Native American Minnesota

Back in April, I blogged about the terrific Dakota Concentration Camp display at Fort Snelling St. Park. (The MN Department of Natural Resources (DNR) operates all state parks. They do not operate Historic Fort Snelling, the site of the fort. It’s operated by the MN Historical Society.)

This exhibit, according to one of the display books on the site, "… was written with the advice and contributions of many Dakota people."

I was pleased when MN Sesqui Executive Director Jane Leonard mentioned it in her speech on the steps of the State Capitol on May 18, in part because so few people seem to know about it.

It seems, however, that the DNR is missing a huge opportunity by

• Not having anything about the exhibit on its Fort Snelling State Park website; and
• Not even mentioning the existence of the concentration camp on the History section of the park’s website, where the narrative reads:

For hundreds of years before Europeans arrived, generations of Dakota people lived in villages along the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers that meet in Fort Snelling State Park. The river confluence was believed to be the place of origin and center of the earth by the bands of Mde-wa-kan-ton-wan Dakota, the "Dwellers by Mystic Lake." By the late 1600s, Europeans had visited the area. In the 1820s, historic Fort Snelling was built on the bluff above the two historic rivers to control the exploration, trade, and settlement on these waterways. The area was established as a state park in 1961. The swimming beach, added in 1970, remains a popular recreation attraction in the park. In 1997, a new visitor center opened to the public.

To its credit, as part of the MN Sesqui, the Park has scheduled an event titled Bdote - Rivers and People Coming Together for Saturday, July 19 at 10 am. The description of the event includes the phrase "concentration camp:"

The area now known as Fort Snelling State Park has worn many titles in Minnesota history, from Dakota homeland to concentration camp, military post to recreation area. Explore the history of this site and its impact, past and present. Begin at the visitor center.

So what could be done?

1. I’d really like to see a multimedia version of the Dakota Concentration Camp exhibit on the Fort Snelling State Park website, or possibly a separate web site altogether. This would be an inexpensive project for the DNR’s web team and make it much easier for many thousands of Minnesotans to discover the exhibit and learn more about the Concentration Camp.
2. I’d really like to see a mobile version of the Dakota Concentration Camp exhibit that could be easily set up at civic events, classrooms, and other temporary locations around the state. Volunteer interpreters could be trained, a DVD with a narrative could be created, and it could be a significant first step towards getting the full story told in the Minnesota History curriculum of our public schools.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper gave a speech to Parliament earlier this week in which he formally apologized for the Canadian government’s native residential school program (see excerpts and videos on the Open Anthropology blog; and see the blogosphere reaction to the speech summarized here by the CBC news).

The apology begins a 5-year process led by a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (more at CBC background website) supported with a $60 million budget.

The Canadian government formed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as part of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement to understand how people were affected by the residential school experience. The commission will allow those who experienced harm at residential schools to share their stories within a safe and culturally appropriate environment.

The purpose of the commission is not to determine guilt or innocence, but to create a historical account of the residential schools, help people to heal, and encourage reconciliation between aboriginals and non-aboriginal Canadians. The commission will also host events across the country to raise awareness about the residential school system and its impact.

…

The truth and reconciliation approach is a form of restorative justice, which differs from the customary adversarial or retributive justice. Retributive justice aims to find fault and punish the guilty. On the other hand, restorative justice aims to heal relationships between offenders, victims, and the community in which an offence takes place.

Those involved in truth and reconciliation commissions seek to uncover facts and distinguish truth from lies. The process allows for acknowledgement, appropriate public mourning, forgiveness and healing.

U.S. Senator Sam Brownback was interviewed by NPR’s Melissa Block on Friday, Apology to American Indians Moves Forward, about the “… resolution making its way through Congress [that] offers an apology to all Native peoples on behalf of the United States.” See Brownback’s Apology Resolution page for more.

Assuming that the US House of Representatives passes their version of Brownback’s apology bill and President Bush signs it, what then? Should Congress then be pressed to launch a national Truth and Reconciliation Commission? No matter who gets elected president this fall, I expect leadership on native issues from both Barack Obama (more) and John McCain (more).

