Native American Minnesota

I first heard of Mona Smith when I met with Miquel Vargas, Community Outreach Coordinator at the U of MN Dept. of American Indian Studies, and he suggested I contact her about her multimedia work. Then historian Bruce White suggested I contact her, and lastly, U of MN Dakota Language Specialist Neil McKay recommended her to me as well-respected educator who was likely to be interested in discussing my ideas. I briefly met Mona at the Coldwater Spring encampment earlier this month (where I met Neil, too) and we finally arranged to meet for a lengthy chat on Tuesday at Minnehaha Coffee near her home in South Minneapolis.

Mona is a producer/director/media artist/co-founder of Allies: media/art and a member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota Community in South Dakota. (Photo thumbnail is from a 2006 MPR story titled “City Indians” use art to stake their claim.)

She’s been working recently on several media projects (eg, the pilot Bdote Memory Map) with the Minnesota Humanities Center and on a Bdote video podcast for the Telling River Stories program at the University of Minnesota.

Her Bdote video podcast is rather hard to find on that site, and impossible to link to.

So I’ve created this 45 second screencast that shows you how to navigate to it.

I think her ability to work closely with both Native communities and non-Native institutions on many projects is unique and I’m hoping to find a way to collaborate with her.

For more background on Mona, see this page from a 2008 conference at the the U of MN’s Institute for Advanced Study:

Mona Smith, Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota, is a multi-media artist, educator and co-founder of Allies: media/art. A former University-level educator, Smith has produced work broadcast through PBS, and shown at festivals, conferences and museums in Europe and North and South America.

Her work has received awards from Native and Non-Native film and video festivals; her new media work includes art projects for the web, sites for web distribution of Native focused media, and multimedia installation work, most notably, Cloudy Waters; Dakota Reflections on the River (Minnesota History Center, 2004-2005), City Indians (Ancient Traders Art Gallery, Minneapolis, 2006-2007), and the Bdote Memory Map (in partnership with the Minnesota Humanities Center).

Her artistic and educational practice uses image, sound and place to re inhabit the imaginations and the experience of the audience/participant, and to work between, the place of healing, of relationship, of meaning, where spirit and physical, life and death, fear and strength, night and day intersect. Allies: media/art is an award-winning Dakota owned media production company, incorporated in 1996.

Thomas Dahlheimer spearheads the Rum River Name Change Movement, which seeks to “… change the faulty-translation and profane name of Minnesota’s Rum River back to its sacred Dakota Indian name (Wakan), which translated means (Great) Spirit.”

He has posted comments to this blog and we met face-to-face for the first time recently at the Coldwater Spring encampment press conference.

I just learned that he has an “Open Letter to the Oyate” in the Sept. 17, 2008 edition of the Sota Iyayeyapi, News of the Lake Traverse Reservation, Volume #32 Issue #38. (The letter is also posted to his blog here, with a longer version here.)

In his letter, he states:

Jim Anderson, an organizer of the event, and I met at the gathering and had a good conversation. But unfortunately, during Chris Mato Nunpa’s press conference presentation, Mato Nunpa made a bold faced lie. He said the “Sesquicentennial Commission will not admit genocide.”

During the gathering, I asked Griff Wigley, Project Leader for the Sesquicentennial Advisory Committee for Native American Partnering, if he heard what Mato Nunpa said about the Sesquicentennial Commission. Wigley said that he did and that it was Mato Nunpa’s “speed” and that it made his presentation “sound good”. I then told Wigley that Mato Nunpa had also been lying to hurt me and my work. A few months ago, the Sesquicentennial Commission admitted that Minnesota committed a genocide against the Dakota people during its early history.

Later in his letter, he writes:

Mato Nunpa’s lies are hindering me from accomplishing the goals that the Great Spirit has given me to accomplish in the Dakota’s sacred Mde Wakan (Mille Lacs Lake) ancestral/traditional homeland.

I don’t know enough about Dakota creation stories to weigh in on that debate.  But three things trouble me about Dahlheimer’s  letter:

1. I never commented on Chris’ presentation style to him. I have no idea what he’s referring to.
   
2. Last May, a statement was posted to the MN Sesquicentennial Commission web site (’May is American Indian Month in Minnesota’ page) that reads in part: “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.”

   I’ve highlighted this quote and the entire statement on this blogsite because I think it’s a significant admission. But it doesn’t explicitly say that the State of Minnesota committed the ethnocide and genocide. It could easily be interpreted to mean that the U.S. government committed the ethnocide and genocide, that the wounds were felt here in Minnesota, that we’ve had a hard time acknowledging those wounds.

   Lastly, there was little or no publicity about this statement. No press release was sent out that I know of. No member of the Sesqui Commission was quoted in the media reading or mentioning it. The statement is virtually invisible on the Sesqui website. There are no links to it from the home page, and even back in May when the page was created, the link to the page/page name (’May is American Indian Month’) didn’t convey that there was an important statement there. I can understand why, as this whole issue is still a political hot potato.

   But I also can understand why Mato Nunpa continues to maintain that the Sesqui Commission has not admitted genocide. It makes no sense to me for Dahlheimer to accuse Mato Nunpa of lying about this.  At most, it’s a difference of opinion.
   

