Contributor Statements and Acknowledgments

GWEN WESTERMAN

In 1995 my uncle told me that one day I would understand how deeply connected I was to Mankato in particular, and to Minnesota. I have remembered his words and through the years have come to learn what he meant. We are the direct descendants of many figures in nineteenth-century Dakota history: Yajopi, whose village was near what is now North Mankato; Tacaŋdaḣupa Hotaŋka, or His Pipe, one of the 303 Dakota men condemned in 1862; Mazamani, killed at the Battle of Wood Lake; Makanahotoŋmani, imprisoned at Davenport after the war; Wakiŋyaŋ Taŋka, known as Big Thunder or Little Crow III; Iṡtaḣba or Sleepy Eye; Joseph LaFramboise, the Odawa and French trader who married into Iḣtaḣba’s family; and Kaŋġi Duta, also known as Scarlet Crow. And we know the names of our grandmothers as well. Our roots are deep in the Minnesota River valley, the Big Woods of Minnesota, and the tallgrass prairies of the northern Great Plains.

Years later, my uncle told me about a project he was involved with to produce a history of the relationship of Dakota people with the land. As a founding board member of Two Rivers Community Development Corporation, my uncle—Floyd Westerman—asked me to help lead that project. Especially exciting to me was the goal to use the written historical records and our oral traditions and history. My role was to help conduct the oral histories and collect the stories about our presence in this place, Mni Sota Makoce.

Together with Glenn Wasicuna and Erin Griffin, I traveled to the four Dakota communities in Minnesota, to Nebraska and South Dakota, and to Manitoba to listen to the stories our relatives had to tell—in Dakota and in English—about our land and their lives. Other times, they came to us or we met at community gatherings and powwows. We had a series of interview questions and an approach to conducting the oral histories, but mostly we listened to what our relatives wanted to tell us. They held our hands and recounted their family stories, they cried and laughed about what had been written in books about our Dakota people, and they asked us to come back because they had more to share. In short, they have entrusted us with their words.

More than anything, this project has been a collaborative endeavor. We traveled among the different bands, communities, reservations, reserves, countries, and families to gather this history. We spoke with our relatives in English and in Dakota. We learned that we have only scratched the surface of the vast knowledge that our people hold. This book will be just one among the many more we hope will follow. We have high expectations that it will inspire many more stories, from many more viewpoints, and above all, more sharing of what it means to be a part of this beautiful homeland. I am humbled to have been a small part of the process. Ihuŋ, wopida ye. Henana epe kte. De winuna miye.

BRUCE WHITE

My mother, Helen McCann, was born in Minnesota, and my father, Gilbert White, was born in Shanghai, China, the child of missionaries. I was born in Japan. For a good part of my childhood we lived overseas. During that time my parents insisted on the importance of respect for the people and the cultures of those in whose countries we were guests. When my family returned to live in Minnesota, it made sense to act with the same respect for the original inhabitants of this place, of whom we were guests.

Because my mother was a historian, I met several generations of the state’s historians, many connected with the Minnesota Historical Society, when I was a child. I later had the opportunity to work with some of them, including Rhoda Gilman and Alan Woolworth, both of whom have continued to share generously their knowledge and encouragement with me. From such Minnesota historians, I learned something of the skills for which I have always strived, of dogged research and writing and the pursuit of knowledge without prejudice. Without their aid, it would not have been possible for me to do the work I did on this project.

In 2007 Syd Beane and Sheldon Wolfchild asked me to be part of this project. I was happy to accept because the relationship of people to the lands in which they live has always been a strong interest of mine. Perhaps because I lived in so many places as a child, I have come to appreciate what it means to have a homeland. I had also learned something of the Dakota connection to Minnesota beginning in 1999 from the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota community, whose ancestors have lived at the mouth of the Minnesota River for generations, and who have applied their efforts to protect Dakota sacred sites.

In working on this project, I sought to show that written records could be combined with the Dakota oral tradition to shape new understandings of Dakota history. At project meetings, when someone pointed out, justly, the issue of bias against Dakota cultural understanding in the written records, I tried to counter with the possibilities of seeing Dakota meanings sometimes unconsciously recorded in such documents.