At the state level:

• In April, the Colorado Legislature passed a resolution “… comparing the deaths of millions of American Indians to the Holocaust and other acts of genocide around the world.”
• In May, the MN Sesquicentennial Commission posted a statement on its web site that included this: “Yet we remain either unaware of or unable to look at our own history and acknowledge the painful wounds of ethnocide and genocide right here in Minnesota. We have a very hard time acknowledging that the pain remains and that it has affected much of our history thru to the present day.”
• Last week, Thomas Dahlheimer (Rum River Name Change Movement) had a guest column in the Winona Daily News titled State looks to settle up with the past
• A 2002 study by Sheryl Dowlin and Bruce Dowlin titled Healing History’s Wounds: Reconciliation Communication Efforts to Build Community Between Minnesota Dakota (Sioux) and Non-Dakota Peoples. (See their 2000 paper titled The Dakota Conflict Remembered; Paper prepared for the 35th Annual Northern Great Plains History Conference which includes reconciliation information.)

And last December, Louis Stanley Schoen, a consultant and trainer on racial justice in the Episcopal Church, authored a commentary in the Star Tribune titled We must talk about race, despite the difficult emotions it stirs. (Thanks to Thomas Dahlheimer for alerting me to it.) In it, Schoen suggests the formation of a Commission (links are mine):

The premise of original sin inherently stirs guilt and, sometimes, anger. Nick Coleman’s Dec. 23 reflection on the Dakota wars as Minnesota’s original sin probably stirred such feelings. They also appeared in responses to Waziyatawin Angela Wilson’s “Time to Level” (Dec. 2). Awakening to our own or our ancestors’ sins is painful. Religious teachings suggest a treatment: Repentance and restorative-justice efforts can evoke forgiveness and provide hope for reconciliation. Prayers help most of us, but the process can work for atheists, too, if done sincerely.

…

How might serious, healing racial dialogue occur? A series of thoughtful, sensitive commentary in news media might be a starter. Sermons and study groups on race in churches would help, as would discussions in all kinds of community groups. Official public bodies must get engaged. What if a public commission were to begin to examine the American (and European) history of white supremacy — and, here, how that doctrine shaped the formation of Minnesota and its public and private institutions? What if such a commission learned how to offer leadership and resources to dismantle this evil doctrine?

The results could be transforming for us and for all the world. What a magnificent legacy this might be to our celebration of Minnesota’s sesquicentennial.

It seems to me that it would be most meaningful for each state to debate the need for its own Truth and Reconciliation Commission and then to fund it. In Minnesota, we’re now less than four years away from the Sesquicentennial of the 1862 U.S.-Dakota War. If Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission can get their work done in 5 years, surely Minnesota could do something similar in 4 years.

Audrey Thayer, coordinator of the Greater Minnesota Racial Justice Project of the American Civil Liberties Union-Minnesota, has a commentary in the Bemidji Pioneer this week titled Sesquicentennial missed reconciliation (excerpt only; full-text currently posted to the Mendota Mdewakanton blog here).

… the 150 years Sesquicentennial for me was a strong reminder of the history of destruction and stealing of land from the original people who lived in this state.

I am glad I supported the events that tried to grasp the concepts of the past 150 years but I fear people missed an opportunity for reconciliation with native people and the word exclusion comes to my mind.

MPR’s Tom Robertson did a story about Audrey Thayer back in 2004 when she was hired by the ACLU for the position in Bemidi.

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:

 
Here’s the audio of Kevin Leecy’s Sesquicentennial speech Sunday night on the steps of the State Capitol. Kevin is Tribal Chair of the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa and Chair of the Board of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council (MIAC).

Click play to listen. 4 minutes, 26 seconds.

Or alternately, download the MP3.

The group of Dakota people who marched and protested last weekend (see my blog post/photos) also staged a protest on Sunday evening during the Sesqui ceremonies.

