Category Archives: Minnesota Historical Society

Controversial anniversaries

Minnesota Historical Society, Minnesota's 150th, Reclaiming Mini Sota Makoce

This summer will be the 75th anniversary of the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike. Last December was the 10th anniversary of the raid on the protest occupation near Coldwater Spring, said by some to be the largest police action in Minnesota history. Next September will be the first anniversary of the Republican National Convention (RNC) in St. Paul. August and September 2012 will be the 150th anniversary of the Dakota-U.S. War of 1862. Each of these anniversaries will be controversial in one way or another, but weighing the nature of the controversy created by such anniversaries produces some interesting results. Perhaps the most interesting question is: When is an event too controversial for commemoration by institutions that consider themselves or strive to be mainstream?

One of a series of posters created by the artist Alex Lilly inspired by what happened in St. Paul during the Republican National Convention in September 2008.
One of a series of posters created by the artist Alex Lilly inspired by what happened in St. Paul during the Republican National Convention in September 2008.

There are still people around who may think the truckers in Minneapolis got out of hand, and that they fomented violence. But the Minnesota Historical Society, which is usually shy about controversy, embraces the point of view of the truckers on its website:

This strike, also known as the Minneapolis Teamsters’ Strike and, alternately, sometimes called “a police riot,” was one of the most violent in the state’s history, and a major battle in Minnesota’s “civil war” of the 1930s between business and labor. A non-union city, Minneapolis business leaders had successfully kept unions at bay through an organization called the Citizens Alliance, but by 1934, unions were gaining strength as advocates of workers for improved wages and better working conditions. By early May 1934, one of the worst years of the Great Depression, General Drivers Local 574 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) had organized 3,000 transportation workers of the trucking industry into an industrial union. When employers refused to recognize the union, or its right to speak for all of its members, union leaders called a strike. Trucking operations in the city came to a halt.

When police and National Guard were called in to guard trucks, and the Citizens Alliance activated the local militia, strike leaders countered with “flying squads” of pickets. To inform the public of the strike’s aims, and to keep workers informed of developments, strike leaders published a daily newspaper. They sought farmers’ cooperation. Conflict escalated daily throughout May and reached a peak late in the month, at the city market, where strikers clashed with police, who were trying to open it for farm produce to be brought in. The police force was increased for the battle. Many women strike supporters joined the strikers and were severely beaten. Hundreds of strikers were arrested. In support of the truckers, 35,000 building trades workers went on strike. The battle raged on violently for two days. The strike ended on May 25, when the union was recognized and their demands settled. Its toll: 200 injured; 4 dead. The strike marked a turning point in state and national labor history and legislation. The strike opened the way for enactment of laws acknowledging and protecting workers’ rights.

In many ways this statement demonstrates the phrase that many Indian people repeat today, that “history is written by the winners.” The truckers won the trucker’s strike so their point of view is the one that has won out, even though you still meet a few people whose families were on the other side and who have a different point of view.

The 10th anniversary last December of the raid on the houses occupied by those opposing the construction of Highway 55 through Minnehaha Park and the Coldwater Spring Are was not marked officially by any agency. That raid involved a task force of 600 law enforcement people who shot tear gas into the occupied houses. This is how a report from that time described what happened:

The Minnehaha Free State/Liberated Zone in Minneapolis MN was raided Sunday morning at 4am by 600 State Troopers in what MN Governor Arnie Carlson has called the largest law enforcement operation in MN history. Police fired tear gas into all 7 seven houses occupied by a coalition of Big Woods Earth First! the American Indian Movement (AIM)and the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community. 33 people were arrested, 20 of them from lockdowns. (included an activist in a Santa suit locked into the chimney of one of the homes) Many of the protesters where tortured with pepper spray and pain compliance holds. One protester who was locked by the neck to a tripod had his life put in serious danger when the police overturned the tripod without taking any precautions to protect him. The extent of his injuries remains unknown. Media were blocked from the site by a wall of riot police and there are extensive reports of police brutality.

