| RACIAL JUSTICE |
THE INCARCERATED BODY AND MUTUAL LIBERATION by Karen Van Fossan
E
ach month, behind the wheel of my 2002 Toyota, which runs better on the inside than it looks like it might from the outside, I take a 221 mile drive, past teeming lakes, clustering trees, and any number of big box stores, to Sandstone Federal Correctional Institution in Sandstone, Minnesota.
Or I used to, before the COVID-19 pandemic and the moratorium on public visitation. Rattler, also known as Michael Markus, lives there, along with roughly 1,155 other imprisoned men. I met him during the Standing Rock Water Protector movement, or revolution as he calls it. Rattler served as Akicita, an honored Lakota role of peace-protection and conflict deescalation. He took the name Rattler when he served as Akicita at Oceti Sakowin Camp. Like Rattler, Little Feather and Angry Bird also served as Akicita. Dion, the youngest of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) Political Prisoners, who celebrated his 21st birthday in prison, didn’t directly serve as Akicita, but he was associated with Akicita, and for this he was also charged. In a separate and complicated scenario, RedFawn, like countless other Water Protectors, fell in love at camp. Unfortunately, her love story ended in prison time and, to quote her support committee, entrapment.1 30
