I was reported to the FBI as a “domestic terrorist” by Fort Lewis College professors and Durango police on Feb. 11, 2003, in response to a column I wrote for the Minneapolis Star Tribune that mentioned the American Indian Movement. This was part of a larger, racial criminal libel prosecution. While it was eventually reduced on appeal and I returned home, my confusion and trauma remain.
The Jan. 24 killing of Alex Pretti, a VA nurse – who, like me, was simply attempting to negotiate the nuances of the First Amendment – by ICE agents, and his immediate labeling by Kristi Noem as a “domestic terrorist” certainly evokes comparisons to my prosecution, which in many ways foreshadowed ICE and the selective application of constitutional rights.
I am a disabled Tlingit veteran diagnosed with service-connected PTSD and encephalopathy – and a terminal liver condition exacerbated by a stay in filthy Colorado prisons without medical care. The VA staff are always warm and attentive, so I feel like I knew Alex personally. We both were nonviolent people subjected to life-ending violence (I’m just taking a little longer to die).
My mother, Ernestine Hayes, is a Tlingit memoirist, professor emerita and American Book Award winner. FLC professors depicted her as Ma Barker in their reports – an irony, given that her books are required reading in some FLC courses. Race was an undeniable factor in my case, as it is in ICE tactics. What is unfolding nationally has been present in Durango for decades, maintained by an establishment that benefits from the racial hierarchy.
Dave Stephenson
Juneau, Alaska