MinnesotaHistory.net

What will happen to the endangered archival collection in the Iron Range Research Center (IRRC) on the campus of the Minnesota Discovery Center (MDC), formerly known as Ironworld Discovery Center? The fate of the archives, which opened in 1980, is up in the air because of the closing of the center in the fall of 2009, due to funding cutbacks.

The center’s collections contain thousands of cubic feet of unpublished materials including government records, personal records, church records, and records of numerous business, civic, and social organizations. They include the papers of former governor Rudy Perpich, mining company newsletters, maps, photographs – many very rare, oral histories, and microfilmed newspapers. According to Barbara Sommer, whose book, Hard Work and a Good…

John Anfinson, historian with the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area or MNRRA, the branch of the National Park Service that recently completed the Environmental Impact Statement for the Bureau of Mines Twin Cities Campus property in Hennepin County, Minnesota, wants to make sure you understand that he did not write the historical sections of the EIS.

If a historian familiar with the history of the Minnesota region had written this portion of the EIS or the historical study included with the EIS, perhaps he or she would have done it more competently. In 2005 Anfinson had thought he might be involved with writing the historical portions of the EIS, but, in an email to me, he wrote:

Thanks for your thorough comments…

“In our creation story of where we first began as people on this earth, that place was sacred long before anybody from Europe arrived and saw the place. . . . We hold our lands sacred, but these lands are more sacred because of the history, because of the myth and what we are pleading for is some understanding. . . . This is more than an argument over a plot of land. It is a debate of two cultures and the understanding of the sacredness and what is sacred.” Eleven years ago on February 26, 1999, Dakota spiritual leader and Episcopal minister Rev. Gary Cavender spoke these words in a moving speech at a press conference relating to opposition to the…

Henry Ford, or maybe it was Harry Truman, said that the trouble with history was that it was “one damn thing after another.” Other people say that historians are god-like because they can make history in their own image. George Santayana said “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Sergeant Joe Friday, on the show Dragnet said: “All we want are the facts.” Patricia Hampl wrote at the beginning of her poem Resort: “The point of this place: don’t ask for much, ask/ for everything. Get: details as everywhere.” Daniel Patrick Moynihan said that everyone was entitled to his or her own opinion but no one was entitled to his or her own set of facts.

All of these…

By George Spears

Fire represents power, strength, life, and sustainability. First Nation people have used this life source in their ceremonies as a way of connecting us to the creator. Our ancestors gathered around fires and discussed many important issues that effected their tribe, community, and family. This connection to fire still remains for the First Nation people of Turtle Island. First Nations United would like to invite you to participate in FIRE TALKS! This is a bi-weekly intertribal gathering to develop a dialog about reclaiming the sacred site known as “Coldwater Spring.” Bring your ideas, history, and knowledge of this sacred site. We all share a common bond as First Nation people to the land of our ancestors, and to…

My mother, who was a tenacious historian, used to ask, when she was involved in some particularly difficult historical research: “If I were that piece of paper where would I be?” She practiced a kind of method-historical research, in which she thought about the process through which the information might have been written, collected, and stored in order to determine where the information might have ended up. As a result she found documents that no one else could find, and tracked down answers to questions that other people thought could not be answered.

Many people think that all it takes to researching and writing about a historical topic is to go into a library or archives and find the books and folders…

Many Native people lived at Coldwater Spring in the 1820s and 1830s. They were important members of the community there. Here are their names: Marguerite Bonga, Marie-Marguerite Hamelin, Suzanne Grant, Sarah Marie Graham, Marie Finley, Marie Frances Boucher, and a woman named Stitt, whose first name is not known. The fact that they are not usually mentioned as Native inhabitants of the area around Fort Snelling during that period has to do with the fact that they were women and that they were often categorized by the ancestry and the ethnicity of their European-American husbands, fathers, or grandfathers, rather than that of their sisters, mothers or grandmothers. Yet their Native ancestry was a key factor in their history and the…

After years of denying the importance of Coldwater Spring to the Dakota, throughout the recently completed NEPA process for the Bureau of Mines Twin Cities Campus property, the Park Service now plans to use Dakota history at the site as a selling point, according to Paul Labovitz, Superintendent of MNRRA which carried out the NEPA process and is the new manager of the property. He stated in a recent press release:

“The public’s interest in this site throughout this process illustrates the great significance that the Dakota and so many others attach to this special place,” said Paul Labovitz, NPS superintendent for MNRRA. “We are excited to be the caretakers, and to work with many partners to tell all the stories…

The spring is the dwelling place of the undergods and is near the center of the Earth. The Spring is part of the cycle of life. The underground stream from the Spring to the Mississippi River must remain open to allow the Gods to enter the River through the passageway. The Spring is the site of our creation myth (or “Garden of Eden”) and the beginning of Indian existence on Earth. Our underwater God “Unktehi” lives in the Spring. These words were contained in an affidavit from Dakota elder and spiritual leader Rev. Gary Cavender for a lawsuit in 1998. Imagine that these words had been on the first page of the recently finalized Environmental Impact Statement for the Coldwater/ Bureau of…

Not wasting any time, less than four days after the end of the 30-day no-action period for the Coldwater/ Bureau of Mines Property in Hennepin County, Minnesota, the National Park Service, through its Midwest Office Regional Director, Ernest Quintana, signed the Record of Decision, stating that the National Park Service would retain the Coldwater property, restore it, manage it as park or open space as a unit of the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (MNRRA) . The full text of the Record of Decision is found below and the original version is online.

A view of graffiti on Building 11, one of the abandoned Bureau of Mines buildings above Coldwater Spring, March 2009 photo.

Detailed analysis is required of this document. A…