Fighter Vaughn Bull Lodge stands guard over South Minneapolis

When Vaughn Bull Lodge makes the rounds at Little Earth, a Native American housing complex in south Minneapolis, he hears stories of daughters who were attacked, granddaughters who go missing.

Prostitution and trafficking are persistent problems, Lodge says, but the solutions require daunting policy changes like a minimum wage increase and a psychological shift among the youth. “After 500 years of genocide and oppression, they’re not led to believe that we can be better than we are, that we can be successful,” he says.

Lodge, 38, opened up Dog Soldier MMA gym in 2013. These days, he trains about 40 young people in self-defense and self-respect according to traditional Native warrior ethics. “Dog Soldier” alludes to the military bands of the Cheyenne, who defeated Custer at Little Bighorn – the “kamikaze of the plains.”

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