Indie film reprises bitter fight over Hwy. 55

BY DICK SAUNDERS

“STOP the ReRoute: Taking a Stand on Sacred Land” documents the violent protests over the 1997-98 reroute of Highway 55 through storied Indian land, a city park and a quiet urban neighborhood. It captures clearly the brutal tensions that can arise when cultural traditions conflict with the perceived needs of modern society.

Oak Folk Films, an independent Minnesota producer, has added a vivid yet poignant chapter to Minnesota’s evolving cultural history. ”STOP,” which makes its Twin Cities debut at 7 p.m. Saturday, March 28, at Roosevelt High School, is particularly useful as a teaching moment for young and old.
Tickets are $5.

The 92-minute film recounts the mixed palette of homeowner anguish, Mdewakanton Sioux and preservationist appeals for protecting sacred oaks and the direct intervention tactics of Earth First!’s lockdowns that resulted in the longest urban encampment in known Minnesota history (479 days).
Over that stretch, dozens of protestors were beaten and pepper-sprayed in a 4:45 a.m. snowy winter raid, other dozens more were jailed (90 percent of whom later were released without charges), tents were burned, homes destroyed, and savanna oak and cottonwood trees cut down.

The producers spent nine years gathering footage from amateur photographers, TV stations and MnDOT archives to portray the struggle against an all-powerful MnDOT, with demonstrations in the State Capitol Rotunda, MnDOT headquarters and at numerous traffic-stopping street venues.

Among the names from the past that resurface are a veritable “Who’s Who” of a generation ago: Gov. Arne Carlson, State Transportation Comm-issioner Jim Denn, Met Council Chair Curt Johnson, Minneapolis Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton, pitted against aging homeowner Carol Kratz, Vietnam war protestor David Dellinger, American Indian Movement (AIM) founder Dennis Banks, Mendota Mdewakanton Cultural Chair Jim Anderson, and visiting tribal leaders from South Dakota and Oklahoma.

The upshot: more than $1.2 million spent on law enforcement and legal research into the legitimacy of Sioux claims to Coldwater Spring . . . and a pivotal decision that allowed the highway project and its estimated $400 million downtown-to-airport light rail line to proceed.

On the positive side were a hard-won height increase in a highway section crossing over Coldwater Spring, and a 2001 state law declaring the spring and collecting pool an Historic Landmark.

Was the cost in dollars and to Minnesota’s reputation for cultural respect worth it? What price are we willing to pay for suburban commuter freedom when there’s a light trail line planned in adjoining space? Can society afford anarchism (especially when it firebombs urban horticultural and genetic research laboratories)?

Progressives will view it one way, conservatives another. The decision, it would seem, depends on the viewer’s cultural values.
The Oak Folk team is seeking regional and national distribution for “STOP the ReRoute.” The next Twin Cities showings will be at 7 p.m., March 28, at the Riverview Theater (38th St. and 42nd Ave. S.) and at 1 p.m., March 29, at the Walker Art Center. Tickets are $5.