3. Lastly, it makes no sense to me for Dahlheimer to maintain that the Great Spirit has given him goals. Many of us might pray to a Higher Power for guidance on setting and achieving our goals but that doesn’t mean whatever we come up with is what our Higher Power intends.

On Sunday we stopped at the Renville County Historical Museum in Morton, MN and met volunteers Chris Hettig and Steve Hettig (right photo, click to enlarge). They’re standing in front of a display about Joseph Renville, my great, great, great grandfather. Chris showed me a folder of miscellaneous research papers and newspaper clippings about Joseph Renville.

In the museum gift shop, I browsed through their booklet, Historic sites of the Conflict of 1862, described as

… a self guided tour to the historic sites of the 1862 Conflict in the Renville County area.

It includes old and new photos of each site along with directions and the historical significance of the site, the people involved, and personal stories told by survivors.

Page 6 of the booklet (left photo) features the Loyal (Faithful) Indians Monument, and when Chris noticed me reading it, she told me that it was located just up the hill above Morton, along with the Birch Cooley (Coulee) Monument. We drove up Monument Drive to take a look it (center).

The words ‘Patriotism, Courage, Fidelity, and Humanity’ are on the four sides of the monument and on the ‘Humanity’ side, the inscription (right photo) reads:

Erected A. D. 1899 by the Minnesota Valley Historical Society to commemorate the brave, faithful, and humane conduct of the loyal Indians who saved the lives of white people and were true to their obligations throughout the Sioux War in Minnesota of 1862 and especially to honor the services of those here named.

Other Day - Ampatutokicha
Paul - Mahzakutemanne
Lorenzo Lawrence - Towanetaton
Simon - Anahwangmanne
Mary Crooks - Mahkahta Heiya win,
Maggie Brass - Snana win

In the June 11 issue of the Toronto Globe and Mail: Part scholar, part activist: With the Dakota nation’s rich history in mind, Waziyatawin takes on prestigious research chair position at University of Victoria. (Photo is cropped from a screenshot of her appearance on TPT a couple weeks ago, blogged here.)

On July 1, she will leave Minnesota for British Columbia. Waziyatawin (pronounced Wah-ZEE-yah-tah-ween) will be taking up a five-year position as the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples at the University of Victoria. She plans to teach courses on such themes as truth-telling and reparative justice, indigenous women and resistance, and decolonization.

I stopped by the headquarters of the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community in Mendota yesterday, as I was in the area and had some extra time before my next meeting.

 
I was greeted with a warm hug by Pidamaya Sharon Lennartson (right photo, click to enlarge) who’s listed on their Contact Us page as the administrative assistant for the Council. We’d exchanged email a few times last month after she’d blogged one of my posts and I attached a comment.

I’d initially heard about Sharon from my sister who has visited their headquarters many times in the past. Like us Wigleys, Sharon’s ancestors include Hypolite Dupuis and Angelique Renville.

We didn’t have a lot of time to talk as it was late in the day and she was swamped with phone calls.  I’m hoping to set up another time to visit with her and possibly the Council. 

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.

George Goggleye Jr., Tribal Chair of the Leech Lake Band Of Ojibwe, spoke briefly Sunday night on the steps of the State Capitol. He then introduced Leech Lake Nation, a drumming and singing group who performed ‘Honor Song.’

Click play to listen. 5 minutes. The music begins at the one-minute mark.

Or alternately, download the MP3.

 
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.

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.

On March 2, I attended a presentation at Fort Snelling State Park by historian Bruce White about his new book "We Are at Home: Pictures of the Ojibwe People," published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press.

This is the audio of the first 11 minutes of Bruce’s presentation in which he discusses the importance of the Coldwater Spring area near Fort Snelling to both the Dakota and Ojibewe.

Below is the press release on Bruce’s book.

 Bruce White, author of "We Are at Home: Pictures of the Ojibwe People," published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press, will be at Fort Snelling State Park on March 2 at 1 p.m., to speak about his book and about the frequent visits by Ojibwe people to the area of Fort Snelling in the 19th century. Copies of "We Are at Home: Pictures of the Ojibwe People" will be available for sale at the program, and Mr. White will autograph copies for those who have them.

Beginning in the 1850s Ojibwe people in Minnesota were photographed by many different kinds of photographers who were interested in recording them, mostly for an audience of non-Indians. These photographs emphasized the exotic, stereotypical look of the Ojibwe, their chiefs, their birch-bark houses and canoes, sometimes recorded with the idea that the Ojibwe were disappearing from the landscape. As time went on, however, Ojibwe people began to obtain photos for their own purposes, recording communities, family members, and relationships.

In the process they created a much richer record of people who have not disappeared but who survived and who thrive today. The audio-visual presentation will be based on the book, "We Are at Home: Pictures of the Ojibwe people," a book published in 2007 by the Minnesota Historical Society Press, which took the author over twenty years to research and write. The author will also discuss the many delegations Ojibwe people in the 19th century to the Fort Snelling area, where they traded with the local Dakota, shared ceremonies, and took part in U.S.-government sponsored diplomacy at the fort and at Coldwater Spring.