It is hard to imagine that there will ever be anything on these events on the website of the Minnesota Historical Society, because the Society embraced at the time, and still embraces, the point of view that these events never happened or that if they happened they should be ignored. It is hard to find a mainstream message useful to the Society in these events and so it is better not to mention them. Instead the history of these events is left for those who took part in them, or who were there at the time, to describe. Several books cover some of the events including Mary Losure’s Our Way or the Highway. A more complete account is found in the book compiled by Elli King,  Listen: The Story of the People at Taku Wakan Tipi and the Reroute of Highway 55, or the Minnehaha Free State, published in 2006 (which oddly the Historical Society does not have in its library). A new movie produced by Oak Folk Films called  Stop the ReRoute: Taking a Stand on Sacred Land based on footage taken at the time and interviews done since then is having its premiere on March 28. Eventually perhaps a so-called mainstream consensus may develop that this police action was a travesty, a mistake, and an abomination, but until then do not expect the Minnesota Historical Society to help out in recording or disseminating the history of that event. 

By contrast, a mainstream historical consensus has yet to develop about the RNC in St. Paul. Many who were at present at the police action along Highway 55 in December 1998 believe that they experienced the practice for what occurred in St. Paul less than ten years later. Memories of the RNC are very, very fresh. Trials are still taking place. Mayor Chris Coleman, a Democrat, who was mayor during the RNC, is running for re-election. Opinions are still bitterly divided. Supporters of the mayor say that people should move on and leave behind these historical controversies. Others demand some acknowledgement by the mayor and his supporters that grave mistakes were made by people who are still in positions of authority in St. Paul and in Ramsey County. Staff at the Minnesota Historcal Society have collected artifacts and ephemera from the RNC. But how long will it take before the Minnesota Historical Society or other such institutions will be able to have a page about the RNC on its website? It may depend on who is perceived as having won the battle of history.

In some ways opinions are even more bitterly divided about 1862 than about any of the other events. The events of 1862 are still controversial, or perhaps the controversy about them is much newer than their history. In fact there was once a consensus about what happened and what it meant, a consensus that was bolstered and revived in 1958, the centennial year of Minnesota. The year 1962 saw a commemoration of the “Sioux Uprising of 1862,” an anniversary that demonstrated the continuing power of the consensus, but also showed evidence that the consensus was falling apart, especially among people who saw its ethnocentrism and racism. As a child in the early 1960s I remember reading an article in the Minnesota Historical Society’s children’s magazine Gopher Historian, by Leo J. Ambrose, which compared the dispossesion of Indian people from their lands to what it would be like for Americans living in 1962 America to be invaded by Martians who dispossessed from their land and moved them from place to place after a series of abrogated treaties. Ambrose stated:

Finally we would feel, in desperation, that we could no longer endure such treatment. We would feel that it were better to die trying to throw off our oppressors than to continue such a life. We might be ready to cry out with Patrick Henry: “Give me liberty or give me death!” 

Ambrose, who was a far-seeing state official with an interest in the history of the Civil War concluded by stating that the story he told was just a fantasy, but that American Indians were treated worse than the fantasy he described.

By 1987, the 125th anniversary of 1862, the mainstream white consensus about what had happened in 1862 had fallen apart completely. It was supposed to be the “year of reconciliation,” but the reconciliation did not occur. A consensus could not be reached even on what to call the events of 1862. It was plain that you could not call it the Sioux Uprising any more, after all the Indians in question wanted to be known by their own name for themselves, the Dakota. So what would it be, the Dakota Conflict? The U.S.-Dakota Conflict? The Dakota War? Among some Dakota people there was less of an interest in what you called the events. Instead, there was a desire for the wider society to acknowledge what had actually happened to their people in 1862. This was viewed as a necessary first step in the process of reconciliation. This suddenly made 1862 controversial again.