Media coverage:

• Pioneer Press: Protest briefly disrupts sesquicentennial event; 3 Indian activists taken into custody
• WCCO-TV: Why Some Native Americans Are Upset With Minnesota

I got this email today from Waziyatawin Angela Wilson, pictured above on the right:

Hi Griff. If you are going to do this work for the Sesquicentennial so that they can say they are addressing Dakota or "Native American" issues, I hope you will include more critical voices.  Right now it seems as if the commission (through your work) is trying to appropriate our voices and to ameliorate the effects of our protest.

This statement from my father, Chris Mato Nunpa, in response to Jane Leonard’s speech on Sunday, must also be included in your blogsite.  He is absolutely right on and effectively addresses why Jane’s speech was so offensive to those Dakota people in attendance.  I am pasting it below.  Please post it.

Thank you.

Waziyatawin

I wrote her back and said I’d be happy to blog Chris’ critique here. I’ve included a photo of him that I took last week at Mounds Park.

Jane, I just heard a brief excerpt of a speech you gave at the State Capitol.  Again, you talk a good game.  You have fine rhetoric.    As long as you don’t talk about massive land theft, 24 million acres alone in the 1851 treaties signed at Traverse des Sioux and at Mendota,  as long as you don’t talk about the broken treaties with the Dakota, which were violated by the U.S. government and its U.S. Euro-Minnesotan citizenry;  and as long as you don’t talk about the genocide of the Dakota People of Minnesota, you are still presenting, literally, a white-washed history.

You are like the other colonizers/white supremacists (not meant to be mean-spirited but to convey a reality) who suppress the TRUTH and substitute myth for reality.  The wagon train at Ft. Snelling is an excellent example of replacing the TRUTH with myth.  The invaders/settlers came up the river by boat to steal land in Minnesota.    You, the Sesquicentennial Commision, the Minnesota Historical Society, etc. would rather create lies (the wagon train) and suppress the TRUTH (bounties, concentration camps,  mass executions, etc.) about what really happened in this state, especially in the past 150 years.

I did notict that you said "internment camp" instead of calling it what it really is - a CONCENTRATION CAMP.  This is the social practice of herding innocent civilians, non-combatants in one concentrated place, holding them there for protracted periods of time without charging them with any crime.  This is a Concentration Camp.   As Jack Weatherford writes in his book NATIVE ROOTS, as he studies a photograph of the concentration camp consisting of tipis, he said he was watching "the birth of an institution which was to haunt the 20th century."

You talk about "mistreatment" - how about "GENOCIDE"      Bounties, Concentration Camps, forced marches, forced removals/ethnic cleansing,  warfare,  all related to various criteria of the 1948 UN Genocide Convention such as:  #1  killing members of the group (viz., Dakota People).  Bounties, Warfare, would fit this;   #3  deliberately inflicting conditions upon a group calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the group in whole or in part.  concentration camps,  forced marches,  forced removals/Ethnic Cleansing fulfill this criterion.   If you think you’re telling the TRUTH, then you need to begin using these terms.

Also, you talk about "Reconciliation," which, in my opinion, is a totally inappropriate term.  This implies that that once Dakota People and the wasicu were once one entity.  They were NOT!   The Wasicu (white man) always wanted land, he had no land.  The Dakota People had land.  Then, the White man stole the land, and now, the Dakota People are living in a state of oppression and exploitation in their own land.  What is more appropriate (than reconciliation) are terms such as TRUTH,  JUSTICE,  and  MUTUAL RESPECT.

TRUTH   acknowledging the bounties,   concentration camps, the stolen lands   the lands which have not been paid for    broken treaties     GENOCIDE    etc.  and then teaching this true history in the public schools and in the colleges and universities.

JUSTICE   land restitution, i.e., the return of state and federal lands, e.g. within the Treaty of 1805, the 155,000+ acres upon which the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis set;     land reparations - payment for the lands.  For example, the lands upon which St. Paul and Minneapolis set have not been paid for (the Treaty of 1805).   The 24 million acres involved in the Treaties of 1851 were grossly under-paid for.    and, finally,  reparations for GENOCIDE which the U.S. government, the State of Minnesota, and its Euro-Minnesotan citizenry perpetrated upon the Dakota People!

