A 1953 bill called for the termination of your tribe, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, at “the earliest possible time.” What was the situation like then, and how did it influence your becoming an activist?
It was 1953 when I was sent to the Wahpeton boarding school. My grandfather had died about six months before that. My grandmother was trying to get some assistance to feed me, my sister, and my cousin. She was living in the same house that we were raised in. They came, got us three kids, and put us in boarding school. I got out in 1956.
I came back here to Turtle Mountain to live with my dad and stepmother, and they were all organizing. I listened to some of the meetings they had, and they were talking about termination—that we were going to be the next reservation to be terminated, because we heard what was going on with the Menominees. They told my dad and his generation that they had to sign up for relocation, and that we were being terminated in Turtle Mountain, because it was too small of a reservation.
But my dad and his generation stood up to it, and told them, “No, you ain’t even paid us for the land you took already.” They took land from the Minnesota border all the way to Montana—they called it the Ten-Cent Treaty. They said our land was only worth ten cents an acre. It was filled with minerals, and it was probably one of the biggest ripoffs in the history of Native people.
The protest against termination was one of my first demonstrations. I was about thirteen. They took over the B.I.A. [Bureau of Indian Affairs] building. In the basement was the jail. They took over the jail and they occupied it all day. Celia Dakota, my stepmother’s sister, was doing most of the talking, and she was very angry. The superintendent was Mr. Rice. I’m standing in the back listening to all this, and the phone rang, and he answered the phone. When he hung up, he said, “I have to go now, you guys got to clear out. It’s my wife, and she said my dinner’s getting cold.” Ms. Celia got pissed off. She said, “You son of a bitch, my children are up home starving. You’re worrying about your goddam meal getting cold?” She started calling to hang him—literally, I’m not exaggerating. She said, “Somebody get a rope.” Nobody had a rope, thank God.