The execution of the 38 Dakota at Mankato in December 1862
The execution of the 38 Dakota at Mankato in December 1862

At the Minnesota Historical Society there was a desire at first to engage with Dakota people about 1862, but many factors undermined that. A few of the more vocal Dakota people–particularly Chris Mato Nunpa–made life hard for the director of the Society, putting her between a rock and a hard place, the hard place being the opinions of the legislature which drive so many decisions about what history to commemorate and what history to ignore. As a result, the director of the MHS was instructed by her board not to speak to him anymore (although since the board of the historical society is appointed by the director, it is hard to know who instructed whom to do what).

To avoid speaking with Mato Nunpa the Society created a Indian-advisory committee, so that she would not have to speak to Mato Nunpa but could still be seen as being responsive to the opinions of Indian people. Needless to say Mato Nunpa was not on this committee. But the committee has not solved the Historical Society’s Indian problem, primarily because–here’s a shocker–no one speaks for all Indians, any more than there is anyone who speaks for Norwegians or Italians. Even if the Society were to make the committee representative only of tribal governments–which would be a very odd thing for a non-governmental entity like the Historical Society to insist on doing–there is still a diversity of opinion within and apart from those tribal governments. In any case, the Historical Society emphasizes that this committee is advisory, that it does not have veto power over the insitution, which means that the Society sets itself up for discontent anytime it does not follow the wishes of the committee.

We are now less than three years from the 150th anniversary of 1862. How will institutions that see themselves as mainstream deal with the anniversary? If the 150th anniversary of Minnesota Statehood in 2008 is any guide, the Historical Society will try to tap dance around the more controversial aspects of the event, trying not to offend the previous consensus–what Angela Waziyatawin has called the “master narrative”– about what happened but also to try to avoid offending Indian people. It is a very difficult, perhaps impossible task. Here’s how 1862 is described in a very short description on the MHS website:

In 1862, Minnesota was still a young state, part of a frontier inhabited by more than one million Indians. Times were hard and Indian families hungry. When the U.S. government broke its promises, some of the Dakota Indians went to war against the white settlers. Many Dakota did not join in, choosing to aid and protect settlers instead. The fighting lasted six weeks and many people on both sides were killed or fled Minnesota. Former Minnesota governor Henry Sibley led an expedition of soldiers and Dakota scouts against the Dakota warriors. The war ended on December 26, 1862, when thirty-eight Dakota Indians were hanged in Mankato in the largest mass execution in U.S. history. Afterwards the government forced most of the remaining Dakota to leave Minnesota. For white Minnesotans, their experience of blood and terror negated all promises they had made to the Dakota. Stories and history books told about the great “Minnesota Massacre,” but for many years the Indian side of the story was ignored.

Whites had their time of  blood and terror, the Indians were were subjected to the largest mass-hanging in American history, then exiled from their land. Everyone has opinions. What is the Indian side of the story? There is no elaboration here, but the page gives helpful sources for learning those points of view, through books like Through Dakota Eyes: Narrative Accounts of the Minnesota Indian War of 1862, edited by Gary Clayton Anderson and Alan R. Woolworth (1988) and the papers of Bishop Henry B. Whipple who was one of the few defenders of Dakota people in 1862 or later.

The Minnesota Historical Society has continued to try to engage by fits and starts. It tried to turn over the Lower Sioux Agency Historic Site to the Lower Sioux Community. But there was opposition in the white community, which stalled the effort. A recent hopeful sign is the recent announcement that the Historical Society will operate the site jointly with the Lower Sioux tribe for a few years:

The Minnesota Historical Society and the Lower Sioux Indian Community have announced a management agreement under which the two entities will work together to present the site’s history to the public. The Lower Sioux Indian Community will be responsible for day-to-day management of the site. The Society will retain ownership of and responsibility for the site’s capital needs and will provide technical assistance. The transfer will take effect April 1, 2009. Hours, fees and programs scheduled for the summer 2009 season remain unchanged at this time. 