MUTUAL RESPECT     The white man, including the Euro-Minnesotans of yesterday and of today, have generally NOT respected for the past 500 years the languages, religions,  the world-views,  the perspectives,  the values,  the customs and traditions,  the cultures,  etc. of the Indigenous Peoples of the U.S., and of the Dakota People of Minnesota.  They have NOT respected the Indigenous Peoples as human beings, as PEOPLE.   Instead, the Euro-Minnesotan and the U.S. Euro-American have viewed the Indigenous Peoples and the Dakota People as sub-human,  as animals, wild animals, therefore, it’s OK to put bounties on them, and as uncivilized and SAVAGE!

These things the Euro-Minnesotan, the Sesquicentennial Commission, the Minnesota Historical Society, and the other colonial institutions of the U.S. and of Minnesota need to acknowledge and then to teach in the texts and schools and in the colleges and universities.

I have some time now - I am now retired.   I may have to attend some of the sessions where you, and representatives of the MHS, and of other racist, colonial institutions are talking and then add my two cents to the discussion.  You need to invite people like me,  Dr. Chris Mato Nunpa;   Waziyata Win (Dr. Angela Cavender Wilson);   Jim Anderson of the Mendota Dakota Community;   Ms. Gaby Tateyuskanskan of the Sisseton Wahpeton Reservation.  If you can’t tell the TRUTH, we can!!!!

Chris Mato Nunpa, Ph.D., Formerly Associate Professor of Indigenous Nations & Dakota Studies (INDS) at Southwest Minnesota State University, Marshall, Minnesota

5690 250th Ave.
Granite Falls, Minnesota 56241

Here’s the audio of Governor Tim Pawlenty’s Sesquicentennial speech last night on the steps of the State Capitol.

Click play to listen. 7 minutes.

Or alternately, download the MP3.

I took photos of some of yesterday’s Sesqui activities at the State Capitol.  I’ll blog those soon.

I also recorded the audio of portions of the speeches that were given from the platform.

Here’s an excerpt of Sesqui Executive Director Jane Leonard’s speech, where she addresses the dark side of Minnesota’s Statehood: the sad and painful legacy of the state’s treatment of its indigenous peoples.

Click play to listen. 4 minutes.

I was forwarded an email to the Sesquicentennial people by book author Marybeth Lorbiecki about the Dakota communities who were exiled from the state after the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. She wrote:

I would like to suggest that it would be an important part of the history, healing, and celebration of the state to invite the exiled communities home and to create a map of the exiled Minnesotan Dakota communities for exhibit and distribution– and set up a kind of virtual community base of email and web site connections for these exiled people to connect, communicate, and be brought back into the circle of our community.

I wrote a biography (as yet unpublished) on one of our incredible Minnesotans — Ohiyesa: Dr. Charles Alexander Eastman — and as part of the project, I tried to track down the exiled communities (or as many as I could), and I wrote a sidebar on them. (I apologize if I have missed some communities). Perhaps it could serve as the basis for a map and contacting the communities — there could be an intriguing book in this as well for a Dakota scholar!! Where Are They Now?

So I offer this research to you as a springboard for bringing these people home — for  apologies, reconciliation, reconnection, and honoring, as we remember, consider, regret, and celebrate various aspects our state’s complex and often painful history and legacy.

I like the idea. I’ll be in Winona this Friday, May 16, for the Sesquicentennial’s Capitals for a Day program . According to Exec Director Jane Leonard, the City of Winona and the Winona Dakota Unity Alliance (the organization that hosts the annual Great Dakota Gathering and Homecoming every June) will be hosting a healing and reconciliation circle and inviting back exiled Dakota tribes, as well as Ojibwe and Ho-Chunk.

