The Sioux in Minneapolis: Protest, Sovereignty, and the Ghost of 1973

ARE THE SIOUX TRYING TO MANUFACTURE ANOTHER WOUNDED KNEE?

The detainment of several Oglala Sioux tribal citizens during Minneapolis’s ongoing immigration crackdown should never have happened. They are U.S. citizens—by statute and by history—and should not have been swept up in a dragnet meant for undocumented migrants. The tribe was right to demand clarity and the men’s release. Beyond that, however, the situation has taken a turn that reveals something deeper and more problematic about Sioux political strategy in 2026.

What began as a bureaucratic overreach is now being inflated into a sweeping sovereignty confrontation. Tribal leaders have invoked treaties, demanded federal meetings, deployed enrollment staff, and framed the incident as evidence that the United States has once again failed to honor its historic commitments. Minneapolis activists, delighted to find fresh oxygen for their protests against ICE operations, have folded the Sioux into an already-chaotic spectacle whose primary goal is not legal redress but political theater.

Here is the problem: the issue at hand—immigration enforcement—is not a Sioux issue. It is not even a tribal issue. It is the exclusive domain of the federal government, constitutionally and statutorily, and no treaty with the Lakota ever granted Indigenous citizens the power to override Congress on immigration policy. If anything, the off-reservation context renders tribal sovereignty largely symbolic. Yet the Oglala leadership has chosen to attach itself to the one policy arena where their leverage is weakest.

This is not irrational; it is historical. Sioux political culture has been anchored to confrontation and spectacle since the American Indian Movement era of the 1960s and 1970s, culminating in the 71-day armed occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973. AIM’s lesson was simple: visibility comes from conflict, not negotiation. Treaties are not enforced in courtrooms—but in front of cameras. Sovereignty is performed, not administered. For a time, that formula worked, or at least appeared to. It forced a nation to pay attention to a people it preferred to forget.

But 1973 is a long way from 2026. Other tribes evolved. The Navajo built institutions. The Cherokee built bureaucracy and contracting capacity. The Seminole built casinos. Alaska Native corporations built resource empires. The Sioux—especially the Oglala—built narrative sovereignty. They emerged with grievance capital, not governing capacity. And grievance capital depreciates over time. Without spectacle, it becomes worthless.

That is what we are watching in Minneapolis: not a coherent intervention in federal

immigration policy, but a struggle for continued relevance. The Sioux are attempting to graft a sovereignty drama onto a protest ecosystem dominated by anti-ICE activists, sanctuary-city progressives, and immigration NGOs. The fit is awkward. It risks turning the tribe into a mere faction within someone else’s coalition, rather than an independent sovereign voice.

Worse, it puts them on the wrong side of public sentiment. The country is in no mood to see federal immigration enforcement obstructed, particularly when the target is a federal agency lawfully executing congressional mandates. If the spectacle escalates—if Sioux protesters try to block ICE vans or interfere with federal operations—the optics will invert overnight: from victims of federal misrecognition to activists protecting illegal immigration. That is a losing frame in every jurisdiction except the activist enclaves of Minneapolis and the editorial boards of a dwindling set of ideological newspapers.

politics cannot survive purely on nostalgia, grievance, or symbolic sovereignty. Trump’s return to the White House further accelerates that shift. He has little patience for victim-based politics, but considerable interest in deal-based sovereignty, resource development, and infrastructure. Tribes that can transact will be empowered. Tribes that depend on spectacle will be sidelined.

The Oglala Sioux deserve better than to remain frozen in the AIM era, reenacting Wounded Knee on every national issue that promises a camera lens. If tribal sovereignty is to mean anything in the 21st century, it must evolve from dramatic confrontation to durable capacity. That will not be found in Minneapolis, and certainly not in someone else’s protest movement.