The Lower Sioux Agency is an important historic site with a crucial story that needs to be preserved and told. The U.S. government administrative center for the Dakota in the mid-19th century, it was the scene of the first attack in the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. The goal of its interpretive program is “to accurately and sensitively portray the powerful and complicated history of the site as well as its historical context,” according to Heather Koop, head of the Society’s southern district historic sites. This management agreement represents an opportunity to expand the use of the site by operating the facility as a year-round cultural center, as well as a seasonal historic site open to the public as it is now. The arrangement also will allow the site’s interpretation to broaden, encompassing expanded aspects of the area’s history, including present-day Dakota culture.

The biggest problem that the Historical Society and other such agencies will have in the next few years will not likely be Angela Waziyatawin, but rather the fact that there are white communities where the previous mainstream white consensus about 1862 lives on, which will prevent the institution from responding reasonably to the criticisms of Dakota people. Reconciling these points of view and the opinions of the Minnesota legislature will tie the Historical Society in knots for the next few years. It should be a very interesting and challenging time for the history of history in Minnesota.

Philosophy prof gets money from Historical Society to play with Legos, proving that history matters

Minnesota Historical Society, Minnesota's 150th

As my friend BJ would say: Stop the madness! According to a story in the St. Paul Pioneer Press today there’s a philosophy professor building models of the Minnesota Capitol and the St. Paul Cathedral out of Legos. It is not surprising that the newspaper puts this story on the front page of its feature section. After all it is always interesting when someone does something out of the ordinary. I would expect a similar story if, say, chimpanzees at the Minnesota Zoo were publishing a daily newspaper. You would expect a full report from the Pioneer Press discussing the chimpanzee view of what it meant to be journalists.

What takes the cake is the report that the Minnesota Historical Society, along with the Cathedral Heritage Foundation, is helping pay for the purchase of more than $1,500-worth of Lego blocks. It is always possible, of course, that the involvement of the Historical Society is minimal. But one dollar spent in support of this project is too much. It seems to me that this philosophy professor should be paying the Historical Society to allow him to even mention its name along with what he is doing. He should have to pay the Society $1,500 for its endorsement. As mentioned before the Historical Society has been selling “History Matters” chocolate bars. It is time the Society endorsed hot dish pans, oven mitts, canoe paddles, fish descalers, and maybe even Lego sets depicting the 1851 Traverse des Sioux Treaty site.

Of course if this philosophy professor shifted to toothpicks I would be in full support of his project. Building things out of toothpicks truly is a lost art, and it involves real skill. In the interview in the Pioneer Press the philosopy professor was asked if what he is doing is art. In response he stated that his Lego models are not art, “they are models of art.” One should add that they are not history or even models of history, that is, unless some frustrated and berserk historian goes over there with his official “History Matters” sledge hammer and smashes the damn things and tosses them in the “dustbin of history,” (metaphorically speaking, of course).

In praise (but not defense) of the Minnesota Historical Society

About this site, Minnesota Historical Society, Minnesota's 150th

Minnesota has a history, and that not altogether an unwritten one, which can unravel many a page of deep, engrossing interest–Alexander Ramsey on becoming the chair of the Minnesota Historical Society in 1851

History is the lifeblood of communities. There is no community without history and the free and open access to that history marks the difference between liberty and tyranny. People who keep history–whether elders, storytellers, archivists, librarians, or even professional historians–who gather it and pass it on to others, perform a crucial function in any society. If history is not kept or if it is kept but not passed on or if it is kept and passed on in distorted or untruthful ways, then the soul of the community where this occurs will suffer.

My intention is to praise the Historical Society not to defend it. The Historical Society has been criticized for its role in supporting a master narrative or dominant form of history, one that is harmful to Native people, particularly the Dakota of Minnesota who were exiled from this state in 1862 and whose struggle to restore their place here has been long and continuing. I agree with this criticism, although I believe this is not done wittingly, or with a full understanding. Not that this makes the result any more defensible. But before discussing that point, I need to state my own admiration and support for the very real contribution made by the Historical Society–its mission, its collections, its wonderful staff, and its future. The Historical Society’s role in the state provides, in fact, the very means for attacking the master narrative and providing an alternative history which acknowledges the role of Native people in Minnesota and documents the genocide committed upon them. (Of course, I do have numerous conflicts of interest involving the Historical Society, as discussed below.)

