Who Does the
USA Belong To?

Chapter I - The Peoples

Who Lived Here
Before

Minnesota is home to eleven federal tribal groups. Four of them are Dakota (Sioux), the first ever people to settle in Minnesota, whose history goes back 9,000 to 12,000 years according to archaeological findings. The other seven are Anishinaabe-Ojibwe (Chippewa), who originally came from the northeastern part of America searching for a new land in which "food grows on water."

Both groups have deep connections with nature that are evident from their oral history. Wilderness was engrained within their cultures - click the boxes to learn more.

Chapter II - Dispossession by Law

The Treaty Era
& Land Removal

Prior to European arrival, 10 million Native Americans such as the Dakota and Anishinaabe inhabited the land. By 1900, European colonisation had reduced that number to circa 300,000; 130,000 in Minnesota. Whilst removing the people, Europeans also removed the land.

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.

The colonisation of America simultaneously subjugated Native Americans and the wilderness they inhabited.

Chapter III - 1862

The U.S.-Dakota War

Following a series of broken treaties, deprivation of food, and settlers moving deeper into Dakota territory, the Dakota War commenced in August of 1862 and continued for six weeks. The consequences of the war were disastrous, not just for the Dakota people but also for the connection between the Dakota nation and the lands on which they thrived. Violence had entered into the wilderness itself that was being swallowed up by European expansion. Click each point to read more.

Chapter IV - 1820-1863

Fort Snelling:
Conquest in the Wilderness

The construction of Fort Snelling took place in 1820 on a piece of sacred land known to the Dakota Indians as Bdote, the place of origin of all Dakota life, at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers. The establishment of a military fort at such a location carried an implied message about possession of the territory. The fortress represented not only conquest of the wildness by humankind, but also control over the indigenous population of the region.

Following the Dakota War of 1862, 1,700 Dakota men, women, children, and elders were herded to a concentration camp near Fort Snelling, where hundreds of prisoners perished during the harsh Minnesota winter. Thus, the sacred place of life for the Dakotas became a place of death, while the wilderness that had supported their community for centuries was enclosed behind the walls of the very institution that deprived them of that land.

Chapter V - Primary Sources

Visual Evidence:
Land Managed and Lost

The purpose of the Nelson Act of 1889 was to move all members of the Anishinaabe community in Minnesota to the White Earth reservation, which was nothing but an encircled piece of land in the western part of the state, and sell off their vacated lands to the Europeans. The creation of the Nelson Act created a whole new idea about what could be defined as 'wilderness'. It was now a wilderness that was managed, bordered, and controlled according to Western ideas rather than according to native concepts.

Reservations were more than a place where Native people had been moved to. They represented the state's idea about managing the wilderness through its control over land enclosed by a boundary. The Anishinaabe had been looking after this piece of wilderness and maintaining it for years with the help of their own rules and regulation. But post-1889, these rules were changed. The wilderness was no longer governed by natives, i.e., those who had knowledge of it, but by the conquerors.

Click the artworks to explore their context

Chapter VII - The Wider Context

How This Links
to Wilderness Thinking

The contemporary treatment of Native Americans can be traced back to the Euro-centric and exclusionist views of conservationists during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The denial of indigenous culture began at the emergence of both conservationism and preservationist actions. Both concepts called for making America "for Americans."

The displacement of indigenous people was justified by the necessity to improve America through offering spaces that lack human presence and the possibility of the emergence of the Frontier concept. This corresponds to the contemporary notion that the elimination of "illegal aliens" would make America "American."

Chapter VIII - 2025-2026

History Echoes
in Minneapolis

Operation Metro Surge in Early December 2025 saw the deployment of 3,000 ICE agents in Minneapolis-St. Paul's twin cities. This led to 3,700 arrests, two deaths by shooting, one shooting without death, and a minimum of 33 wrongful detentions. The article that had caused Operation Metro Surge was later revealed to be an exaggeration; its primary source claimed that he could "find no evidence" to corroborate al-Shabaab's statements.

There have been reports of Oglala Sioux tribe members, individuals with indigenous ties to this same soil, being arrested and interrogated about their claim to residence. The ICE detention center is located within walking distance of Fort Snelling, which had been used 163 years ago to imprison the Dakota nation.