At one of the spirited project meetings, one participant referred to the “stale information” found in many written accounts about the Dakota. It was an important point to make. Many accounts are stale because they are biased, with little attempt to get at Dakota understandings. For many people, history is defined as being based on a written record, often the most biased written records. In this project we have rejected this kind of ethnocentric understanding of the meaning of history.

For me, learning something of Dakota understandings about their homelands has made my perspective of this place much richer because my view of Minnesota now resonates with a sense of the experiences of those who lived here before. As a result of the time spent working on this common topic with the other participants in the project, who are now my friends, I believe our work has not ended. Instead it is just beginning. We have learned a great deal from each other, but we have a lot more to learn. And I know there will be others who carry on after us, telling the story of the Dakota and their homelands.

I would like to thank Kate Regan for aid in writing the project grant proposals, Larry M. Wyckoff for creating the project database and transcribing documents, and Virginia Martin for research and editorial assistance.

GLENN WASICUNA

Ate Wakaŋ Tanka ho hiyuwayaye kiŋhan anayagop̣tan kte kehe. Ho aŋpetu kiŋ de ho waŋ unsiya hiyuciciye. Mitakuyapi uŋṡimadapi kte taku kiksuya unsipi kiŋ hŋan taŋyan weksuye kte.

Great Spirit, you said you will listen if I send my voice to you. Today with a sincere voice I ask our ancestors for compassion in that I remember the accounts of our history correctly.

Being involved with this group of bright, energetic, articulate (I could go on, but I think I am allowed only three adjectives) people to create Mni Sota Makoce: The Land of the Dakota greatly contributed to my healing as a Dakota man. My family and tribe were not exiled into what is now Canada but were part of a concerted, well-thought-out plan implemented in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by our own people to save “what is Dakota.” Our tribe was given the responsibility of preserving the language, traditions, and culture. And they did.

Then with research for Land of the Dakota, coupled with personal accounts of events, it all made sense. Only then did I understand what Tuŋwiŋ Molly must have felt when she recounted her memory of being a little girl holding onto a horse’s tail—fleeing. And the archeological evidence of Dakota presence uncovered in the far reaches of northern Manitoba where no roads exist even today—the significance of these details became clear. Dakota people approached us wanting to relate information. It is endless. We realized we were just scratching the surface of something so enormous it is beyond comprehension—for now.

We say thank you to all those people who have tried over the years to tell the stories of the Dakota people. Now it is our turn. There are some magnificent young Dakota out there today able to tell who they are without fear or shame. Listen to them this time. At the beginning, we Dakota people held out our hands in friendship, greeting, and willingness to share what we could. History has shown us what took place.

We say thank you to all those who took part in the making of Mni Sota Makoce. But most of all, we say thank you, wopida, to all the Dakota people who took part in this project and helped us. Many more Dakota people out there have something to share and tell that will promote understanding.

It is a painful journey. I cannot go to Tiŋta Wiŋta yet because Wakiŋyan Zi Sapa is no longer physically there. He shared with us the history and his knowledge of the people. When we were getting ready to leave, the look on his face said, “There is more, don’t go yet. I will see you again.” He passed on shortly after that. I will never forget TaṠuŋka Wakiŋyaŋ Ohitika. He led me every step of the way through my first Sun Dance.

Today I am so grateful that I work with Phyllis Redday Roberts at Tioṡpa Zina Tribal School in Sisseton, South Dakota. She understands the Dakota ways. She lives the Dakota way. She speaks the Dakota way.

I work with Dakota people of all ages at Tioṡpa Zina Tribal School. I see young boys and girls in the hallways, and they say, “uŋkaŋna, hau, toked yauŋ he?” It is not the same as in English, “grandpa, hello, how are you?” They are speaking from their hearts when they speak Dakota—the way the Creator decreed.

So, this Mni Sota Makoce: The Land of the Dakota is a blueprint. From it will evolve many more books about Dakota people, from a long time ago, through the years, to today.

KATHERINE BEANE

As a Dakota person I am searching for the truth of what happened to my ancestors and an explanation of why my family was raised outside our homeland of Minnesota, to which we have such strong ties. Throughout this project I have been learning and reflecting upon where these ties come from and where we as a community must go to ensure our knowledge is not lost within a state that holds a name in our very language but whose inhabitants, in large part, have no clue where the meaning lies.

