In the first episode of Season 4 of the LANDBACK For the People Podcast, NDN Collective’s Senior Tactical Media Strategist, Lorenzo Serna, interviews NDN Collective founder and CEO Nick Tilsen. During the episode, they discuss Nick’s origins as an organizer, unpack what it means to be a leader in Indigenous movement spaces, and share more about the circumstances surrounding Nick’s upcoming trial, where he is facing up to 26 years in prison based on politically motivated charges.
Origins as a Cultural Organizer
When asked about what it means to be an organizer, Nick shared, “You’re organizing to put some work in or something that needs to be done in the community. You’re organizing because there’s a gap that exists.” This work is about bringing people together to work towards a common goal and being ready to admit what we don’t know. The work often takes a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, and sometimes organizing means just washing the dishes after the community dinner.
Nick’s organizing background originated in cultural organizing, which uses the lessons from ceremonies to build collective power and win issues. He shares a story about how, when he was a teenager, he worked with other community members to organize against a proposed shooting range at the base of the sacred site Bear Butte. Through cultural organizing, the group mobilized thousands of people to speak up against the shooting range, which led to a lawsuit they won.
Risks as a Movement Leader
Lorenzo and Nick also discuss the risks that come along with being a visible movement leader. “I come from a lot of leaderless movement spaces where we did very intentional work to not have visible leadership because we were worried for those people all the time,” reflects Lorenzo. They then pose the question to Nick: “What makes you willing to take on this risk of being a visible person in these spaces, which are so under attack?”
“I think to me, it comes down to my role amongst my people,” Nick asserts. He reflects on the cultural traits he was raised with, and how he views his role in the community as stepping into what his grandmas and grandpas raised him to be. “When the grandma said what you’re supposed to do, you kind of do it,” Nick states.
But he also understands the risk that this role brings – a reality that was at the forefront of his mind when he founded NDN Collective. “I knew that if we were going to push against the system, they were going to come after us… an organization that’s equipped to fight back,” Nick says. He gleaned lessons from past resistance movements when developing the plan for NDN Collective in order to have the infrastructure to better protect and support our movement leaders.
The Fight for Nick’s Freedom
Lorenzo and Nick then turn their attention to the current repression that Nick is facing – inflated and fabricated charges accusing him of aggravated assault, simple assault, and obstruction of a law enforcement officer. Nick shares how the trial he is facing stems from an incident in June of 2022, when he stopped to do a routine cop watch while he was driving through Rapid City. “I just happened to observe a cop pull over or come up on an unsheltered relative,” Nick explained. “There’s a lot of community care happening in Rapid City. And so we have community safety, community cop watches where we basically just watch an interaction from the police to mainly our unsheltered relatives.”
Since Nick was driving at the time, he started to pull his vehicle into a parking stall and then stopped when a cop stepped into the parking spot. When the cop asked Nick, “What the hell are you doing here?” Nick responded that he was making sure the police were treating this unsheltered relative with dignity and respect. Then, because his vehicle was still partially in the road, he finished pulling into the parking stall.
Then a passerby approached the cop and said, “Hey, he just tried to run you over!” The cop then looked at Nick and said, “Oh, he did, didn’t he?” Within a few minutes, Nick recalls being surrounded by police cars. “I locked myself in the vehicle. I turned on my dome light,” Nick recalls. “I showed them my hands, and the vehicle never touched the police officer.” Nick requested to speak to a police supervisor, and after he explained what happened, the police officer let him go.
Nothing happened until a full year later, in June of 2023, when NDN Collective announced that it would host a March for Justice protesting police brutality in Rapid City against Indigenous peoples. Nick shared how the prosecutor in the state’s attorney’s office and the prosecutor in Rapid City sat down with law enforcement agencies in Rapid City and decided to press charges for the incident that happened over one year earlier. “I was shocked when they came back with the charge aggravated assault of a police officer because that is a crime of intent – you intended to show up and to create harm on a police officer – when my intent was nothing to do other than to show up and do community safety and protection of a relative,” Nick said.
Nick continued to recount the suspicious circumstances leading up to the trial. In addition to waiting a full year to press charges, every single judge in the judicial circuit recused themselves from this case. Additionally, he was originally charged with aggravated assault and obstruction of an officer in 2023, but just a few weeks before the trial, they added an additional charge of simple assault. NDN Collective believes this last-minute added charge, which is a felony that is easier to convict with, to be further evidence of political motivation and an abuse of power by the prosecutor’s office.
As he faces this fight for his freedom, Nick shared how grateful he is for the outpouring of support he’s receiving. “In facing these charges and being on this journey, I’ve realized that they really want you to feel isolated,” Nick reflected. “I’ve gotten an outpouring of support, and of love, and petitions, and people donating to the legal fund, and people writing letters, and people calling the prosecutor’s office trying to get them to drop the charges.” All of this support from near and afar has helped him combat those feelings of isolation and inspire him in this difficult time. Nick concludes, “And so I thank all the people that pray for me out there, and for all of the elders and the matriarchs for standing with me and supporting me in this struggle, and to movement comrades across Turtle Island.”
Watch the full podcast episode here or listen on your preferred podcast platform
Learn more about how to support Nick here: https://ndnco.cc/nicksupport
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NDN Collective is an Indigenous-led organization dedicated to building Indigenous power. Through organizing, activism, philanthropy, grantmaking, capacity-building, and narrative change, we are creating sustainable solutions on Indigenous terms.