The Minnesota Historical Society, through its library, its archives, and its museum collections is Minnesota’s history-keeper. From the Society’s very beginnings it has gathered the records of this place and this state, in manuscripts, books, newspapers, photographs, oral histories, information, and objects. And it has preserved and disseminated the information assembled in endless and useful ways. In this it has performed a crucial cultural role, one that helps to make Minnesota a better place. Whenever this cultural role is harmed or diminished, whenever the budget of these programs is cut, Minnesota itself is diminished.

Archives, libraries, collections, and the gathering of diverse sources of information are a key function of any society. Without such institutions a people cannot exist as a people. Societies without written records still have historians who help others to see where they came from and where they are going. Oral histories, legends, winter counts on buffalo skin are as important a record as the collected records of a state legislature. 

Of course, even totalitarian and criminal societies keep records, often very meticulous ones. The Nazis kept gruesome records of their worst acts. Organized crime keeps careful financial records. In terms of record-keeping one difference between such societies and free and open societies is the degree to which the records are open, accessible, and freely disseminated. Open records are a key to accountability. If a society makes no provision for such access and dissemination and does not support it with adequate funding this causes great harm to democracy.

The Minnesota Historical Society has not always been the State Archives, but its tradition of record-keeping goes back to its beginnings. It is no accident that the second Archivist of the United States, Solon J. Buck, was for many years the director of the Minnesota Historical Society. Some will note that the origin of the Historical Society is enmeshed in the very processes through which criminal acts were committed by the Territory and State of Minnesota against Native people. The first records collected by the Historical Society of Indian people were designed to document a “dying race.” In 1851 Alexander Ramsey wrote: “In tracing the origin of the Indian races around us, we should not overlook the necessity of preserving their languages, as most important guides in this interesting, though perhaps unavailing pursuit. It must be evident to all, that they are destined to pass away with the tribes who speak them, unless by vocabularies we promptly arrest their extinction.”

Alexander Ramsey and Henry H. Sibley, who helped engineer the 1851 treaties with the Dakota, and committed other acts worth detailed cataloging, or posthumous indictment, were both there when the Historical Society was founded in 1849. But if one wants to catalog the crimes of Ramsey and Sibley one needs to begin in the very records kept by the Minnesota Historical Society. People who commit crimes against humanity are sometimes proud of what they have done. The commitment to keeping a record of their actions sometimes blinds them to the understanding of what that record will show. Such records illuminate the nature of the acts but also the complexity of character that led to them.

In December 1850, Alexander Ramsey, as governor of Minnesota Territory, supervised a series of government actions that led to the deaths of hundreds of Ojibwe people at Sandy Lake. The full record of those actions is found in both the National Archives and the Minnesota Historical Society, recorded meticulously by government employees. Ramsey himself wrote in his diary that he could not believe the reports that Ojibwe people were dying in large numbers. On Christmas day he received a visit in St. Paul from the Sandy Lake Indian agent John Watrous, who knew very well what was happening, but, Ramsey reported, Watrous presented him with a “fine long sleeved pair of fur gloves,” and “a pretty segar case.”

A cheerful man, Ramsey was blind to the fatal irony of these gifts, as he was of so much in his life. He and his descendants kept his records carefully and finally gave them to the Minnesota Historical Society. Others who were equally or more guilty appear to have been aware of the nature of their actions, or at least their heirs were. In the case of Henry M. Rice, the same Minnesotan whose white marble statue is in the Statuary Hall of the U. S. Capitol in Washington, who masqueraded all his life as a “friend to the Indian” but dealt with them ruthlessly through a series of terrible treaties, his records were carefully purged of anything that told the true story of his acts.