Here’s the text of Marybeth Lorbiecki’s sidebar from her forthcoming book on Ohiyesa. (In the meantime, see the Wikipedia entry on Ohiyesa/Charles Eastman.)

The Dakota Diaspora

In 1863, Congress passed the Act of Forfeiture, revoking all treaties with the Dakota, including their reservation lands and payment rights. The state confiscated all their lands and exiled them permanently, leaving only a small group of "friendlies" living on Sibley’s land in Mendota.

By 1893, Congress recognized that the earlier act of forfeiture did not fully address the complexities of the conflict, that there had been many who had not engaged in an act of war against the state and national government. Public pressure arose from Indian rights associations that it was not legal or ethical to simply nullify treaties, since the causes of the conflict had been the Congress’s lack of fulfilling the treaty stipulations in the first place.

In keeping with the Dawes Act, loyal Dakota were given 80 acres each in three areas in the state: Prairie Island, Shakopee/Prior Lake, and around Morton, where Eastman had been born on the former Lower Sioux Reservation. Many Isanti (Santee Sioux) Dakota also settled around Granite Falls on the former Upper Sioux Reservation or around Lake Tewaukon /near Sisseton and Lake Traverse in South Dakota.

Eventually each of these coalesced into recognized tribal communities. But numerous Dakota never made it back to their homelands. Many remained on the Santee Reservation in Niobrara, Nebraska, or in Flandreau, South Dakota. Others were scattered in northern exile, ending up in Fort Totten/Spirit Lake (Devil’s Lake) in North Dakota; at Fort Peck with Assiniboine bands in northeastern Montana, and in Saskatchewan at the Standing Buffalo Reserve near Fort Qu’Appelle; White Cap/Moose Woods Reserve, just south of Saskatoon; Round Plains Wahpeton Reserve near Prince Albert; and in Manitoba at the Sioux Valley Reserve just west of Brandon; the Birdtail Reserve north of Virden; Oak Lake Reserve south of Virden, and the Dakota Plains and Dakota Tipi Reserves near Portage La Prairie.

Many tipospaye and village bands were separated, with links to each other lost in the scattering. Yet, even under the threat of death and imprisonment, many returned to their lands, continued their traditions, spoke in their language, and continued to try to rebuild the sacred hoop of the Dakota and the Oceti Sakowin. These efforts go on today.

I’ve enabled comments on this blog post so that anyone can contribute to the discussion on how to make this happen.

The traveling Sesquicentennial banner made its way my home town of Northfield yesterday, hosted by our local public libray. (I blogged the event with 18 photos on a community site. Here are 5 of them. Click to enlarge.)

 

The most interesting part for me was the the leather-bound journal accompanying the banner in which visitors are invited to write their thoughts about Minnesota and the Sesquicentennial. Here’s what I wrote (right photo) with minor edits:

I grew up near Mendota but have lived here in Northfield since 1974. I love this town and this state! However, I would like the state legislature and the governor to make a formal apology to Minnesota Indian tribes for the ethnic cleansing and other crimes that were committed before and after statehood. The apology would go a long way to helping the wounds heal. - Griff Wigley

A replica of an original copy of the Declaration of Independence is on display at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul for the next two weeks.

 MPR’s Midmorning show today featured two experts talking about "… how understanding of the document evolved over time."

I didn’t catch the first 30 minutes but submitted this question to the show via MPR’s Send a Question feature. It didn’t get used, as they probably ran out of time.

What’s the background on the inclusion of the phrase "the merciless Indian savages" in the Declaration? How did it help shape our country’s attitudes about Native Americans over the years?

Here’s the complete sentence from the full DOI text, part of the list of "… repeated injuries and usurpations" by the King of Great Britain:

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

I didn’t know until a few months ago that this sentence was included in the Declaration of Independence. I’m guessing most Minnesotans aren’t aware of it either.

