At the Sesqui celebration at the Capitol last weekend, there were several tents for a variety of exhibitor displays. Among them was the Archives and Special Collections department of the University of Minnesota Libraries, displaying their Becoming Minnesota: A Sequicentennial Sampler exhibit.
One of table displays was called ‘Where We Began’ and it conveyed a very narrow and 100% positive version of the early history of the state. Click the photos to enlarge and you’ll see. Even more telling: The web page for the "Where We Began" portion of the exhibit contains the following narrative. (It uses scrolling Flash text but I’ve manually transcribed it.)
Encounter between the native peoples of this region and Europeans is where the story of our statehood begins. The European perspective on the nature of these encounters — captured in accounts written by Jesuit missionaries, explorers like Father Louis Hennepin, early settlers like Jonathan Carver, and illustrated in early printed maps — is what remains for us today of this early time, enriched by the memories and life experiences, captured nearly a century later, of such men as Chatonwahtooamany, chief of the kapoja band of Mdewakanton Sioux.
By the 19th century, encounter gave way to widespread settlement and industrialization. Cities like Duluth attracted businesses and immigrants; the expanding milling industry brought additional prosperity, so much so that Minneapolis could undertake such projects as the dredging of Lake of the Isles to expand its parkway system. Immigrants from Sweden and elsewhere throughout Europe, including the Isle of Man, flocked to Minnesota, changing the nature of our history of encounter. We acknowledge this rich heritage today in the names of our lakes and rivers, our counties, cities, and streets, our institutions, and our celebrations.
The text completely avoids any mention of horrible realities of Euro-American treatment of our state’s indigenous people. It uses phrases like "By the 19th century, encounter gave way to widespread settlement" when it should use phrases like "By the end of the 19th century, decades of broken treaties and policies of ethnic cleansing allowed for widespread settlement…"
I think that it’s seemingly innocuous exhibits like this that, when they’re part of a pattern, continue to contaminate the state’s relationship with its Native people.
It’s too late to do anything about this particular exhibit, as it ended in late March. But maybe something can be changed with the web version. And maybe the U of M Libraries would consider creating another exhibit, similar to the terrific one that the DNR has done at Fort Snelling State Park about the 1862-63 Dakota Concentration Camp that I blogged about a few weeks ago.