To a large extent the Dakota people were erased from Minnesota history after 1862. Telling our history is part of a quest for full acceptance of Dakota people. It requires a lot of inner strength to dig into the historical archives that contain written records of my people. Those of us who may understand some of the materials on a more personal level and who may carry an indigenous perspective of these archival materials can become quite disenchanted with the work. The use of language that seems derogatory to our ancestors coupled with statements made one hundred–plus years ago by white missionaries that are disrespectful to our traditional spiritual beliefs can and often do still hit a nerve. Living in a colonized society, struggling in our own ancestral homeland, all while fighting to remain indigenous by preserving what we have left of our language and culture can make reading these materials a very emotional experience. This work is not easy.

One of the cruelest barriers Dakota people face in locating their histories is the rate at which the Dakota language is declining. It has been estimated that there are less than ten fluent speakers currently living in the ancestral homeland of Minnesota. Though others live in the diaspora since being exiled, the separation of the people and other colonial forces have caused a fluency loss that is detrimental to Dakota people and to the future existence of the traditional knowledge and stories told in the language.

Yet I have felt very blessed to be a part of this project. The hours I have spent at the Minnesota History Center looking through archives have been significant to me not only as a student but also as a member of my community who is searching for the meaning of my history. Combining my educational training with outside projects such as this one, I really do feel that knowledge and history are being perceived in another light (not a new one, as it is as old as time), and I give thanks, many thanks for the opportunity this project has given me, as a young Dakota scholar, to apply my skills and knowledge to something far greater than my own pursuits. Nina pidamayaye.

KATHERINE BEANE (Flandreau Santee Sioux) is a PhD candidate in American studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Her research work focuses on Dakota history and language revitalization, and she is a descendent of Maḣpiya Wic̣asṭa (Cloud Man).

SYD BEANE

My Bdewakaŋtuŋwaŋ Dakota family was exiled from Minnesota after the 1862 Dakota War. I am a descendant of Waŋyaga Inażiŋ (He Sees Standing Up), also known as Penichon, one of the Dakota chiefs who signed Pike’s Treaty of 1805. One of my grandfathers was the Bdewakaŋtuŋwaŋ Maḣpiya Wic̣asta, known by his English name Cloud Man, through his daughter Wakaŋ Inażiŋ Wiŋ or Stands Sacred, who married the officer Seth Eastman. Thus I am related to both the original Dakota inhabitants of this region and some of the Americans who colonized Minnesota.

My exiled Dakota family included my grandfather John Eastman, who became a Presbyterian clergyman, and his brother, my great-uncle Charles Alexander Eastman, the internationally known medical doctor and author. Our Dakota family homesteaded near the eastern South Dakota town of Flandreau and was instrumental in establishing the federally recognized Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe. In this community I was born and raised as a member of the tribe.

One of my earliest memories of the historical and cultural conflicts into which I was thrown as a young boy involved the most traditional and eldest member of our tribe. I recall attending a tribal community gathering where a group of white lawyers in suits and ties were explaining why our tribe should vote in favor of accepting a federal land claim settlement for which they had represented our interests in Washington, DC. One tribal member after another responded that we should accept the financial settlement for lands lost because we needed the money and it would lead to a better life for our families. Suddenly from the back of the room, I heard the growing sound of a thumping cane coming down the aisle to the front. It was the eldest member of our community; he had heard enough and was ready to speak his mind. The crowd became silent as he raised his cane toward the lawyers seated up on the stage and said we should not accept this money because the land cannot be sold and we will no longer be Dakota people. Just as quickly as he had appeared in front of the crowd, he left the room.

The lawyers asked for a vote in favor of accepting the money, and the measure passed without further discussion. This event has stuck with me over the years, and now that I am an elder I understand better both what the old man meant and why the vote was to accept the money. This scene represents the different world views of history and culture which we all find ourselves struggling with, not only from the past but now and in the future. Many years later, after returning to my ancestral home I have found numerous unanswered questions of history and culture related to my Dakota people and our lands in Minnesota. This book has grown out of a history of Dakota and non-Dakota relationships and conflicts which continue to this day.

SYD BEANE, a Flandreau Santee Sioux tribal member, is a professional educator, social worker, documentary filmmaker, and community organizer.

