A couple of weeks ago, my sister and I visited the MN150 exhibit at the Minnesota Historical Society.
The exhibit and book, Minnesota 150: The People, Places, and Things that Shape Our State by Kate Roberts, displays and documents "… responses to the following question: What person, place, thing, or event originating in Minnesota do you think has transformed our state, our country, or the world?" (See the MN150 wiki for nominated answers.)
I took photos of all the exhibit displays that have some relevance to this blogsite and project, i.e., Native American Minnesota.
But rather than writing about my reaction to/detailed opinion of the exhibit all at once here in a blog post, I’d rather do it a little bit at a time in the comment thread attached to this post. And I’d like to invite visitors to this blog to comment here as well.
I’ve created a Native American Minnesota in the MN150 exhibit photo album, and I’ve uploaded the photos so that most are 1600 pixels wide which allows you to use the Picasaweb ‘zoom’ tool to read the text. (Click the screenshot image on the right to see the red arrow pointing to the zoom icon.)
So when you’re viewing a photo in the album (this one, for example), click the zoom icon to display the larger photo, click and hold your cursor on the enlarged photo, and then drag the image left/right/up/down as desired.
See the album of 42 photos or this slideshow:


I was pleased to see how many different displays were Native American-related and that overall they were well done.
And that’s not just because my great great great grandfather, Joseph Renville #116, was featured!
http://picasaweb.google.com/nativeamericanminn150/NativeAmericanMinnesotaInTheMN150Exhibit/photo#5208054684399034722
This sentence in the immigrants display #62 was disappointingly mild:
“Immigrants claimed land from native people from what is now known as America…”
http://picasaweb.google.com/nativeamericanminn150/NativeAmericanMinnesotaInTheMN150Exhibit/photo#5208054478240604226
Something like “The federal and state government’s legacy of deception, theft, broken treaties and ethnic cleansing allowed immigrants to claim…” would be more accurate.
Griff Wigley wrote: “Something like “The federal and state government’s legacy of deception, theft, broken treaties and ethnic cleansing allowed immigrants to claim…” would be more accurate.
I think that “The federal and state government’s legacy of deception, theft, broken treaties, ethnic cleansing and genocide allowed immigrants to claim…” would be even more accurate.
A letter to the editor of mine about this topic is located at: http://www.mystarnewspaper.com/read/detail/24881.html
I thought the interactive display to show the ‘land ceded by treaties’ was well done. It was amazing to me to visually see in #5 and #6 that virtually all of southern Minnesota was ceded in 1851.
http://picasaweb.google.com/nativeamericanminn150/NativeAmericanMinnesotaInTheMN150Exhibit/photo#5208054856197726674
Of course, there’s a long and complex story behind Little Crow’s signing of those 1851 treaties (Traverse de Sioux and Mendota).