Here’s some background on it, from the Footnote.com site:

The Declaration of Independence accused King George III. of unleashing "merciless Indian Savages" against innocent men, women, and children. The image of ferocious warriors propelled into action by a tyrannical monarch fixed in memory and imagination the Indians’ role in the Revolution and justified their subsequent treatment. But many Indian Nations tried to stay out of the conflict, some sided with the Americans, and those who fought with the British were not the king’s pawns: they allied with the Crown as the best hope of protecting their homelands from the encroachments of American colonists and land speculators. The British government had afforded Indian lands a measure of protection by the Royal Proclamation of 1763 which had attempted to restrict colonial expansion beyond the Appalachian Mountains, and had alienated many American colonists. Indians knew that the Revolution was a contest for Indian land as well as for liberty.

…

Indians fought in the Revolution for Indian liberties and Indian homelands, not for the British empire. But the image of Indian participation presented in the Declaration of Independence prevailed: most Americans believed that Indians had backed monarchy and tyranny. A nation conceived in liberty need feel no remorse about dispossessing and expelling those who had fought against its birth.

Front page of yesterday’s StarTribune: Reclaiming a lost legacy - The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community is purchasing land in Scott County at a pace that’s worrying Shakopee city leaders.

… the tribe’s land purchases, which are surging as the price of land sags, are turning up a different sort of heat in Scott County. Civic leaders in Shakopee say the pace and pattern of the tribe’s land buys — it has spent more than $100 million — are making planning a logistical nightmare in the fast-growing community.

And they wonder if the tribe is engaged in a shrewd chess game to block Shakopee’s development plans, then move out into open countryside to start reacquiring vast stretches of ancestral land.

…

"This land was taken by the point of a gun — and we are buying it back with American dollars." - Stan Ellison, Manager of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community (SMSC) Land and Natural Resources Department.

The StarTribune’s Nick Coleman has a column in today’s paper titled, First Americans should finally get apology long owed to them.

The late Gov. Rudy Perpich proclaimed a Year of Reconciliation in 1987 in the hope that the 125th anniversary of the 1862 Dakota War would be a fitting time to talk honestly about the causes of the war and its legacy — decades of oppression, racism and government neglect that followed. Not much reconciling occurred. And not much will be said about it during statehood week, May 11-18, when Minnesota celebrates its sesquicentennial during American Indian Month.

“A lot of Indians don’t see the sesquicentennial as something to celebrate,” says Leonard Wabasha, a Dakota whose parents, Ernest and Vernell, were sent to Indian boarding schools as children. “It’s just another year and an anniversary that reminds us of what was taken away, and what we lost.”

“A celebration makes it too painful to discuss some things,” agrees Jane Leonard, executive director of the Minnesota Sesquicentennial. But she says the 1862 Dakota War and its aftermath will be on the agenda May 16, when Winona becomes Capital For A Day.

Here are some snips of other opinion pieces that have appeared in the Strib since last fall:

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On Feb. 17th, the Strib opinion page staff published two articles on the history of Fort Snelling in light of this year’s Minnesota Sesquicentennial.

The headline: Fort Snelling: How should its history be told?

• Painful, even shameful, stories that reflect the broad scope of the fort’s past should not be erased, but learned from by Nina Archabal, a officer on the board of the Minnesota Historical Society.
• Rather than perpetrate injustice, the fort should be moved and the sacred site turned into a park by Jeffrey Kolnick, Associate Professor of History at Southwest Minnesota State University.

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StarTribune’s Nick Coleman had a column on Dec. 22, 2007 titled As Minnesota turns 150, how will it face up to its original sin?

We are still burying the past. Twenty years ago, as I witnessed the reburial of the 31 unnamed Dakota who died in prison, I shared the common belief that history is old. Then my eyes were opened. As Ernest Wabasha and the other men lowered the boxes of bones into the trench and Amos Owen prayed in Dakota, the men began to sob, and to bend in grief. It wasn’t an ancient wound that had brought us all to a mass grave.

It was a deep one.

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On Dec. 3, 2007 Strib, Waziyatawin Angela Wilson had a guest commentary on the front of the Opinion page titled Time to level: Minnesotans must acknowledge, at long last, the dark side of their state’s history.

