“Tear Down That Fort!”: Nick Estes on Minnesota’s Resistance - and Responsibility
Below is a transcript of remarks delivered on January 23, 2026, by historian, organizer, and professor Nick Estes at the “ICE Out of Minnesota” rally held at the Target Center in downtown Minneapolis in conjunction with the general strike held in the city to protest the presence and actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Estes is the author of the celebrated book, Our History is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance (Verso, 2019). He is also one of the hosts of The Red Nation Podcast.
Nick Estes speaking at the “ICE Out of Minnesota” rally in Minneapolis on January 23, 2026.
My name is Nick Estes. I’m an enrolled member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe. I’m also an Associate Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota.
I’m out here today standing with my fellow educators whose schools are under attack, whose students are under attack, whose families and communities are under attack. We can’t wait for the bosses, we can’t wait for the managers to do what’s right. We can’t wait for them to grow a conscience or a spine. We have to exercise that right as workers.
As an educator, and as someone who’s Indigenous from these lands, Bde Óta Othúŋwe, what you call Minneapolis, I’d like to tell a little bit of history. Because that fort - Fort Snelling - when it was built in the 19th century, it was built to genocide our people. It was built as a concentration camp, as a projection of US power in this region to genocide Indigenous people and Dakota people. From the very first stone they laid in that fort, Dakota people resisted. And we will continue to resist until they remove the very last stone from that fort.
A view of Fort Snelling. (Photo: Gabriel Vanslette, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
Because all of you today are now feeling what we have been feeling for centuries. This did not begin in December with Operation Metro Surge. This began centuries ago when they built that fort. The regional ICE facility is now housed at Fort Snelling. As somebody from the Oceti Sakowin, we say “Abolish ICE, ICE out of Minnesota,” yes. But if we want this problem to end once and for all, we also have to say, “Take down that fort!” And I want you all to remember that when you’re on the streets, when you’re on your patrols, when you’re watching your students, your family members get taken away, that this isn’t something new or unique, but this is a continuum of colonialism, and it takes all of us. This isn’t just an Indian problem. This is all of our problems. And we have to stand up as workers, as educators, as health care workers, to fight back. And as we see on the streets, that means tearing down that fort in our minds, tearing down that fort in our hearts, tearing down that fort that surrounds our spirit and tries to choke it out. But it also means tearing down that fort. Thank you.
