The grandchildren generation is coming: Winona LaDuke talks with Nick Tilsen about stepping up as a young Lakota leader.(q & a)(Interview)

Nick Tilsen comes from a long line of activists. His maternal great-grandmother was Meridel LeSeur, the renowned writer, poet and political activist from Minnesota. His paternal grandfather is Ken Tilsen, a civil and political rights lawyer who defended activists at Wounded Knee in the 1970s. His mother is Lakota activist JoAnn Tall, the winner of the 1993 Goldman Environmental Prize for opposing a toxic waste dump on Indian lands. Nick's father is Mark Tilsen, a political activist who works behind the scenes raising money, awareness and encouraging activists.

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Now 23, Nick has been raised between two worlds. He graduated from an almost all-white school in Minnesota, while being raised by his father and a large extended family of political activists in the Twin Cities area. He has moved back to the Pine Ridge reservation and is a member of the Lakota Action Network, which is creating campaigns to build and defend the Lakota Nation.

How did being raised by an activist family affect you as you grew up?

There comes a point where you learn all this stuff in your family. You come from the families who are marching, and you wonder why you are marching. And then you see how blind your peers are, because there are not enough activist families. We end up sort of separating ourselves from everyone else because there are no other people like us. And when you see that the things they are teaching in school are just totally opposite to what we are learning at home and in the rest of the world, and you see that everyone else is buying the lics, you get so angry. You ask yourself, "Am I going to become numb to it?" or, "Why should I have the responsibility to do anything about it?" That's the point I came to in high school, like, "Why is this my responsibility?" You either become numb or really angry and then get active.

How did you become politicized?

I was already there. Three years ago, I was in my house in Minnesota, and I had this dream. I dreamed that I was a little baby, like three years old, and I was in this black van. And there were people all over the place, and there was a stage, and my mom and dad were talking. I hated the fact that they locked me in this van. There was all kinds of confusion in the crowd, and someone came in and a tear gas canister, filled up the entire van with gas, and they couldn't get me out of my seat belt.