Once Gov. Alexander Ramsey made his infamous declaration on Sept. 9, 1862, that “the Sioux Indians of Minnesota must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the state,” his genocidal agenda was widely and wildly supported by white Minnesotans. His call was very clearly a demand for what we would today identify as ethnic cleansing. Everything that followed fit into this larger agenda, an extraordinarily successful genocidal effort from which Dakota people have never recovered.

…

Once this history of genocide is acknowledged, Minnesotans will have to ask themselves, “What does recognition of genocide demand?” Certainly, a celebration of what was gained as a consequence of genocide would be unthinkable. If those who are aware of the genocide continue to celebrate, they will only add to the lengthy list of wrongs already done to Dakota people. When Minnesotans celebrate statehood, we hear that genocide is acceptable as long as white people benefit from it. This is a message we have heard our entire lives. Not one generation of Minnesotans has attempted to send a different message. What will this generation decide to do?

I believe the recognition of genocide requires a period of mourning. It requires contrition. And it requires reparative justice. As long as Dakota people live and breathe, we will struggle for the recognition of our humanity and for justice in our Minisota homeland.

Waziyatawin Angela Wilson, author/editor of In the Footsteps of Our Ancestors, The Dakota Commemorative Marches of the 21st Century, has a new book coming out titled: What Does Justice Look Like? A Look to the Future after 150 Years of Minnesota Statehood. The description:

What does it mean when a state was built for white Minnesotans at the expense of Indigenous Peoples? What does it mean when genocidal policies were advocated, supported, and carried out by Minnesota citizens so they could obtain Dakota homeland? This book will examine these questions and more in a contemporary context to address how Minnesotans today might more appropriately think about the historical legacy created by the establishment of the state. It will also address how the perpetrators of genocide might begin to undo the damaging legacy of these actions and restore a measure of justice.

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On December 29, 2007, Louis Stanley Schoen, a consultant and trainer on racial justice in the Episcopal Church, authored a commentary in the Star Tribune titled We must talk about race, despite the difficult emotions it stirs.

How might serious, healing racial dialogue occur? A series of thoughtful, sensitive commentary in news media might be a starter. Sermons and study groups on race in churches would help, as would discussions in all kinds of community groups. Official public bodies must get engaged. What if a public commission were to begin to examine the American (and European) history of white supremacy — and, here, how that doctrine shaped the formation of Minnesota and its public and private institutions? What if such a commission learned how to offer leadership and resources to dismantle this evil doctrine? The results could be transforming for us and for all the world. What a magnificent legacy this might be to our celebration of Minnesota’s sesquicentennial.

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Back on October 28, StarTribune editorialist Lori Sturdevant authored a column titled A time when cultures met — and clashed: At age 150, is Minnesota ready to own up to the truth about the 1862 Dakota War?

As Minnesotans blow out the candles next year on 150 years of statehood, they’ll do well to acknowledge that there were people living on this land long centuries before 1858. And that for those original people — and their descendants, still very much here — statehood wasn’t the beginning of something grand, but the ending.

On April 3, I attended an event hosted at the Minneapolis American Indian Center (MAIC) titled, Close the Gap: End Disparities in the American Indian Community. There were speakers, a panel discussion, and a showing of one of the segments of Close the Gap, a documentary film series by the Minnesota Channel  of Twin Cities Public Television (TP).

Featured presenters:

• Elaine Salinas, President, Migizi Communications
• Jim Clairmont, spiritual leader, educator, elder
• Sandy Vargas, President, Minneapolis Foundation
• Justin Huenemann, President and CEO, Native American Community Development
• Bill Ziegler, President and CEO, Little Earth of United Tribes
• Lee Antell, President and CEO, American Indian OIC
• Noya Woodrich, Executive Director, Division of Indian Work, Greater Minneapolis Council of Churches
• LeMoine LaPoint, Healthy Nations Director, Minneapolis American Indian Center (MAIC)

See the album of photos or this slideshow: