Opinion | The Whipple Building stands on a historical landscape of law, power and racism

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“Bdote,” the land beneath the Whipple Federal Building at Fort Snelling, is not neutral ground. It’s a place where federal law and power have repeatedly decided who is worthy of protection and who can be cast aside. That history matters now, because the patterns formed here never ended but were institutionalized.

Long before a federal office complex rose near Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, this place was Bdote, the sacred uniting of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers, central to Dakota origin stories, culture and survival. European immigrant expansion treated that reality as an obstacle. In 1805, Lt. Zebulon Pike negotiated land cession for a military post that became Fort Snelling, atop the rivers as a symbol of federal authority over Indigenous land in the 1820s (Minnesota Historical Society).

From its earliest years, the fort enforced racial hierarchy. Although slavery was prohibited under the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and reaffirmed in the Missouri Compromise of 1820, U.S. Army officers brought enslaved African Americans to Fort Snelling and held them in bondage (William E. Lass, “Minnesota: A History,” 3rd ed., pp. 54-55). Federal law said slavery was illegal; federal power allowed it anyway.

Enslaved people resisted. In the 1830s, Rachel and Courtney (enslaved women with only first names), once held at Fort Snelling, successfully sued for freedom in Missouri courts, arguing that residence in free Minnesota territory made them free. Yet, the Army continued to ignore the law. Dred and Harriet Scott were enslaved at Fort Snelling despite these precedents. Their later freedom suit relied on the same reasoning — but when it reached the U.S. Supreme Court in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), the court ruled Black people could not be citizens and Congress could not prohibit slavery in the territories. The decision dismissed an entire people from constitutional protection.

Federal law proved equally devastating for the Dakota. Broken treaties, land theft and starvation led to the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. Military tribunals tried hundreds of Dakota men, often in proceedings lasting just minutes, and 303 were sentenced to death. President Abraham Lincoln commuted most sentences, sparing all but 38 Dakota men, who were hanged in Mankato on Dec. 26, 1862 — the largest mass execution in the U.S.

The federal building bears the name of Bishop Whipple, advocate for Dakota clemency. He condemned the trials, pressed Lincoln and Congress for humane treatment, and saved lives — but was unable to prevent executions or exile (William W. Folwell, “A History of Minnesota,” Vol. 2, pp. 283-284). Even then, moral advocacy conformed to limits set by a system intent on expulsion.

The Whipple Federal Building, constructed in the late 1960s on former military land, stands upon this landscape of constrained justice. Today, it houses ICE operations central to federal enforcement in Minnesota, including detention of immigrants and limited oversight access, drawing protests and scrutiny. Its facilities echo the historical logic of removal and containment: Certain communities, deemed undesirable, are being segregated, monitored and held in controlled spaces. Analogy to Japanese and Aleut internment camps in World War II is stark: federal law at once repurposed to confine entire populations based on identity.

History does not repeat itself exactly but parallels unlearned lessons. At Fort Snelling and Bdote, law was used to manage, contain and remove racialized communities while claiming fairness and restraint. Lincoln’s commutations and Whipple’s advocacy remind us that moral intention can coexist with still devastating outcomes.

Minnesota fairness and moral leadership now have global focus. Honesty about place and parallels is vital. Recent random arrests of Native American citizens by ICE highlight both history and injustice. The ground beneath the Whipple Building has witnessed illegal slavery, mass imprisonment and state-sanctioned execution. It now sits mired in immigration enforcement and raises urgent questions about transparency, accountability and human dignity. The question is not about this history’s discomfiting accuracy — it is whether we will let it inform how federal power is exercised today or whether we will again treat this land as if its past no longer matters.