Winona LaDuke addresses mascot opponents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on November 2, 2014. Photo from Simon Moya-Smith / Facebook

Leaders and residents of Little Earth of United Tribes in Minnesota have been fighting racist mascots for generations.

Cassandra Holmes, a member of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Ojibwe, grew up at the housing complex in Minneapolis. She attended her first anti-mascot protest as a teen and participated in a massive protest at the November 2 NFL game between Minnesota and Washington.

Her 10-year-old son also marched. He's part of the new generation of opponents of the Washington team's racist mascot.

“Because they’re offending our culture with their actions,” Daniel Solis-Corona Jr. said of the team, The Washington Post reported.

Mascots are just one part of the struggle at Little Earth, whose activist roots date to the 1970s, when the complex was created by the federal government. Leaders and residents have fought against police brutality and violent crime and they have advocated for better treatment of the urban Indian population in Minneapolis.

“Inside every Little Earth resident is an activist waiting to come out," Frank Downwind, the director of the youth center at the complex, told the Post.

Get the Story:
Amid Little Earth’s poverty and pain, a protest culture aimed at Redskins’ name (The Washington Post 11/14)

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