Back in mid-January, I met with some of the people involved with the Minnesota Sesquicentennial project at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. We discussed what could be done during the Minnesota Sesquicentennial to address how the Native American population was treated during the years before and after statehood in 1858.
Standing, L to R (click to enlarge): Matthew Brandt, VP, Minnesota Humanities Center; Stephen Feinstein, ED, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Feinstein died from an aortic aneuryism a month later); Sheldon Wolfchild, former chair, Lower Sioux Indian Community. Sitting, L to R: Lou Ann Matossian, Program Director, Cafesjian Family Foundation; Megan Jung, Grants Coordinator, Minnesota Sesquicentennial; Jane Leonard, Executive Director, Minnesota Sesquicentennial.
I’ve been a colleague of Jane Leonard’s for many years, collaborating on a variety of civic-oriented online projects. When she learned I was very interested in how the Minnesota’s Sesquicentennial was going to involve Minnesota Native Americans and that I’d been researching my own Dakota roots the past few years, she invited me to the meeting. She subsequently accepted my proposal to host this blog (now titled Native American Minnesota: A journey of learning and understanding) and lead the effort to explore what kind of partnering could be done with Minnesota Indian Tribes to increase public awareness of what happened 150 years ago at the dawn of Minnesota’s statehood.
My Dakota roots? My great great grandparents were Hypolite Dupuis and Angelique Renville. Angelique Renville was the daughter of Joseph Renville and Mary Little Crow, a full-blooded Dakota. Joseph Renville’s mother, Miniyuhe, was a member of Little Crow’s (Taoyateduta) Santee Dakota village of Kaposia. It’s not clear if she was the daughter of a Dakota chief named Big Thunder or a daughter of the first of three leaders named Little Crow (not, however, the noteworthy ‘third’ Little Crow, Taoyateduta).
