In Minneapolis, Native Americans show how community care is done
A barista volunteers at Indigenous-owned coffee shop Pow Wow Grounds while it is closed for business but open to community members, during a statewide pause in daily economic activity to protest the U.S. government's surge in ICE agents in Minneapolis, on Jan. 23.Erica Dischino/Reuters
There is a coffee shop called Pow Wow Grounds, on historic Franklin Avenue in south Minneapolis, which has once again become a place of hope, warmth and refuge from tyranny in America.
In 2020, Pow Wow threw open its doors to offer food and supplies to those who were out on the streets demonstrating against the police’s murder of George Floyd. After Renee Nicole Macklin Good was shot and killed on Jan. 7 by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, the shop has provided free coffee, soup, and a place to warm up for community members protesting the presence of ICE.
Pow Wow Grounds is owned by Robert Rice, a member of White Earth Nation, an Anishinaabe community that is the biggest reservation in Minnesota by land area. This makes sense, and not just because Minneapolis was where the American Indian Movement (AIM) was born – a group formed on Franklin Avenue in 1968 to address police brutality and poverty, including through volunteer AIM patrols to monitor officers’ interactions. It’s also because the Anishinaabeg are the first peoples of the land, and we believe in........
