After years of broken promises, withheld food, and encroaching settlers, Dakota warriors rose up in August 1862. The war lasted six weeks. Its aftermath was catastrophic for the Dakota people. Click each point to expand.

Chapter IV - 1862–63

Internment at
Fort Snelling

Over 1,600 Dakota women, children, and elders were force-marched to a concentration camp below Fort Snelling, held through a brutal Minnesota winter. Hundreds died of disease and exposure.

Chapter V - Primary Sources

Visual Evidence:
The Ojibwe & Dakota

The Nelson Act of 1889 was intended to relocate all Anishinaabe people in Minnesota to the White Earth Reservation and sell off their vacated land to European settlers. The land bar below shows what this meant in practice - a collapse from near-total territory to a fraction within decades.

The paintings by Seth Eastman - a U.S. Army officer stationed at Fort Snelling - are among the most important visual primary sources documenting Dakota and Ojibwe life before widespread dispossession. They are deeply ambiguous: made by an agent of the same state that destroyed the cultures he depicted.

Click the artworks to explore their context

Chapter VII - The Wider Context

How This Links
to Wilderness Thinking

The treatment of Native Americans today connects directly to the Eurocentric and exclusionary ideas of 19th and 20th century conservationists. The erasure of Indigenous history began with the rise of the conservation and preservation movements - and continues in American society today.

The removal of Native Americans was justified by the idea that it would better America - providing areas of "natural beauty void of human interaction" and enabling the frontier myth. This directly mirrors modern arguments that removing "illegal aliens" would make America more purely "American."

Chapter VIII - 2025–2026

History Echoes
in Minneapolis

Operation Metro Surge - In early December 2025, 3,000 ICE agents were deployed to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. The operation resulted in 3,700 arrests, 2 fatal shootings, 1 nonfatal shooting, and at least 33 wrongful detentions. The article that triggered the operation was later found to be exaggerated - its key source admitted finding "no evidence" of al-Shabaab claims.

Reports emerged that Oglala Sioux tribal members - people with ancestral connections to this very land - were among those detained and questioned about their right to be here. The ICE detention facility sits five minutes from Fort Snelling, the same site used to intern Dakota people 163 years earlier.