FREE STATE: A SPIRITUAL MOVEMENT
It began is a spiritual movement to save a sacred site: four bur oak trees planted in a diamond representing the four directions. The site been used by the Dakota for generations, first as a burial scaffold, later as a place for ceremony where prayers were made for ancestors whose bones lie beneath the soil. While efforts to stop the expansion of highway 55 through Minnehaha park span four decades, the current movement was born last July in Pipestone, Minnesota during a sundance, the Dakota ceremony of thanksgiving and renewal.

Bear, a sundancer, member of the Northern Cheyenne nation, and long-time organizer of AIM Patrol in Minneapolis, says he emerged after four days of dancing and fasting with a renewed commitment to the red road. It was then he met Jim Anderson and Leo Ronneng, leaders of the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Nation, a federally unrecognized tribe whose name means "the joining of the waters," and whose oral tradition tells of a people whose genesis isthe place where the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers meet (known today as Minnehaha Park). Anderson and Ronneng said they had struck a pact with Earth First!, a loose knit group of international activists whose uncompromising (though non-violent) defense of the environment has made them corporate America's enemy number one. They needed Bear's help too.

The Dakota would provide the moral vision, Earth First! the dedicated, experienced manpower, and Bear, with his eleven years of protecting Indians on the streets of Phillips, the security. The goal, said the Mendota leaders, was to establish a camp that would both raise awareness of the proposed desecration of their lands, and get in the way of the destruction.
"After Jim and Leo took me to see the trees I quit my job working for AIM patrol and gave up my apartment," says Bear. "I'm a sundancer. I love mother earth and try to live in a traditional way. I wanted to help save these trees here. I don't want to see them digging up our ancestors in that burial ground back there."

On August 10, 1998, a tipi was erected and a sacred fire lit in the yard of a home scheduled for demolition. A sweat lodge was put-up, soon after, and a kitchen built. A growing number of activist, some living in tents, others in vacated homes, took over the block and declared the area a "FreeState." As summer gave way to fall, the reality of living outside in subfreezing temperature set-in, and with it a realization that the Dakota and Earth First!, working together, made a powerful team. It was the kind of coalition that had rarely been seen in America: the joining of indigenous and non-native people whose shared vision and complimentary talents could combine to create a better future for all. A new understanding surfaced in the camp. No longer was the central battle in the Americas being waged white against non-white. The war today had nothing to do with outmoded ideas of race and colonialism, rather, it was corporate America and its military wing, the United States government, that had to be stopped. Indians and common people of all races, if they were to survive in the United States as anything but workers, consumers, or prisoners, must work together.

Cricket, a non-Indian camper, says the experience of his first Inipi (sweatlodge ceremony) at the Free State was galvanizing . "I can't find the words...it was an intense emotional thing. I feel so grateful to have been invited to participate with people willing to share the Dakota culture and traditions. It's a beautiful thing when you understand what it means that we all breath the same air and drink the same water."

A COMPLIMENT TO OUR STRENGTH

On December 10 the Highway 55 coalition received what one protester called "a compliment to our strength," when over six hundred police officers from three agencies stormed the camp in a predawn raid. It was the largest display of police power this area has ever seen. Thirty-six people were arrested, many pepper-sprayed even as they offered no resistance. Police demolished the sweat lodge, impounded religious objects, and extinguished the sacred fire. That raid cost over $386,000 - more than $10,000 per arrest - a fee Minneapolis was forced to pay after the legislature refused to pick up the tab. While campers were in jail the city razed the houses on the disputed block, a day many in the coalition recall as the struggles' lowest. 20

The Free State was reestablished within days, three blocks south of the old camp in one of the last remaining oak savannahs in the Twin Cities, near the site of the four sacred trees. A three story star-shaped sleeping quarters was constructed out of tarps and scrap wood by members of Earth First!. The sweat lodge and sacred fire were rekindled, as was the resolve of the coalition.

As winter wore on an increasing number of citizens from a wide variety of backgrounds joined the coalition. Neighborhood residents, environmentalists, historians, and academics began showing up to the weekly meetings. The ever-broadening group held a spectrum of views on how to fight the reroute. Leaderless by design, they sought consensus on tactics never fully in agreement but always respectful of the Mendota Dakota's insistence on non-violence. The coalition was tested when a zealous Earth First! activist named Bob Greenberg pushed a pie into the face of a state senator for her refusal to hold hearings on the reroute issue. The media portrayed the event as a violent attack, setting off a wave of condemnation among some vocal coalition members who distanced themselves by calling for Greenberg's ouster.

Dubbing himself "Agent Pecan of the Biotic Baking Brigade," Greenberg says,

"On Tuesday, March 30th I gently pressed an $18 vegan lemon coconut cream pie into the face of state senator Carol Flynn. It is being portrayed erroneously as a violent act committed out of rage. This was a prank not intended to intimidate or hurt anyone."20

Ojibwe elder Darlene Jackson was meeting with Flynn in the minutes prior to Greenberg's prank. "Carol Flynn told me she would put the reroute on the floor and let the Legislature reconsider it. There was a young man in her office, an anarchist page, who knew Flynn had made a deal with MnDot and never intended to keep her word. That anarchist page called Bob Greenberg and then it happened. After she got the pie, Flynn pushed Bob and he fell against me and I went down those marble stairs. I strained ligaments in my neck and my health hasn't been the same since." But when prosecutors called her to testify against Greenberg, Jackson told the court, " I understand Bob's feelings and I forgive him. I don't blame Bob for what happened."

Others in the struggle embraced Greenberg for his actions. "It's going to take all sorts of people taking all sorts of steps to stop this thing, "said one activist. "If this brings further attention to the issue then I applaud him."
Greenberg is serving 60 days work release for the incident.