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In today’s Strib, Nick Coleman has a column titled: Nothingburger celebration will go down easy with State Fair spice.
It’s all about Warren Nelson, artistic director of the Big Top Chautauqua, and how his musical theater production of ‘Old Minnesota: Song of the North Star’ includes our sad legacy of treatment of Native American Minnesotans. The musical will be performed thrice daily at the MN State Fair this year.
Called “Old Minnesota: Song of the North Star,” Nelson’s show offers a rich selection of Minnesota stories, from the beginnings of the state through the world wars up to modern times, with an orchestra, stunning audiovisuals and attention paid to the history of the fair, too. Mostly rollicking, the show also deals frankly with painful episodes in state history, including the wresting of the land from Native Americans and the war of 1862 that ended with the banishment of the Dakota Sioux and 38 hangings at Mankato on the Minnesota River.
Since 1986, Nelson has been the artistic director of the Big Top Chautauqua near Bayfield, Wis. In “Old Minnesota,” he explores the Indian tragedy with a poignant song called “Little Crow’s Flute” that reflects on the state seal — which was reversed to show an Indian riding into the sunset, rather than the dawn, as was originally intended:
“Statehood will soon seal their fate,” the son g goes: “Beside the home river, they hung 38.”
Nelson decided to confront that legacy of loss when he watched an Indian ceremony marking the anniversary of the forced removal of the Dakota from their homeland. In just a few minutes in a State Fair musical, Nelson might make Minnesotans give more thought to the Indian story of the state than we usually get in a year, even during a sesqui-whatever.
Winona LaDuke appeared on The Colbert Report yesterday. The 7-minute segment is a hoot!
"Stephen asks former Green Party vice presidential candidate and Native American activist Winona LaDuke what it’s like to be an oppressed elitist."
MPR reporter Tom Robertson aired a piece yesterday titled: American Indians prefer to reflect on their own history.
Minnesota marks 150 years of statehood this year, but not everyone is celebrating. American Indian tribes in Minnesota were here long before the state was. For many Indians, the history they remember is one of repression, broken promises and loss of culture.
Seventy-four-year-old Peter Strong is an Ojibwe elder from the Red Lake Indian Reservation. Strong says many of his friends and family are indifferent to Minnesota’s sesquicentennial. He’s more interested in reflecting on the history of his tribe and his own family.
There’s an article by Rob Capriccioso in the June 6th edition of Indian Country Today titled Minnesota genocide wounds fester: 150th birthday celebration prompts protests, education efforts. It includes quotes from Waziyatawin, Tom Dahlheimer, Leonard Wabasha, and yours truly.
Griff Wigley, project leader of the commission’s Native American outreach component, said the commission has attempted ”to engage the greater citizenry of Minnesota to take a look at these things and to open their eyes.” In that effort, he’s started a blog that notes Native history and news, which is linked to from the commission’s Web site. ”There are a lot of people out there like me who are willing to have their eyes opened,” Wigley said. ”Many more things can be done that will have an impact on the education of the public.”
Last Friday night, Waziyatawin Angela Wilson was a guest on Almanac, Twin Cities Public Television’s weekly public affairs program, with co-hosts Eric Eskola and Cathy Wurzer. The segment was the third in their series of Sesquicentennial Month discussions with Minnesota historians.
The video can be viewed from the Almanac home page or their archives. The segment is about 5 minutes long.
And a tip-of-the-blogger hat to her for mentioning this blog as one of the places people can go to get information about our state’s sad history of treatment of its indigenous people.
I saw the article in this morning’s StarTribune, Protesters decry ’shameful history’, about how a couple dozen Dakota people halted the sesquicentennial wagon train at Fort Snelling yesterday… and the plans for a march to the State Capitol today where festivities were planned to launch Minnesota’s Sesquicentennial week.
So I drove up to Indian Mounds Park at about 10 am and took photos and video of the speeches and ceremonies there. I then followed the protestors on their march from the park to Capitol. (The Strib has posted a story tonight on their web site about today’s events at the Capitol titled Minnesota’s Sesquicentennial: Celebration, somber protest.)
The protest was organized by leaders of the Take Down the Fort campaign, including Waziyatawin Angela Wilson, Jim Anderson, Chris Mato Nunpa, and Denise Breton.
See the album of 75+ photos or this slideshow:
In today’s StarTribune: Ancestral Mi-Ni-So-Ta: "Paul Durand’s life work unearthed hundreds of American Indian names for area landmarks. The work continues even after his death."
Right: Paul Durand’s family has a memorial web site dedicated to him:
"…. a humble historian of Native American place-names of the Upper Midwest. Paul’s lifelong research has helped to preserve a history that might have otherwise been forever lost. Two unique books with accompanying maps document Dakota and Ojibwa place-names, including their English translations. Many of the books’ entries also describe the geographical features, historical events, and mythology that contributed to each place’s name."
Durand’s two books:
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.
In yesterday’s Strib travel section, Wacipis (pow-wows) and other Native events of remembrance and celebration were featured in an article titled Land of 10,000 memories.
Among the events mentioned:
Other resources:
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:
The headline: Fort Snelling: How should its history be told?
It was a deep one.
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.
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.
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.
