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A forgotten veteran

Native man’s twisted trail into a court system that doesn’t seem to care

By C.S. Hagen
MOORHEAD – With fingers twisted by acute arthritis, Kevin “NeSe” Shores pushed the lever to propel his wheelchair into the Clay County Courthouse. His free hand clutched a large white banker box filled with documents. Folded in worn leather rested an iPhone, his digital eyes.

A driver and assistant followed, told him when to steer right, when to stop. At times, he had to push him through a doorway.

“I’m literally going into court blind,” Shores, an Anishinaabe, enrolled in White Earth Reservation, said. “In the eyes of the court, I’m considered a vulnerable adult, and to cause me any harm is against the law.”

Since the day he received a compulsory cocktail of shots and vaccinations during Navy boot camp, a rheumatoid variant disease he claims is Gulf War illness has broken and bent his body until he can no longer walk and can no longer see. He served aboard the USS Fox, a guided missile cruiser and one of the first ships to arrive during the Gulf War.

Hands gnarled by an acute arthritic condition, an illness Kevin “NeSe” Shores says is Gulf War Syndrome, he relies on Apps and programs to be able to read – photograph by C.S. Hagen

“As a veteran who is in my wheelchair because I swore to uphold the Constitution, it’s sad that this system that I am allegedly dying for, this slow death, is failing me,” Shores said. “We are in a wrong place as a society. It’s disheartening. I know I’m not the only veteran that is going through this ridiculousness.”

He lost his first marriage due to his symptoms, and a second relationship, a binding ceremony with a Native woman, was recently annulled. Now, he’s defending himself in court for the rights to see his children, and for financial reasons. He says that Clay County Court has failed in notifying him properly, and has ignored his rights under the Americans with Disability Act.

“There is a lot of stress on relationships dealing with this condition,” Shores said. “I’m trying to rectify the situation with the sheriff’s department, and in the meantime I missed a preliminary hearing that I wasn’t aware of.”

Dressed in moccasins, a well-worn black cowboy hat, hair long and cleanly braided, Shores told Seventh Judicial District Judge Steven J. Cahill last week that he was not in court out of his own free will, and because of the court officials’ ineptitude, he missed a court date and lost his parental rights because of it. His computer is six years slow, and he was initially denied using the devices he requires to record.

Kevin “NeSe” Shores and his box of paperwork, none of which he can read due to what he says is Gulf War Syndrome – photograph by C.S. Hagen

“My challenge is I can only go by what I hear,” Shores said. “Since I couldn’t have any of my devices, I had to go back and go through the transcripts, which I had to pay for. I don’t know if you know what it’s like for a blind person to try and search the web. For some reason, I kept missing this one little click spot for the ADA request.”

He can’t afford an attorney, he said, so he prepares everything himself.

“I’m just scrambling just trying to stay afloat.”

During one court visit, he claims a bailiff elbowed him in the face during courtroom drama after he attempted to describe his marriage was a Native binding ceremony, and not a sanctioned marriage.

“How am I to take notes, how am I to prepare for this?” Shores said. “It’s like a domino effect, you have to absolutely stay on top of all of the stuff. Before, I was paying people out of my own pocket for scanning things, but the court is supposed to provide. I am trying to calculate now how much money I spent going back to the original separation.”

All paperwork takes Shores time to scan and listen to.

“As a blind person you cannot serve a blind person papers,” Shores told Judge Cahill in court. This court has trampled on my ADA rights. You have not given me due process of law. My biggest question is why am I here? Why were my children used as leverage when you suspended my rights?”

“Because you were ignoring us, sir,” Cahill said. Cahill was reprimanded in 2006 by the Minnesota Board on Judicial Standards for at least 18 violations of the rules governing the conduct of judges.

“I have not been ignoring you,” Shores said. “I’ve been trying to be compliant.”

After a lengthy tit-for-tat, including Shores asking the judge to recuse himself from the case, Judge Cahill refused the request and ordered the case continued to give Shores more time to prepare. Cahill agreed to order the court to deliver documents to Shores in a manner in which he can scan, but treatments for his illness, and the case, which is against his second “wife,” has left him broke, he said.

“The judge stated that I am more likely going to try to use my disability to get out of court,” Shores said. “And nothing could be further from the truth. The last time I went to court, not only did I get whirly screwed, I had to pay somebody to gather papers, out of my own pocket I had to pay thousands of dollars just to assist me.

“The judge was lying from the get-go that he was well aware of the challenges that I have,” Shores said.

During the years that he did not fall under 100 percent disability, he paid more than $300,000 for care and services, he said. Settlement money for an accident he had in 2000 has been depleted, he said.

Kevin “NeSe” Shores as he exits Clay County Courthouse, is completely blind due to what he says is Gulf War Syndrome – photograph by C.S. Hagen

Gulf War illness
Before Boot Camp, Shores weighed in more than 200 pounds, stood five-feet-eleven-inches, and was the former captain of a local swimming team. The first signs not all was right came shortly after receiving a cocktail of vaccinations. Days later, he was diagnosed with drop foot, a nerve disorder.

“That’s where, I am absolutely sure, I got it,” Shores said.

The military ran the gamut of excuses, Shores said. One explanation was that Middle Eastern sand was too fine for American lungs. They next rational was to blame conditions on mites, then that Saddam Hussein was using biological and chemical weapons, and finally, that they were given experimental inoculations before the war.

A 2008 study by the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses reports that Gulf War illness is a multisystem condition resulting from service during the 1990-1992 Gulf War, and is the most prominent health issues affecting veterans. The illness affects one fourth of 697,000 U.S. veterans who served. Symptoms include persistent memory and concentration problems, chronic headaches, widespread pain, gastrointestinal problems, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, fibromyalgia, and other abnormalities not explained by well-established diagnoses.

Few veterans have recovered, and until now, there are no effective treatments, the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses, reported. Two possible causes include the use of pills given to help effects of nerve agents, and the widespread use of pesticides during deployment.

In 1996, Shores accepted his first wheelchair.

In 1998, the same year Congress mandated the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses to study and advise the federal government, Shores lost sight in his left eye. At the time he was listed as 20 percent disabled, but received little assistance.

Two years later, while riding along Highway 10 at 3.4 miles per hour in his wheelchair from Moorhead to St. Paul to raise awareness about Gulf War illnesses, he was run over by a garbage truck, breaking his femur and elbow and guaranteeing him a hip replacement.

Kevin Shores posing for a picture while aboard the USS Fox in the late 1980s – provided by Kevin Shores

Not until 2005, however, nearly 15 years after Operation Desert Storm, did the Veterans Administration list Shores as 100 percent disabled. Since then, his symptoms have slowly broken his body down. His medications, including addictive synthetic opioids, serve to maintain, not to heal. His spirit , however, remains strong. He has run for the elected position of mayor three times, and has become known as the “megaphone man,” he said. He also does comedy and runs a conspiracy-based Internet radio news show.

“The ‘megaphone man’ because I voice my opinion for the underdogs,” Shores said.

Much like his Indigenous name, “NeSe,” pronounced nay-say, which means someone who speaks truth to power, or is a “maker of great noise, like the thunder,” Shores has never sat still for long, despite his handicaps. He uses an iPhone app as his mobile eyes, and has special scanning equipment at home to help him read.

“I consider myself a traditionalist as much as modern society will allow me,” Shores said. “Your name is your power, you don’t ever share your entire name, except with your mother or father. You only use a syllable of it.”

Because of the secretive and mysterious nature of the Gulf War illness, Shores’ efforts at raising awareness and at conducting research has led him to be labeled as a conspiracy theorist, he said.

“I never really wanted to be a conspiracy theorist, but because of the Gulf War illness, I was thrown into it.”

His online videos are lumped into Bigfoot, aliens, and secret society categories, he said. “Gulf War illness wasn’t talked about, and if you did you were considered crazy. But it’s basically the Agent Orange of 2000.”

The shock from returning to America after three years of service, the inability to find meaningful work, and his slowly deteriorating illness, has left Shores wondering why the country he fought for doesn’t do a little more to help the hundreds of thousands of veterans.

“How do you settle in?” Shores said. “There’s no transition from watching your buddy die one week, to coming to America and listening to a woman complain about choice.”

Shores was supposed to hear back from the Clay County Court’s IT department on Monday, but he didn’t receive a call. He has tried to submit necessary documents online, but keeps receiving errors.

“I have no clue why it wasn’t reading properly, finally I had to ask a person to look over my shoulder and see if I was doing something wrong, and they couldn’t see what I was doing wrong,” Shores said.

“It is absolutely a validation of where we stand in today’s society,” Shores said. “When the entities or individuals that swear an oath and some make the ultimate sacrifice in defending the American way of life in their service to the Armed Forces or other positions of great sacrifice, veterans should not have to continue fighting, not only for their dignity and respect, but for fairness of treatment due to those sacrifices such as disabilities that are a direct result of their service.

“When I joined the military and I said I would die for my country, I didn’t know they would take it literally. For a time I thought I would hate my country for what I am going through, but I love my country. It’s easier to love than to hate, hate just eats you up inside. I just need to survive, to survive, and to go on in this world being the best person I can be.”

Kevin Shores, middle, in the Navy circa 1988 – Facebook

‘A thousand Saddams’

November 2, 2017 / CSHagen / 1 Comment

A Yazidi family’s journey from war-torn Iraq to America

By C.S. Hagen
MOORHEAD – Today, Ezzat Khudhur Alhaidar is safe from ISIS guns, but the memories of war still haunt him. In 2005, he donned a U.S. Army uniform and began working as a front-line interpreter, a position that put food in his belly and a target on his back.

He leans back into a leather sofa while his wife, Zaman Alo, finishes setting a makeshift table with a mound of biryani, steaming hot chickpea soup. Onions covered with sumac follow. Four more dishes take up the table’s last inches, which doubles as a nightstand: homemade pickled green tomatoes, olives, a sumac salad, and chicken kabob pieces, tastes of Alhaidar’s homeland in Iraq. He bemoans the lack of proper Iraqi kabobs, also known as kafta; the taste here is just not the same.

Volume blaring, Alhaidar’s five children finish watching “The Emoji Movie.” After only three years in America, his eldest children speak English with ease, explaining the movie’s plot. His second youngest daughter performs cartwheels with the grace of an Olympic athlete on the living room floor. The apartment walls are sparse; few pictures or decorations accompanied the family on their flight from Iraq, but the apartment is home and it’s safe.

They’re Yazidi, an ethno-religious minority, persecuted for centuries because of their adherence to Yazidism, the oldest Mesopotamian religion. Alhaidar obtained U.S. visas three months before the most recent pogrom against Yazidis began, watching news reports helplessly of neighbors and family fleeing before ISIS’s onslaught.

Ezzat Alhaidar – photo by C.S. Hagen

When Saddam Hussein was captured in 2003 during Operation Red Dawn, Alhaidar remembers feeling relief. During Hussein’s reign, no one dared breathe the dictator’s name, let alone speak ill of the government. If suspected of dissatisfaction, one could face flesh-eating acid in one of multiple torture chambers, Alhaidar said. Few came out alive.

As a child when he saw police, he remembers shivering with fear. “It was not life,” Alhaidar said. “We were the happiest people when we got rid of Saddam, but we didn’t know after Saddam, a thousand Saddams would come to the country. If there was a choice between now and Saddam, we would not choose Saddam.”

The ISIS invasion of Yazidi areas came quickly in 2014, with no time to raise alarms. The Peshmerga, the Iraqi Kurdistan forces, promised safety but fled before oncoming ISIS troops. One night, Yazidi villages went to sleep and awoke the next morning with ISIS in charge.

And then from 6,000 miles away, Alhaidar watched as the slaughter began.

The Yazidi people are regarded as people of a different faith who need to be killed or converted to Islam. Once before, they were targeted by Muslim extremists, primarily Sunni jihadists, after the US invasion of Iraq in 2014.

ISIS jihadists have been mostly beaten back, but Alhaidar’s relatives still have no home. After the massacres began, Alhaidar managed visas for his mother, a few nephews and nieces, from America, but other family still remain behind. They live in refugee camps and are unable to return home.

More than 40,000 Yazidis fled to Mount Sinjar, identified as the final resting place of Noah’s ark, and nearly half a million people poured into Dohuk, the Kurdish north, in one of the largest and most rapid refugee movements in decades.

Villages were decimated. More than 5,000 people were killed in two days. Another 7,600 women were kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery, many still missing. No less than 3,000 children were sent to brainwashing, indoctrination schools to learn how to become future terrorists, Alhaidar said.

Most of the ISIS forces were recognizable faces, Alhaidar said, coming from neighboring towns, and not foreign fighters.

“What can we expect of these kids in the future?” Alhaidar said. “We were crying over here. ISIS attacked my people. People have become hopeless, homeless.”

Growing up hard
At 16, Alhaidar rose with the sun to haul bricks on his back. Not manageable red baked bricks but heavy construction bricks, with a daily quota of 100, for $25 in pay.

“Life is hard, sometimes, and harsh, it can crush you,” Alhaidar said. “But I got a lesson from the bricks: if I didn’t go to school I knew I would spend my life hauling those bricks.”

In ancient times, Yazidi culture and religious rituals were passed orally from generation to generation. They do not have their own schools, and mosques were avoided to deter conversion.

Historically, the Yazidi have been attacked repeatedly by neighbors. Atrocities were recorded by researchers, historians, and writers, such as Henry Austen Layard. One genocide occurred in Shekhan Province, close to Mosul, after fleeing Yazidi were trapped along the Tigris River due to spring flooding. Yazidi women jumped into the river to escape conversion, according to Laynard.

A second genocide occurred in Sinjar Province, when Ottoman soldiers beheaded Yazidis.

Picture of Yazidis before terrorist firing squads – from Ezzat Alhaidar’s Facebook

The Alhaidar family is originally from Sinjar, but his parents fled from oppression to a village called Kabartu, where Alhaidar was born. Later, Hussein’s regime destroyed their village and grouped 12 villages into a collective called Omayya. After Saddam fell from power, the collective was renamed Khanke.

Although the villagers were also Yazidi, Alhaidar’s family was never accepted into the community, he said. Alhaidar’s father, formerly a shepherd, became a day laborer to put food on the table, and life for his family was difficult.

“They were always higher, as we were not from that village,” Alhaidar said.

Life became harder after his father died in 2004. Without money to take him to the hospital, his father asked a friend for help, but he passed away the next day.

“After my father’s death, my life became harder, and I felt that I had to walk alone with no support,” Alhaidar said. “My brothers and sister and my mother were in the situation, and were doing their best, yet nothing could be compared to my father. Before my father’s death, we would barely think about the tough or hard side of life.”

Refugee camps currently in use in Duhok area, Iraq – photo provided by BRHA Duhok

In 2013, the government handed out land parcels to the villagers, but not to his family. “They were mean, and they were always the people of the situation, nobody could raise their face to say ‘Hey, we’re over here.’”

“We were always getting attacked by those around us, and by that I mean Muslims,” Alhaidar said. “The only reason we were oppressed was because of our religion, which makes it difficult to maintain our culture.”

He began studying late into every night at the Iraq University of Dohuk. College was free, but he still needed money for food, clothes, and lodging. Some days, he borrowed clothes to attend classes. A brother helped with a loan of 500 dinars, the equivalent of $300.

While his friends were getting married and buying cars, Alhaidar worried about enough cash for his next meal. A dowry for marriage seemed an impossible dream. He spoke his native Kurdish, also Arabic and English, and saw opportunity when U.S. armed forces came, once again, to his homeland in 2003.

He signed up as an interpreter.

“That decision changed my life,” Alhaidar said. “And it changed the lives of all the people around me. Because of that decision to join the U.S. Army, I brought 28 people to the US and they are working, smiling, while if they were left over there, whatever you say is not enough, at the very least they would have no jobs.”

As a U.S. Army interpreter
“If you were a minority, you were gone. If you were US Army and coming from vacation, you were gone,” Alhaidar said about a lonely road he frequently had to travel. “Gone” means a quick bullet or indefinite imprisonment for exchange. Al-Qaeda terrorists would not frequently target military Humvees, but rather the vehicles following behind.

“I was an easy target for them,” Alhaidar said.

Being Yazidi and an interpreter for an invading force, and frequently meeting face to face with terrorists during interrogation sessions, meant he had to take extra precautions. Frequently, suspected terrorists were interviewed, then released two weeks later.

“We were safe, but we were scared to go anywhere,” Alhaidar said. He always watched for tailing cars, never went to Mosul. Terrorists targeted interpreters and their families. Stories of fellow interpreters ambushed by terrorists kept him on edge. Such as the story of one man who broke 27 bones during an Al-Qaeda sneak attack.

Before joining the US Army, food was scarce. Afterward, he could eat his fill. “You could smell the food a mile from the restaurant,” Alhaidar said.

He went on duty for 45 days in a row, then came home for six. He also worked as an advisor for US troops, helping differentiate between friend and suicide bomber. When he saw indiscriminate shooting, it was one of his jobs to stop the soldiers or private mercenaries and tell them the differences between Orange Zones and Red Zones, the latter meaning dangerous areas.

Ezzat Alhaidar while an interpreter for US Army – Facebook page photo

The stress of war, constant vigilance, leaving his home country to start a new life in a strange land, has taken its toll, Alhaidar said. He opens a kitchen cupboard and returns with a brown paper bag, filled with prescription medicine for PTSD. He’s improved over the years he’s lived in Moorhead, but is filled with a longing to help his people, as well as the new American community in Fargo/Moorhead.

He’s tried for help at the local Veterans Hospital, but was denied. The U.S. Army does not consider him a veteran.

“We wore the same uniform, wore the same boots, went on the same missions, and could be killed at any moment in Iraq and Afghanistan, but unfortunately, today, they do not recognize us as veterans,” Alhaidar said.

Ezzat Alhaidar showing his PTSD medicines – photo by C.S. Hagen

“It’s not about money. The U.S. Army was a school, and I was proud to be a student in that school. I was a part of it. But they said ‘No, rules are rules.’ Even if they could consider us veterans, and not pay us anything, that would be fine.

“Are you a veteran?” Alhaidar pretended to be military doctor questioning himself.

“No. I don’t have a paper. So what do they call it when I was working with them? Part of our duties meant that if we weren’t there, many more US soldiers would have been killed.”

Additional duties included interpreting any communication between Iraqi and US forces, talking with village leaders, learning where the dangerous spots were, and locating IEDs.

Alhaidar was injured once when his Humvee was ordered to lead a nocturnal drive without headlights and they smashed into a gravel pile. He marched with soldiers into war, accompanied searches for terrorists going house to house, relayed information quickly under fire.

“We were between them,” Alhaidar said. “We would know who was lying and who was a danger.”

Once, a commanding officer known to Alhaidar as Captain Kingman, ordered him from the safety of a Humvee to accompany an ambulance into Mosul Province.

“Even a crazy person wouldn’t go into Mosul in an ambulance,” Alhaidar said. “No armor, no protection.”

He survived, but the same captain also required him to translate while he cursed elderly village leaders. “And you know, in Iraqi community, that was not allowed,” Alhaidar said. “We were there to protect people.”

The U.S. Army had one rule he can’t forget: never chase terrorists if they ran away.

“These bitter moments gave me lessons in life,” Alhaidar said. “I’m a new American, but even in Iraq I was American in my soul.”

Because of his role helping the U.S. Army, officials said he would be protected, but Alhaidar waited more than a year before obtaining a visa, during which time he saved enough money to purchase a house and find a wife, with a $7,000 dowry.

After he left the military in 2012, he worked as a teacher with Weatherford, an oil company. Working 15 days on and 15 off, he also started a computer shop and a learning center for teaching English as a second language.

The Alhaidar family – photo by C.S. Hagen

America
Over sips of cloying Iraqi tea, Alhaidar knows he is one of the more fortunate interpreters, one of thousands who worked with the U.S. Army during its post-9/11 military operations. In exchange for their services, Iraqis who collaborated were promised special visas, but the Special Immigrant Visa program became backlogged. Some are considered traitors by insurgents, and are actively hunted. Identities were kept secret.

President Donald Trump’s Administration travel ban has recently created new obstacles for the Army’s former Iraqi partners, and many are being denied visas.

In May 2014, however, Alhaidar packed his family’s lives into eight suitcases. He filled four with his most precious possessions – books – some Kurdish, some Arabic, and others in English. Hard drives and photo albums, the only transportable keepsakes he could bring, went into another suitcase.

Traveling through Jordan, his family landed in Chicago after a 14-hour flight.

“Everything was green, everything was beautiful, but we still knew our trip was not done,” Alhaidar said. A type of sadness came over his family during their layover in Jordan. Their home for countless generations seemed far away.

Today, Alhaidar has three bachelor’s degrees, and is active in community development. Neither Republican nor Democrat, he believes in dealing with issues, and not following a political line. He’s building a nonprofit organization, and is active with Mindful Seeds, a leadership program in the Fargo/Moorhead area.

Settling into America hasn’t been easy, but slowly, his children are growing used to the area. Alhaidar’s wife is in school, and he has found work, but is looking for more meaningful employment, perhaps one day in politics.

“Life has started to smile on us.”

With recent hate crime incidents in Fargo, seven cases so far in 2017, Alhaidar challenges people to make attempts to understand world events. He is no stranger to hate crimes. In Iraq, he was part of a close circle of friends including engineers, doctors, veterinarians, and technicians, with himself as a teacher, who once, when life was simpler, enjoyed picnics, a few beers, and music together.

“Due to tensions, discrimination, sectarian religious and political issues, and adding to that, ISIS attacks, there is barely anyone left in this group anymore. They all left the country. Each went to a different country, whether in Europe, America, or Australia, to start a new life away from their childhood memories.

“Life is about stepping toward each other and building trust,” Alhaidar said. “Even white supremacists we should listen to. We have to be careful of our daily actions, and see Fargo/Moorhead as a colorful community. Today, the life of Moorhead is the life of our kids.”

Savanna’s 24 Steps

August 28, 2017 / CSHagen / 0 Comments

“A Cruel And Vicious Act Of Depravity”

A frantic week of searching for a pregnant 22-year-old Native American woman ends in tragedy, suspects arrested, and a city is hurting

By C.S. Hagen
FARGO – It’s a short distance from the Greywind family’s basement apartment to the third floor, 24 steps, to be exact. Apartment number five is boarded up tight. Neighbors, who were allowed to move back in Sunday, are scared, and don’t want to speak about the suspects sitting in Cass County Jail, now charged with conspiracy to commit murder, kidnapping, and false information.

An even shorter route leads to the rear door and a parking lot. From the outside appearance, the building is clean, white washed; no palpable evil emanates from apartment number five. The suspects do not resemble monsters. They’re people anyone could pass on any street and at any time.

The apartment complex from which Savanna Lafontaine-Greywind went missing from – photo by C.S. Hagen

Five days after Savanna Marie Lafontaine-Greywind disappeared on August 19, Fargo Police arrested Brooke Lynn Crews, 38, and William Henry Hoehn, 32, of Apartment 5, 2825 Ninth Street North, Fargo, and believe they have the right suspects.

“By no means is this case closed, we have a lot of work ahead of us,” Fargo Police Lieutenant Jason Nelson said. “But there is no indication that there are other suspects involved.”

Apartment #5, the room to which Savanna Lafontaine-Greywind went before her disappearance – photo by C.S. Hagen

Before the weekend, both were charged with class A felony conspiracy to commit kidnapping, and now after Greywind’s body was found, wrapped tightly in plastic and duct tape, snagged by a tree in the middle of the Red River, the suspects face additional charges of conspiracy to commit murder, and conspiracy to give false information.

At the same time, police responded to the report of a body in the river, volunteer searchers also discovered strange evidence of a possible crime that may be related to Greywind’s murder in an abandoned farmhouse off 90th Avenue Northwest in Clay County.

“A conspiracy requires an agreement with one or others to do things which are otherwise unlawful, and someone take s an overt act in furtherance of that conspiracy,” Cass County State’s Attorney Birch Burdick said.

The backdoor, easily accessible from apartment #5 – photo by C.S. Hagen

Pending the results of an autopsy from Ramsey County’s Medical Examiner’s Office in Minnesota, police would not say if Greywind’s death is being investigated as a fetus abduction, but Greywind was killed, and her baby girl, named Haisley Jo, was found 24 steps away from where her mother once lived.

“As the chief, I speak on behalf of the men and women of the Fargo Police Department, and I tell you are hearts are heavy as we mourn the loss of this young lady,” Fargo Police Chief David Todd said. “As law enforcement, through our investigative efforts we will continue to pursue justice for Savanna. Savanna was the victim of a cruel and vicious act of depravity.”

Greywind’s body was found Sunday afternoon by kayakers in the Red River in Clay County, Minnesota, and she disappeared from Fargo in North Dakota. A crime that crosses state lines frequently becomes a federal case, which may present jurisdictional issues.

Front door of the apartment building from which Savanna Lafontaine-Greywinf disappeared – photo by C.S. Hagen

“It’s premature for me to go into that right now,” Burdick said. “We need to weigh the facts, and we feel we have appropriate charges to move forward right now in Cass County in state court.”

North Dakota banned the death penalty in 1976, but the federal government does employ capital punishment for federal offenses such as kidnapping leading to death.

Although many case facts are still unknown, what is clear is that Greywind, 22, and eight months pregnant, left her apartment on the first floor to model a dress for Crews at approximately 1:30 p.m. on August 19, according to Nelson. An hour went by, and her 16-year-old brother texted her for a ride to work. Greywind’s father, Joe, went upstairs at some point, but no one answered the door, Nelson confirmed.

Greywind’s mother, Norberta, drove her son to work at around 2:40 p.m., then returned, and by approximately 4 o’clock climbed the 24 steps to apartment number five and knocked. Crews answered the door and told Norberta that her daughter was no longer there.

Later that night, family reported Greywind missing. The next day missing persons fliers were posted around town, and by Wednesday the family announced a $7,000 reward for information leading to Greywind’s discovery. Three consent searches were made by police of the apartment complex, but no information was forthcoming until Thursday, when police obtained a forensic warrant and discovered a healthy newborn infant inside apartment number five with Crews.

Police believe the infant is Greywind’s baby girl, and are waiting on DNA test results.

Fargo Police, West Fargo, Moorhead Police, Cass and Clay County sheriff’s departments, North Dakota’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation, and Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, are involved with the investigation. Luminescent-shirted volunteers have helped with with searches totaling more than 150 tips, and by Sunday combed more than 35 areas of interest. Since police became involved, a total of 35 detectives, four sergeants, two lieutenants, cadaver dogs, K-9s, watercraft, aircraft, and a deputy chief have been working around the clock on this investigation, Fargo Police Chief David Todd said.

The Fargo Police Department also teamed up with Minnesota K-9 Search Rescue & Tracking handler Paul Matheson with dogs specially trained in locating placentas to search multiple points of interest, including dumpsters, vacant fields, freshly dug-up earth, and construction sites, police reported.

The activity early Sunday morning brought Norberta and Joe Greywind from the hotel where they were staying. The couple appeared nervous, quickly walking toward where four police vehicles and a fire truck were parked along the Red River. They stopped, waiting for any word, but law enforcement officials were busy.

They spoke of anger toward their former neighbor, frustration with police who they said initially suspected them and Greywind’s boyfriend and father of the baby girl, Ashton Matheny, of being involved in their daughter’s disappearance for two days after she was reported missing.

“The whole family was looking forward to the birth of her baby, my first grandchild,” Norberta said. In the darkness, 3:30 in the morning, her voice choked as she watched police drag a pontoon into the Red River.

Federal agents are still watching them, Joe said.

“We are a tight knit family,” Joe said. The Greywinds and Matheny are members of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewas Tribe. “It’s just us, and that’s just the way it is.”

Norberta said she was always wary of Crews, and didn’t like the way she looked at her daughter. She mentioned a public Facebook post Crews posted on July 22, 2016, of a Native American woman breastfeeding a baby with two other infants on her lap, which disgusted her.

“And to think of what my daughter might have gone through?” Norberta said.

Later that day, more than 400 people showed up for Fargo’s Native American Commission annual picnic, which after approval from Greywind’s family also became a march honoring Savanna to Veteran’s Memorial Bridge.

All attendees were smudged with burning sage after lunch.

“This is community spiritual support,” Willard Yellowbird, cultural planner for the City of Fargo, said. “We march as one voice, one sound, one spirit, one community, regardless of tribe, race, or creed. Our goal is to bring Savanna home.”

Behind him, four men, including Zebediah Gartner, 20, an Anishinaabe from Fargo, sang a Native American song while beating a drum. Their voices rose and fell, synchronized drumbeats softened while Gartner drumstick rose high, then crashed into the soft leather. Dozens ate barbecue and hamburgers from plastic plates, while luminescent green-shirted search volunteers gathered for the upcoming meeting.

“All this energy is for people who are feeling sad, we have all this positive energy and this need that everybody has to feel this goodness now, at this time, native and non-native,” Yellowbird said.

In a statement Monday, Fargo Mayor Tim Mahoney offered appreciation to everyone involved in the case, and observed a moment of silence at Monday’s City Commission meeting.

“I would like to acknowledge the profound sadness being felt within our metro area over the loss of Fargo resident Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind,” Mahoney said. “Savanna was taken from this community far too soon and in an utterly reprehensible manner. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of Savanna.

“It is in these moments that we fully appreciate the tight bond uniting our community during times of crisis and distress. As your Mayor, I’ve been very moved by the outpouring of support shown during the search efforts. The willingness of our people to volunteer and help others is appreciated and uplifting. Please remember that instances like this do not define Fargo; Fargo is instead defined by our people’s incredible spirit of resilience and their collective acts of support exhibited in the aftermath of difficult circumstances.”

Greywind’s family and friends watching while police search forest early Sunday morning along Red River banks in Moorhead, Minnesota – photo by C.S. Hagen

Arraignment
Hoehn, pronounced Hayne, entered the television screen dressed from neck to ankles in orange on Monday afternoon. Hands folded in front of him, he remained emotionless when the charges were read against him.

He was charged with class AA felony of conspiracy to murder Greywind with Crews, a crime punishable up to life imprisonment without parole, class A felony conspiracy to kidnap the infant child of Greywind with Crews, punishable up to 20 years in jail and a $20,000 fine, and then a class A misdemeanor conspiracy to mislead the police investigation punishable up to one year in jail and up to a $3,000 fine.

Tanya Martinez of the Cass County State’s Attorney’s Office asked Hoehn if he understood the charges.

“Yes, I do,” Hoehn said.

“Because two of the these charges are felonies, we will not take pleas from you today,” the judge said. “Rather this matter will be set for a preliminary hearing on October 4, at 9 in the morning.”

William Henry Hoehn in prison orange – photo by C.S. Hagen

Hoehn is unemployed, and qualified for a public defender, fees for which he may be responsible for paying back if proven guilty. He has a prior criminal record including child abuse in 2012, possession of drug paraphernalia in 2011, and a simple assault domestic violence charge Hoehn pled guilty to in 2016.

“Mister Hoehn was uncooperative and in fact misled the investigation,” Martinez said. “In addition the state has information that there were Internet searches that would lead a reasonable person to believe they were looking at staying somewhere else. They were searching places like Travelocity… the state is asking for $2 million cash bail only.”

“Two million dollar cash only is set at such a high level to be unattainable,” Hoehn said, straightening up for the first time. “Um, I would request that we do something along the lines that we be able to use a bail allotment, if that is a possibility. I don’t know if that is a possibility to me, but I know that two million is unattainable for any regular person. That is not a reasonable bail.”

The judge agreed with the state’s attorney, setting bail at $2 million cash only.

Crews looked at home in her orange pajama suit, keeping her head bowed most of the time while Martinez read the same charges. If the case is not tried in a federal court, Crews faces more than life imprisonment, and also received a $2 million bail.

Brooke Lynn Crews at arraignment – photo by C.S. Hagen

Because Crews also has a criminal history, bad checks in the early 2000s, and an assault in Minnesota that was later dismissed, the state asked for the same bail. “There were efforts to look for and places to take flight,” Martinez said. “We are recommending for two million dollars, cash only.”

Crews understood and did not attempt a discussion. Crews also qualified for a public defender, and her preliminary hearing was set for September 28, at 1:30 p.m.

Red lights
Family and friends are asking the City of Fargo to illuminate their front porches with red lights this week.

As a member of the Mandan Hidatsa Arikara Nation, Ruth Buffalo attended the arraignment hearing, and asked for people to honor Greywind and remember missing and murdered indigenous women every year.

She wants the case to be tried in a federal court, as all registered Native Americans belong to a sovereign nation.

“One of three Native American women go missing every year,” Buffalo said, pointing to friends standing nearby. “And those statistics are not accurate because a part of the cases go unreported. If and when we go missing, it should go straight to federal, not the state.”

“I’m here as an indigenous person and mother supporting another indigenous person,” Amanda Vivier, also of the Turtle Mountain Tribe, said.

Family who attended the arraignment declined to speak.

Andrew Varvel, from Bismarck, said the Greywind’s case feels surreal, and not only because of the mystery behind Greywind’s death.

“Here, we have the State Historical Society hosting a stilted ‘cultural event’ to ‘foster healing’ while Indians throughout the Upper Midwest are converging on Fargo in a desperate search for Savanna,” Varbel said on Sunday, before Greywind’s body was found. “One side seeks cultural understanding, while the other side is frantically searching for a woman who is probably dead by now.”

Varvel also hopes the case goes to a federal court. “Regardless of what you think of the death penalty, if federal prosecutors don’t seek the death penalty in this case, the racial bias in this region becomes glaringly obvious.”

Search volunteers Stephanie Walters, Brian Weidener, and Tonya Simonson, also stood outside the courthouse after the arraignment, expressing disdain that the two suspects were given bail at all.

“If it was my choice, they would not be getting a bond,” Walters said. She helped search Highland Park, County Road 22, and County Road 31, Memorial Cemetery and other places over the weekend.

Walter was still searching when she heard the news Greywind’s body had been found.

“I could just feel my heart break,” Walter said. “I was scared, shocked, relieved. I was like, oh my gosh, we were so close to her.”

Friends and family are asking Fargoans to display red light bulbs in front porches or landings, Buffalo said. If not red light bulbs, then a red dress by the front door is also acceptable.

“Red light bulbs to show honor to Savanna and all missing indigenous women,” Buffalo said.

GoodBulb, at 4211 12th Avenue North, Fargo, is selling red light bulbs all week, and will be contributing all proceeds to the family. Tom Enright will be representing his company Monday night starting at 8:30 at Mickelson Field to sell the bulbs during a candlelight vigil for Savanna.

“We hope to sell 1,000 of them this week,” Enright said.

Cass County State’s Attorney Birch Burdick at press conference – photo by C.S. Hagen

Fetal abductions
Whispers around the city have filtered across the state, even to national media outlets that Greywind was the victim of a fetal abduction.

From 1974 until 2011 there have been at least 22 fetal abductions, attempted fetal abductions, or alleged fetal abductions in the United States, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

According to a 2012 masters of criminology case study by Kerry Arquette for Regis University, research into the issue is difficult, as fetal abductions are not systematically reported at local, state, or at the federal levels.

The first recorded case of fetal abduction took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1974 when Winifred Ransom killed a pregnant mother of three using a handgun and a butcher knife to perform a Caesarian section on the victim. When the pregnant woman, Margaret Sweeney, who was eight months pregnant at the time, regained consciousness during the operation, Ransom fired two shots into her head, and then buried the dead woman beneath the floorboards of her kitchen shed, according to the Delaware County Daily Times. The baby girl survived, and was being raised by relatives.

Ransom was acquitted on grounds of insanity, committed to a mental hospital, and then released after 20 months.

A second case in Albuquerque, New Mexico followed in 1987, when Cindy Lyn Ray was kidnapped outside a prenatal clinic at Kirkland Air Force Base. Darci Pierce, who was 19 at the time, strangled Ray and used her car keys to open the pregnant woman’s womb, snatching the unharmed fetus, according to police reports. The baby survived.

Pierce was found guilty-but-mentally-ill of first degree murder and was sentenced to a life in prison.

A sharp increase in fetal abductions were reported in 1995 until 2011 with 19 fetal abductions or attempted fetal abductions.

Psychologists state that baby stealers are extreme examples of “maternal instinct run amok,” who have deep psychological desires, a fragile sense of self esteem, a disturbed family background, and dependency on others, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Ashton Matheny and Savanna Lafontaine-Greywind picture posted on August 25, 2017 – Facebook

Haisley Jo
Greywind’s baby, who was found healthy and taken to a Sanford Hospital on August 24, is named Haisley Jo, and her name is the only US Bank official account people can donate to help the Greywind family. The family is not using or accepting any GoFundMe account donations.

Haisley Jo is currently under the protection of the Cass County Social Services. Calls were made for comment on the child’s condition, and when the infant may be given back to family, but no responses were received.

The official account’s name at the US Bank for donations is under Haisley Jo, and was coordinated with the Sacred Journey Lodge, a nonprofit organization, according to Breyanne Lafontaine-Enno.

“Thank you everyone who helped bring my sweet cousin Savanna home,” Lafontaine-Enno said. “Please respect that we are grieving… Our family appreciates all the love and support we continue to receive.”

Krissy Weber, listed from Fargo, is one of the people who set up a fake GoFundMe account, and was called out by netizens.

“This is not an account from the family,” a woman named Heather Fischer wrote in the comments section. “This is fake do not donate to this account. The family will have an account set up at US Bank in Savanna’s daughter’s name. You should be ashamed of yourself. This family has been through so much and now as do [to] deal with people like you.”

Others reported Weber’s GoFundMe as being a fake account. No donations have been made as of early Monday morning.

Another fake GoFundMe account was set up by Anna Miller Christenson, from Walcott, and raised $50 of a total goal of $2,000, and by Monday was no longer accepting donations.

Christenson later responded by saying she had good intentions, and was disheartened by the accusation.

Downstairs of the apartment, laundry room, also has back door access – photo by C.S. Hagen

Savanna Lafontaine-Greywind - Facebook

Savanna’s Body Found Near Harwood

August 28, 2017 / CSHagen / 0 Comments

Eight days after a 22-year-old pregnant woman disappeared from a Fargo apartment, her body was found near Harwood

By C.S. Hagen
HARWOOD – The body of Savanna Marie Lafontaine-Greywind was found near the Red River early Sunday evening by law enforcement.

At 8:20 p.m. her body was found, and at 9:20 p.m. the body was identified, according to Fargo Police Chief David Todd. Greywind’s body will be brought to the Ramsey County Medical Examiner. Her family has been notified, Todd said.

Rural 90th Avenue Northwest was blocked off in Cass County and Clay County, making travel impossible along the road while police conducted their investigation.

Greywind went missing eight days ago on August 19, and she was eight months pregnant when she went upstairs to model a dress for neighbor, Brooke Lynn Crews, in Apartment 5, 2825 Ninth Street North, Fargo.

Three consent searches were made by police of the apartment complex in which Greywind’s family lived, but no information was forthcoming until Thursday, when police obtained a forensic warrant and discovered a healthy newborn infant inside apartment number five with Crews.

Police believe the infant is Greywind’s baby girl, and are waiting on DNA test results.

Five days after Greywind disappeared, Fargo Police arrested Crews, 38, and William Henry Hoehn, 32, and say they believe they have the right suspects. Both were charged with Class A felony conspiracy to commit kidnapping by police.

The Fargo Police Department reported receiving more than 150 tips during the week of investigation, and combed more than 35 areas of interest. Since police became involved, a total of 35 detectives, four sergeants, two lieutenants, cadaver dogs, K-9s, watercraft, aircraft, and a deputy chief have been working around the clock on this investigation, Todd said.

Police combed a cornfield and other areas in Dilworth, Moorhead, along the Red River banks, and other areas connected to suspects’ GPS information, while green-shirted volunteers led by Belcourt Rural Fire Department fanned out across multiple points of interest near Trollwood Park over the weekend.

More than 400 people showed up for Fargo’s Native American Commission annual picnic, which after approval from Greywind’s family also became a march to Veteran’s Memorial Bridge on Saturday afternoon.

No further information is available at this time. This is a breaking news story and updates will be posted when received.

"Death by Oil" - wet plate by Shane Balkowitsch

“Death by Oil” Remembering the Dakota 38 for Christmas

December 19, 2016 / CSHagen / 0 Comments

Looking back 154 years, little has changed in the Peace Garden State

By C.S. Hagen
BISMARCK – The same prejudices that sent 38 Dakota Native Americans to the gallows in Minnesota 154 years ago still exist in the Peace Garden State today. Parallels between the broken treaties that sparked the six-week US-Dakota War of 1862 and the current fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline contain undeniable similarities, red man and white man say.

Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault II has repeatedly stated the Sioux tribe is not only fighting water and land rights, but also defying hundreds of years of broken treaties and oppression.

Little has changed since the day after Christmas 1862, the day of the U.S. largest mass execution in Mankato, Minnesota.

“Death by Oil” – wet plate by Shane Balkowitsch

“The overt racism that exists here in North Dakota is something that shocked me,” retired rancher and former candidate for the North Dakota House of Representative Tom Asbridge said. His family has lived in or near Morton County since the late 19th century. “It is North Dakota nice. During holiday times we pride ourselves for handing out turkeys to poor kids, but the rest of the year we ignore what is going on. There’s a lot of self-delusion here about who we are, and people who are smart prey upon that. We shouldn’t blame them, but blame the people who are too dumb to know the difference.”

Bismarck native and wet plate artist Shane Balkowitsch decided to commemorate the 154th anniversary of the Dakota 38’s mass execution with a wet plate featuring renowned flute player and writer Darren Thompson.

“I made this wet plate in the historic wet plate collodion process to remember and pay respect to the 38 Native Americans that we executed a day after Christmas in 1862 by Abraham Lincoln,” Balkowitsch said. “The oil dripping down the rope symbolizes the current protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Have we learned nothing from past historical tragedies?”

Thompson, the subject in the wet plate, is an award-winning flute player and a journalist who lives in Rapid City, South Dakota.

Growing up on the Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe Reservation in Northern Wisconsin, he didn’t hear about the Dakota 38 until later in life. The story upset him, and he recently stepped from behind his role as a journalist to help Balkowitsch with his wet plate “Death by Oil.”

“It was difficult because originally I was planning on covering it as a journalist, and not being in the photo,” Thompson said. “It was difficult especially in terms of how can I explain this story.

“But he said ‘you have a voice that I don’t have, you can make this image reach to larger masses of people than I could.’ It would be a modern look of a Native American man.”

The Dakota 38: “It is a good day to die.”

Little by little, through trick and by trade, the federal government ate away at Dakota lands in southern Minnesota. Starting in 1805, the nomadic Dakota people were forced into smaller and smaller areas surrounding the Minnesota River, according to the Minnesota Historical Society.

In 1819, the US Army began building forts, settlers soon followed. Animals the Dakota depended upon for survival vanished from the forests. Missionaries promised education and farming assistance. Politicians threatened reprisals if treaties weren’t signed. Eventually, 35 million acres were exchanged for a promised USD 3 million, which the Dakota never received in full. Despite disagreements within the Dakota tribe, treaties were signed, but the translations were false.

Battle of Wood Lake sketch

The Dakota were tricked, lost half their land, and now owed fur traders in excess of USD 400,000. Those that refused to change their ways were threatened with more reprisals, and were not allowed to return to their homes. Annuity payments were late.

In 1862, the Dakota had enough. War began.

Settlers in Renville County lived opposite the Dakota, three days after the attacks began the county was abandoned, as most had been killed, wounded, captured, or had fled, the Minnesota Historical Society reported. The attacks took settlers by surprise. Those that escaped fled to Fort Ridgely.

General Henry Sibley led the U.S. Army against the Dakota. Sibley was no Indian hater; he spoke the Dakota language, and was well acquainted with the four tribes, according to historian William Folwell.

He was frequently opposed by General John Pope, who subscribed to a Three-Alls policy: kill all, burn all, loot all. Sibley resisted.

“It is my purpose utterly to exterminate the Sioux if I have the power to do so and even if it requires a campaign lasting the whole of next year,” Pope wrote to Sibley in 1862. “Destroy everything belonging to them and force them out to the plains, unless, as I suggest, you can capture them. They are to be treated as maniacs or wild beasts, and by no means as people with whom treaties or compromises can be made.”

Prairie on Fire

The campaign against the Native Americans ended at the Battle of Wood Lake on September 23, 1862. Dakota warriors lay in ambush against Sibley’s forces near Lone Tree Lake, while soldiers broke camp. They attacked as Sibley’s forces marched. Sibley won the battle, but not without casualties to both sides: seven white soldiers were killed, 33 wounded, 15 Dakota, including chiefs Makato and Mazamani, were killed.

A total of 152 civilians were killed, 48 soldiers or militia killed, 113 settlers and soldiers were captured, and 201 people escaped, according to some estimates. Other historians report more than 600 people were killed in total. Only 24 percent of the survivors returned to Renville County after the war.

The numbers of Dakota killed during the war estimate from 75 to 100, and by some reports much higher, but more than a fourth of the Dakota people who surrendered in 1862 died the following year. More than 1,000 Dakota were captured, and were forced into concentration camps on reservations, pressured to assimilate, and their lands were taken by white settlers, according to the Minnesota Historical Society. Eventually, all Dakota were forced from Minnesota; all treaties were destroyed. Many fled to North Dakota and Nebraska.

The U.S. Military Commission convened at Camp Release to try 392 Dakota prisoners. Proof of crimes was difficult to obtain as President Abraham Lincoln’s criteria for capital punishment was to sort out those who had committed rape and murder from those who participated in battles.

The trials were known as a mockery, both blind and ignorant, according to the Family and Friends of Dakota Uprising Victims. Language barriers, lack of proper translations, and local hatred against the Dakota spurred judges to quick determinations. A total of 303 people were originally sentenced to death, and 16 were given prison terms. President Lincoln shortened the list to be executed to 39, and one elderly man was spared minutes before the execution by Sibley.

Under orders from President Lincoln, the U.S. Army carried out the largest mass execution in U.S. history in Mankato, the word for Blue Earth in the Dakota language.

Abraham Lincoln letter and signature regarding the Dakota 38

The day before the mass execution, Reverend Stephen Riggs said some of the condemned “availed themselves of the opportunity to receive the Christian rite” of baptism. The prisoners were chained in pairs and to the floor.

“It was a sad, a sickening sight, to see that group of miserable dirty savages, chained to the floor, and awaiting the apparent unconcern the terrible fate toward which they were then so rapidly approaching,” Riggs wrote for newspapers in 1862.

A man identified as Father Augustine Ravoux, a noted Catholic patriarch of the Minnesota church, addressed the condemned, but was interrupted when an elderly Dakota “broke out in a most lamentable and unearthly wail; one by one took up the lay, and ere long the walls resounded with the mournful ‘death song.’”