ERIN GRIFFIN

Haŋ mitakuyapi. Erin Griffin emakiyapiye. Sisituwaŋ otuŋwe ed wati. Dakota wiŋyaŋ hemaca ye.

Hello my relatives. My name is Erin Griffin and I live in Sisseton, South Dakota. I am a Dakota woman. I am enrolled with the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate and a member of the Ḣeipa District.

I grew up in Mankato, Minnesota. Today I laugh and tell people it was a pretty ironic place for a Dakota person to grow up. I say that as a joke but also with pride. I lived with a lot of confusion, anger, resentment, and sadness in a place where thirty-eight of my ancestors were put on display and executed. I often wondered how many people would drive by that site in a day and not even know what had happened there in 1862. I wondered how many people would care.

In the last ten years, awareness and knowledge of this place has grown. The fact that more people are learning about this history, and some sympathizing with it, is encouraging. When I was younger I expected and demanded that these people know and understand the history of this land and the Dakota Oyate who were exiled from it; now I simply hope for understanding. This simple hope is not a concession but an awareness that people, no matter their color, culture, religion, or other classification, cannot be forced to care about or consider history or place. Each individual must make a conscious decision about whether history and knowledge of the land are important. The confusion, anger, resentment, and sadness that encompassed my childhood in Mankato have transformed into pride as I have gained a better understanding of myself and the place I lived. Yes, I grew up in an area that has a horrific history, but as a Dakota person my presence in that area was a testament of resilience.

This project has unquestionable significance for its addition to the written record of the land base of Minnesota. As we have come together, Dakota and non-Dakota, to research and write “Mni Sota,” we have attempted to present not just one understanding of the land and history but many. We often get caught up in one way of telling stories, thinking there is the white history and the Dakota history. History and memory are complex and deep. Understanding the Dakota presence is essential to understanding the history and land of Minnesota. The land holds memories of all that has happened here, and those memories are intertwined with Dakota culture and language. Too often, Dakota people are not included or are afterthoughts in histories and events relating to Minnesota. Without the Dakota presence, we are left with partial histories. Whether we are Dakota or Minnesotan, if we continue to accept only partial histories we will continue to limit our understanding of them and their effects on us. Limitations such as these do not allow us to face history and may tempt us to write it off as “in the past.” By providing a space for Dakota voices and perspectives, this body of work includes our past, our present, and our future. I am proud to have contributed to it.

ERIN GRIFFIN is an enrolled member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota Oyate, Ḣeipa district. She received her MA in sociocultural anthropology from the University of Oklahoma in 2009 and currently works for the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate tribal government. She is an accomplished beadwork and quillwork artist.

THOMAS G. SHAW

There is no dispassionate way to say this: being a member of the Dakota Lands Project was a once-in-a-career delight. Even today I can’t quite believe I was granted this privilege.

The working group brought together scholars from a diversity of background, interest, and perspective that one seldom has the opportunity to work with. I had collaborated with Bruce and Howard before on projects for Historic Fort Snelling. I had never met Gwen or Glenn. Sheldon and I had crossed paths a few times but had never worked together before.

At the beginning it was unclear how we would work together and how our separate interests could be leveraged to create something useful. We had no idea what form the end product would take and no understanding of how it would be used by the Indian Land Tenure Foundation. I suspect Syd, Bruce, and Gwen didn’t know any of this either, but their choice of collaborators suggested they had some inkling that our association might produce something worthwhile and unexpected.

Our monthly meetings were surprising to say the least. For one thing, many of them were video recorded. I’ve never seen these recordings, but I wager they would be pretty startling to an outsider. The meetings were certainly startling to me as an insider. Of course we each gave a report on our work since the previous meeting. All of us would speak at greater length about something in our work that might be of special interest to the group. But it was the discussion around these routine items that was arresting. We talked about metaphysics, religion, addiction, French cartography, perceptions of time and language.

The nature of my work in the group was to provide information that could inform the work of others. In the course of our monthly meetings, thanks to the insight and candor of the other members, I discovered new ways of viewing the raw material I looked at every day. A lot of it did not make its way into the final product, but my association with the Dakota Lands Project has affected all aspects of my professional life.

