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- By Levi Rickert
MINNEAPOLIS - Maya Thin Elk ordered a mango smoothie and breakfast burrito at Pow Wow Grounds Coffee before going to the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center to pick up supplies for families homebound with newborns and pregnant mothers who are unable to leave their homes.
The Sicangu Lakota woman is eight months pregnant, and is a doula for expecting mothers. Thin Elk’s deliveries have increased since January, when federal immigration raids became a daily, violent, occurrence in the Twin Cities and left some families unable to go out for basic supplies. For instance, she said the husband for a family she helps was recently picked up and is now detained in Texas at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility. Her deliveries offer some protection from encounters with ICE.
“It’s really about getting them the supplies they need. As an Indigenous doula, it's really about supporting them emotionally,” Thin Elk said.
That type of direct community aid and response to federal immigration police is now part of the daily life for many in Minnesota, particularly the regulars at Pow Wow Grounds Coffee. The Native American–owned coffee shop is now serving as a headquarters for community first responders like Thin Elk to fuel up before going into the streets to offer whatever help they can.
This includes the mobile whistle patrols weaving through nearby neighborhood streets, home to thousands of the approximately 35,000 Native Americans living in Minneapolis and St. Paul.
The mobile patrols are volunteers who call themselves observers. They walk and drive the streets of Minneapolis to alert the community to the presence of ICE agents or Border Patrol.
Minutes after Thin Elk’s order, Holly Rock (Leech Lake) stopped by for coffee and snacks before heading out on patrol. She said she patrols as often as possible, carrying a whistle to alert others if she spots ICE agents.
Rock said her motivation comes from her nine-year-old daughter, who is half Latino and half Leech Lake Ojibwe.
“The best I can do is prevent what's happening, because if they're going to do it now, they're going to do it to the next generation. And I just don't think it's fair,” Rock said.
‘We knew how to organize quickly’
Pow Wow Grounds Coffee became the patrol headquarters on January 7, the day Renee Nicole Good dropped her six-year-old son off at school, and shortly after, was killed by federal immigration officer Jonathan Ross.
Since then, Pow Wow Grounds has served between 600 gallons of free coffee to volunteers each week. Every day, owner Robert Rice (White Earth Ojibwe) ensures three types of soup are available for volunteers patrolling Native neighborhoods. Last month he said roughly 400 gallons of soup were distributed, along with approximately 3,000 pieces of frybread.
The shop is located in the heart of the American Indian Cultural Corridor in Minneapolis. During a recent Sunday evening, a robust fire roared in the parking lot against 20-degree temperatures. Inside, employees moved steadily behind the counter, preparing specialty coffees for a constant stream of customers.
An out-of-town visitor stopping in for a latte might never realize that the Native American–owned coffee shop is now serving as the headquarters for mobile patrols tracking ICE.
(photo/Levi Rickert)
The headquarters operates out of a space that, in ordinary times, houses the All My Relations Art Gallery. The artwork has been taken down, leaving bare walls where vibrant Native American paintings once hung.
Art has been replaced by tables filled with donated goods for mobile patrol volunteers: gas cards, snacks, whistles, gloves, socks, bottled water, energy drinks, and other essential items. Rice also coordinates the steady flow of donations delivered to the coffee shop. The supplies are donated t from places throughout the country. Some days, Pow Wow Grounds receives up to 200 packages for the makeshift headquarters.
Rice, who opened Pow Wow Grounds 15 years ago on East Franklin Avenue, told Native News Online there was never any question about allowing his business to be used as a headquarters.
“We had experience from the days after George Floyd was killed. Our people mobilized and used this place as headquarters back then. So, we knew how to organize quickly,” Rice said. “We knew the day Renee Good was killed we had to mobilize the patrols again.”
AIM Influence in 2026
Rice shares responsibility for staffing the headquarters at Pow Wow Grounds Coffee with Crow Bellecourt (White Earth Ojibwe), the eldest son of the late Clyde Bellecourt, one of the co-founders of the American Indian Movement (AIM).
Crow Bellecourt is the executive director of the Indigenous Protector Movement (IPM), formed to fill gaps in services not offered by existing nonprofit organizations serving Native Americans in the Twin Cities, including Indigenous-led advocacy and healing initiatives.
“IPM breathes life into that vision, honoring ancestral tactics while forging new pathways for today’s challenges,” according to the organization’s website.
Like Rice, Bellecourt points to the need for patrols during the days following George Floyd’s murder, when Native businesses along the Franklin corridor required protection.Bellecourt also notes that Pow Wow Grounds Coffee sits directly across the street from where AIM was founded in 1968, in response to police brutality against the Native community.
“We're doing this for our community. All we're doing is trying to protect our community, which covers four or five blocks from here. It’s for our people; this is our community,” Bellecourt said.
Inside the coffee shop on Monday morning, a young man emerged from a back room carrying sage burning in a clamshell. He offered the sage first to employees behind the counter, then to patrons waiting in line and those seated at tables.
Before she went to make deliveries in the Minnesota cold, Thin Elk said part of her doula care is to provide pregnant women access to traditional medicines, like sage.
“Specifically, we try to give them the traditional medicines that Indigenous mothers that I work with want. A lot of Native moms want sage at the hospital, those types of medicines,” Thin Elk said.
In addition to serving Native mothers, Thin Elk also supports Hispanic women. She recounted one case in which a Hispanic mother’s husband was sent to a deportation center in Texas, leaving her without income and too afraid to leave her home for fear of being apprehended by ICE.
Rock, the other Native mother who stopped at Pow Wow Grounds before whistle duty, said she is especially passionate about preventing ICE from violating the rights of Native American citizens.
“They should do their jobs of, as they say, ‘arresting rapists and killers’ they claim they’re grabbing, but don’t hurt our community,” Rock said.
Later that day, FRANCE 24 English visited Pow Wow Grounds Coffee to speak with Rice and Bellecourt, who shared the story of the Native community’s mobilization in Minnesota with an international audience.
Rice and Bellecourt said the Twin City patrols will continue for as long as they’re needed. The mission is simple: keep the Native community safe.
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