When a second missionary began his address, the Dakota once again began singing.

Soon after, the condemned were bound, hands behind their backs. Many dressed in traditional blankets, white muslin hoods were slipped over their heads.

At precisely 10 a.m., the condemned were then marched to the gallows, a square structure on Main Street, between the jail and the Minnesota River. “The mechanism of the whole thing consisted in raking the platform by means of the pulley, and then making the rope fast, when by a blow from an ax by a man standing in the centre of the square, the platform falls; the large opening in its centre protects the executioner from being crushed by the fall.”

They wore war paint, and hopped on one foot to the gallows. Some of the condemned who had been “Christianized” sang “I’m on the Iron Road to the Spirit Land,” while others sang a native war song. One person among the condemned yelled out, “Hear me my people, today is not a day of defeat, it is a day of victory. For we have made our peace with our creator, and now go to be with him forever… Do not mourn for us, rejoice with us, for it is a good day to die.”

The spectacle drew people by the thousands. “Every convenient place from which to view the tragic scene was soon appropriated. The street was full, the house tops were literally crowded, and every available space was occupied.”

More than 1,500 soldiers also were present to keep the peace.

“Instead of shrinking or resistance, all were ready, and even seemed eager to meet their fate. Rudely they jostled against each other, as they rushed from the doorway, ran the gauntlet of the troops, and clambered up the steps to the treacherous drop. As they came up and reached the platform, they filed right and left, and each one took his position as though they had rehearsed the programme.”

Three taps of the drum signaled the executioner.

Upon the first tap, the condemned reached for each others’ hands, and shouted out their names to watching relatives.

The second tap followed. Stillness descended upon the scene.

“Again the doleful tap breaks on the stillness of the scene. Click! Goes the sharp ax, and the descending platform leaves the bodies of thirty-eight human beings dangling in the air.”

Most died instantly; some struggled. One rope broke, and a new length was quickly tied and the condemned hung until he was dead.

“Thirty-eight human beings suspended in the air, on the bank of the beautiful Minnesota; above, the smiling, clear, blue sky; beneath and around, the silent thousands, hushed to a deathly silence by the chilling scene before them, while the bayonets bristling in the sunlight added to the importance of the occasion.”

Their bodies were buried in a large hole in a sandbar in the Minnesota River.

President Lincoln later explained the mass execution to the U.S. Senate.

“Anxious to not act with so much clemency as to encourage another outbreak on one hand, nor with so much severity as to be real cruelty on the other, I ordered a careful examination of the records of the trials to be made, in view of first ordering the execution of such as had been proved guilty of violating females.”

Many local politicians and military personnel sent telegrams to the President to execute all 303 prisoners.

Sibley sent a telegram to President Lincoln the day after the executions. “The 38 Indians and half-breeds ordered by you for execution were hung yesterday at 10 a.m. Everything went off quietly.”

Hanging of the 38 Sioux at Mankato – sketch by W.H. Childs

Racism today

Thompson began teaching himself the flute while in college and now tells native stories with his songs, frequently in the Black Hills at the Crazy Horse Memorial, the world’s largest stone carving, which is not yet finished. Many of his tribe’s old songs and traditions are gone, but he’s discovered a few songs Jesuit priests recorded years ago, and he creates his own music.

Darren J. Thompson “Pipigew” or flue player – wet plat by Shand Balkowitsch

He plays prayer songs, songs for nature, songs to honor corn grinding, which he described as experiences for people to be baby fed native trauma and culture. Before Europeans “discovered” America, estimates put 50 million natives north of the Mexican border. By 1900, less than 100,000 remained, he said.

“With that comes an immeasurable loss of a people, languages, knowledge, their history, and their culture, and one of the ways I try to emphasize that particular fact is explaining this music is a part of who we are and it’s a very pleasant thing to listen to.”

Thompson has seen racism up close and it has been personal. As an Ojibwe, his tribe had issues over hunting and spear fishing rights, a fundamental part of their original treaties with the U.S. government. One of the ideologies he faced as a child was the “Save a walleye, kill an Indian” slogan. He has brown skin, and was called a “timber n*gger.” He received death threats in college, and close friends were also threatened.

The dangers Native Americans face today are just as real as they were in 1862, he said, although this time perhaps not at gunpoint, but with the burning of fossil fuels. Communication and mutual understanding could ease the months-long standoff.

“If somebody is wanting to understand, they need to specifically go in to speak with the people of Standing Rock,” he said. “It’s going to become too late if we don’t stop being so reliant on fossil fuels.

“What’s really challenging for an entire community is to have to swallow the inability of this company to consult, to invite the community to the table to have significant contributions. In the lack of doing that 86 burial sites were desecrated or harmed because of their inability to consult or to invite the community to the table.

“The people there are not anti-white, they’re anti-greed. They want a clean environment for everybody. It’s not that they want to harm the police or harm the pipeline workers. The people that want the pipeline want it built only because native people don’t want it built.”

Asbridge said racism is deep-rooted in the Peace Garden State, frequently reminding him of the days in the deep south when white people believed they had a moral right to go so far as to have white-only drinking fountains.

In coffee parlors and coffee shops around Bismarck he’s heard people say “we ought to go kill those damn Indians that are protesting.’

“Makes you wonder. When you hear it, it’s just really startling, do you really know what is coming out of your mouth? We’re being guided here without us thinking very clearly.”

Racism dates back to 1862 and beyond, Asbridge said.

“It’s kinda cultural, it goes back to the Scandinavian and the German roots – we got that built into us, instead of questioning government, we defer to it. An example is the response of police to the pipeline, they’ve been the aggressors in my mind, no question about it. I think they were sent there to antagonize the Natives.”

Early on, someone should have went down, rolled up their sleeves, and over pots of strong coffee discussed plans, man to man. “That to me is a crime, it’s a criminal activity to do that. The dogs, the rubber bullets, the water hoses, what the hell is the purpose of that?

“It’s an indicator of the culture here. Fighting the culture is a tough job.”

As Jack Dalrymple prepared to step down from the governorship, he received a standing ovation after he praised law enforcement and National Guard efforts during the Dakota Access Pipeline controversy. “Many of our people have gone months without a day off, ably managing the onslaught of out-of-state agitators in a situation that could never have been anticipated.

“The people of North Dakota can take satisfaction in knowing that the financial strength of their state is among the best in the nation,” Dalrymple said. He left a financially stable state to the newly elected 33rd governor, Doug Burgum.

The state may be financially secure, at least for the time being, but many agree the Peace Garden State’s spirit is sick. The symptoms are evident; the disease is contagious. From state politicians accepting big oil bribes during election races, to ignoring its first citizens, to not consulting appropriately with sovereign nations, to repressing the collective voices of North Dakota’s original peoples, racism is still alive and well, and living in the Peace Garden State.