The book we produced through the generosity of the people of Minnesota reflects a small part of what the group accomplished. Perhaps we will find other ways to bring this work to the public in the future. The genuine value is in making us all look at landscape and see the humans in it. Some of the landscapes are invisible because they have been profoundly altered. Others are invisible because they are part of our everyday routine. Still others are very remote. As a group we tried to recover not the landscapes themselves—they can never be completely expunged—but the meanings attached to them by humans. We enriched ourselves through fruitful, unexpected revelations. I hope the product of our work will enrich the reader and help form a closer attachment to the land that nurtures us.

THOMAS SHAW served the Minnesota Historical Society for twenty years as the assistant site manager at Historic Fort Snelling. He is a longtime student of U.S. Indian policy and the St. Peters Indian Agency.

HOWARD J. VOGEL

As a fifth-generation descendant of German-speaking immigrants who first came to the Dakota homeland in the mid-1850s, prior to its incorporation as the State of Minnesota, I heard stories about my ancestors who settled in the Minnesota River valley, where I played as a child. Thus, I heard that Margaretha Serr, my great-grandmother, who arrived with her parents in 1854 as a seven-year-old girl and settled on a small farm in Milford Township, less than two miles upriver from the town site selected for New Ulm, had “played with the Indians.”

During the Dakota–U.S. War of 1862, on the first day of the first attacks in Milford Township, Margaretha Serr left a farmhouse a quarter mile from her home when the family she was visiting sat down for the noontime meal. Shortly thereafter two men were killed at the dinner table as fourteen-year-old Margaretha was walking home. Later she was one of the women and children who fled to New Ulm and gathered with dynamite in the basement of a building located in town, intent on blowing themselves to death if the warriors broke through the barricades.

As a child I also learned that Joseph P. Vogel, who would marry Margaretha Serr in 1866 and become my great-grandfather, arrived in 1856 as an eighteen-year-old boy along with his parents and settled on a small farm just south of New Ulm near the Cottonwood River, where I also played as a child. It was said that he participated in the defense of New Ulm during the 1862 war and later was present at the mass execution of thirty-eight Dakota men that took place in Mankato on December 26, 1862. These few stories of “Indians” were all told from within the settlers’ experience of what they called “the Sioux Massacre of 1862.”

Over the years the way the stories of the war were framed began to gradually change to eventually include references to the facts of Dakota experience in dealing with the United States. Today I refer to it, as some Dakota people do, as the “Dakota–U.S. War of 1862” to acknowledge that the Dakota were provoked to start a war by the broken treaty promises of the United States.

My understanding of the treaty negotiations has also changed over the years. During my work as a legal scholar researching the Dakota treaties for this project, I learned much while listening to the stories of the Dakota homeland told by my Dakota colleagues as well as listening to the account of the careful rereading of the written documentary record by my historian colleagues. I now understand the complex story of the negotiations at the treaty table as one marked by a clash of world views about land. Taking the story of this clash seriously reveals the treaties in a new light that is both exciting in its newness and disturbing in its details, as we have tried to make clear in Chapter 4.

I am grateful to librarians Barbara Kallusky and Megan Jens of the law library of Hamline University School of Law and to Hamline law student research assistants Chelsea Hanson and Autumn Baum.

HOWARD J, VOGEL is a Professor of Law Emeritus, Hamline University School of Law.

We are especially grateful to the following Dakota people who have shared their knowledge of Dakota history and their love of Mni Sota Makoce: Connie Big Eagle, Celine Buckanaga, Tannis Bullard, Curtis Campbell, Clifford Canku, Gary C. Cavender, Francis L. Crawford, Darell Decoteau, Harley Eagle, Emmett Eastman, Gus High Eagle, Melissa Hotain, Walter “Super” LaBatte, Chris Leith, Aaron McKay, Carl Mazawasicuna, Mikey Peters, Caroline Renville, Phyllis Redday Roberts, Clayton Sandy, Carolynn Cavender Schommer, Danny Seaboy, Kenny Seaboy, Gabrielle Tateyuskanskan, Redwing Thomas, Bob Wasicuna Wanbdi Wakiṭa, Dr. Tina Wasicuna, Glenn Wasicuna, Waziyatawiŋ, Wayne Wells.