All of the protesters who were arrested in
South Dakota Friday have been released,
except for Nick Tilsen, who we interviewed Friday.
Do you have the latest news on Nick Tilsen
and why he alone is continuing to be held,
Nick Estes?
Yeah.
So, first of all, the arrests that happened
of those 15 people at the blockade,
they were treaty defenders, right?
So, when Trump is talking about erasing history,
he’s actually suppressing history.
The people who were arrested at this particular
blockade were arrested
because they were representing the true histories, right?
And so, Nick Tilsen was charged with several
things.
One of them is a serious charge.
It’s a second-degree robbery charge, which
in the state of South Dakota is a Class 4
felony, which is punishable up to 10 years
in prison.
He appears this morning in several hours,
at about 10 a.m.
Mountain Standard Time, before a judge.
And it has yet to be seen whether or not Tilsen
himself will be charged with the new riot
boosting laws that Kristi Noem signed into
law earlier this year, something that Nick
himself has successfully sued the state of
South Dakota over in the past, and the courts
have sided with him, saying that it is a violation
of First Amendment rights.
The state went back and rewrote the laws.
But now it’s a question about whether or
not he’s going to be charged with these
new riot boosting laws that were created and
drafted in preparation for the construction
of the Keystone XL pipeline, something that
NDN Collective and Nick himself has been adamantly
opposed to because it violates, again, the
1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, because it trespasses
through the heart of our treaty lands and
skirts around two major reservations,
the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe as well as the
Rosebud Sioux Tribe.
So, it’s important to remember that already
the state of South Dakota has one of the highest
rates of incarceration of Native people.
There are about 10% — we’re about 10%
of the state’s population, but we make up
about 30% of the jail population.
And in a place like Pennington County, where
Nick’s being held right now, I think it’s
around 50 to 75% jail population are Native
right now.
So, this is more than just about his arrest
at Mount Rushmore.
It’s about a long-standing treaty claim.
And I think Nick would agree with me on this,
that this is about treaty rights.
He’s a treaty defender.
And it’s unclear why all 15 other protesters
were released, but not Nick himself.
