MinnesotaHistory.net

Robin Johnson of Alexandria, Minnesota, says in a recent letter to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, “until Minnesota adults stop thinking of their state’s history and culture as being the almost sole province of children, the complex arguments [about the history of Historic Fort Snelling] will never make an appearance inside the forts, museums or zoos.”

Johnson’s letter to the Star Tribune is part of a continuing a debate about the Historic Fort Snelling and the way it is being interpreted by the Minnesota Historical Society, fostered by the efforts of Waziyatawin and others to call for the tearing down Fort Snelling physically and symbolically.  Nick Coleman wrote a column on June 7, entitled Minnesota’s Cradle and Stain, raising questions about whether the…

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Contrary to an earlier finding by a federal agency, state officials assert that Coldwater Spring meets the criteria for listing on the National Register of Historic Places as a Traditional Cultural Property (TCP). The Minnesota State Historic Preservation Office (MNSHPO) in St. Paul, has put on record its agreement with a June 2006 report by a cultural resources consultant supporting the eligibility of Coldwater as a TCP for Dakota people. MNSHPO has informed officials at the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (MNRRA), the local St. Paul branch of the National Park Service, that MNSHPO does not concur with the decision of MNRRA, in 2006, to reject the finding of the consultant about the Dakota importance of the spring.

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In September 2006, an article appeared in several Twin Cities business and legal publications by Bill Clements of Dolan Media Newspapers about the role that John Anfinson, a historian, and Scott Anfinson, an archaeologist, had played over the years, in the decision-making of public agencies about the Dakota cultural and historical meaning of Coldwater Spring near Fort Snelling in Hennepin County, Minnesota. Illustrated with a photograph by Bill Clements of the two of them standing in front of the Coldwater/ Bureau of Mines Twin Cities campus main building, the article was headlined: “Brothers in Arms: Scott and John Anfinson have been in activists’ cross hairs for years because of their stand on the controversial Coldwater Spring site.” [Italics added.]

Scott and John Anfinson,…

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Here are some real plans that people are talking about for what to do about Fort Snelling and keep it from being attacked. You are going to want to read this because it is very topical,  including all the parts some of you campers will not like at all.

The guy who runs this website, that “White” guy, is telling me to stop talking trash about those rich people on the Minnesota River just south of Bloomington because other people are giving him carp about it and talking about sovereignty, which is really scary. OK, I get the message. I’m a changed person of infindecimal characteristics and I will try harder because that is completely, exactly how vaguely defined I am.

So,…

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Bureaucratic approaches to the study of history and culture are fundamentally authoritarian. Understanding bureaucratic knowledge-gathering and bureaucracies in general requires ethnographic knowledge, including the folk knowledge, traditions, and practices of bureaucrats, which is sometimes only retrievable through the Freedom of Information Act.

Bureaucrats insist on the codification of rules for gathering and interpreting history. Though apparently scientific and unbiased in nature these rules are self-serving for the bureaucrat, serving the goals of government agencies or private bureaucracies. It is always easier when dealing with information that is challenging to the position of the bureaucrat if one can question its adherence to a set of bureaucratically-established rules, rather than deal with the meaning of the information itself. Similarly, it is easier to call attention to…

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The local Twin Cities office of the National Park Service, known as MNRRA, the National Mississippi River and Recreation Area, has provided clarification on who it was within the agency who made the decision almost four years ago to reject the findings of a government consultant–which stated in an Ethnographic Study, that Coldwater Spring at the Bureau of Mines Twin Cities Campus property near Fort Snelling in Hennepin County, Minnesota, is a place of traditional cultural importance for Dakota people.

According to a document–a “White Paper”–from MNRRA recently released by the Park Service under a FOIA, or Freedom of Information Act request made by MinnesotaHistory.net,

For the Draft EIS, MNRRA’s Cultural Resources Specialist, Dr. John Anfinson, evaluated Coldwater Spring’s eligibility for the National…

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There will be mixed feelings among many about the announced retirement of Nina Archabal, long-time director of the Minnesota Historical Society. People may have disagreements about the legacy she leaves in the institution she led. The good news is what Archabal said in the interview reported in the Pioneer Press this morning. Archabal stated that Fort Snelling would be a challenge for whoever replaces her as director of the Society: “The new director will have to ‘figure out how to knit Fort Snelling back together; it’s like Humpty Dumpty, it’s falling apart. That’s probably a 10-year undertaking.’”

Unfortunately too many people, including some in the Minnesota Historical Society, view Fort Snelling as a stone and mortar problem. What is really falling…

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By Daniel Shagobince

The multifarious, extensively pervasive, unpersuasively extensive, existential influence of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community and its Mystical Lake Casino is made embarrassingly clear when you go to the Star Tribune web site to read about the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Wolfchild case, a decision that does a great job of shoring up the revenues from Mystical Lake Casino for the paltry percentage of Dakota people in Minnesota who are officially enrolled members of the alleged Shakopee community. If you click on that itty bitty metaphorical buttony thing that helps you to print out the article, an ad for Mystical Lake will appear on your printed page. This mystical and transcendental, juxtapositional conflagration is made possible…

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The following analysis was written in January 2010, to discuss two important issues, the effort by the Internal Revenue Service to seize land belonging to the Crow Creek Sioux Creek, and the rejection by the National Park Service of claims by the Dakota for Coldwater Spring. Since this was written an agreement was reached between the IRS and Crow Creek allowing the tribe to buy back their own land. But in mid-January the National Park Service asserted that it plans to keep Coldwater Spring and continue to reject any Dakota claims to the land.

In support of a petition on Crow Creek land seizure and National Park Service seizure of Coldwater Spring, under the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868

By Jason Wakiyan…

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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…

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