Rice’s actions were not widely publicized at the time, but were understood by many. Jacob V. Brower, the archaeologist, credited with a pivotal role in the creation of Itasca State Park, deplored Rice’s role in the theft of the land of the Mille Lacs Ojibwe. Brower had no academic distance from the topic of his study. He had a clear understanding that archaeological record of the Mille Lacs area could not be separated from the treatment of the Indian people who still lived there.

In 1901 Brower addressed a meeting of the Minnesota Historical Society in which he “went to a considerable extent into early Indian history and condemned in the severest terms the persecution of the Indians by the government and the settlers.” He reportedly said that “if such wrongs continued the day would come when the destruction of the government would be chronicled.” (This is from a November 12, 1901 St. Paul Dispatch article.)

The address was a shock to some members of the Historical Society. General John Sanborn, a politician and the director of the Minnesota Historical Society at the time, described Brower’s address as “too radical in places and thought it might be softened a little before it became a record of the society.” Brower published the statement uncensored, at his own expense, but it soon became a valuable record in the Historical Society where one can find it when compiling the full record of Henry Rice’s life.

This incident describes both the strengths and weaknesses of the Minnesota Historical Society. While the Society tries to be comprehensive in its collecting of history, it is also wary, suspicious, conservative, and nervous about controversy. When it comes to interpreting history, the leadership of the Society usually places popularity above truth or complexity.

This is because of the nature of the role that the Society plays in Minnesota civic life. The Society occupies a sacred space in Minnesota, rather like the Vatican, which is why it is only fitting that the Society displayed the recent exhibit of Vatican treasures. The Society is an agency of the state without being a state agency. The Historical Society has the state archives and a free library. It operates a state historic sites network and is designated to receive a variety of federal funding on behalf of the state. The Minnesota legislature gives it many tasks to do, but the Society remains not part of state government. Instead it is perhaps the oldest 501(c)(3) in Minnesota.

In particular, the Historical Society is not a state agency in the strict legal sense of the term, as determined by a ruling from the Commissioner of Administration in 2006. For this anomalous reason, the Historical Society is not required to follow one of the most important laws regarding public record-keeping and the dissemination of information, the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act. That is to say, that the agency given the task of aiding and furthering public record-keeping in Minnesota and helping to carry out aspects of the Data Practices Act is not actually subject to the act. Instead the Society has its own seldom publicized information policy. This policy states that the society “may deny or limit access to information if providing access would harm the interests of the Society,” an enormous loophole that any state or local government agency would find very useful.  Among other escape clauses, the policy states that the Society reserved “the right to amend or terminate this policy as it deems appropriate.” Until recently the exact words of this policy were unavailable to those seeking information from the Society, even when they were denied access to  information in the possession of the Society.

Many will say that the role of the Historical Society as a non-state state institution—including not being subject to the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act–explains its strength, making possible its sacred functions as keeper of history in Minnesota. But the Society is still publicly funded to a large extent and is not insulated from any of the political pressures that engender a persistent fear of controversy, unlike the University of Minnesota. The university is expressly named in the law as subject to the Minnesota Data Practices Act and does not seemed harmed as a result. Perhaps the doctrine of academic freedom makes a difference.

To return to the starting point, it is precisely in situations in which the status of the Historical Society is at issue that a dominant master narrative so damaging to Indian people makes its appearance. Fear of the legislature increases the stereotypical and superficial presentation of history to the public. In the long run one might hope that adequate, even lavish funding would allow the Society to overcome this recurring syndrome, but sometimes the desire for funding becomes not a means to an end, but a never-ending quest. Circuses become more important than bread. Without a firm tradition of academic freedom to support it, the Society believes it can only hide behind its sacred status and a pious facade if it wishes to survive in the winds of Minnesota legislative politics.

More about master narratives and the Minnesota Historical Society next time

A Personal Note about My Conflict of Interest

Some will say that my credibility about the Minnesota Historical Society, pro or con, is simply nonexistent. My mother worked there for many years (though before her death in 2008 she was very critical of it). I worked there for ten years myself (and ever since then have been described as “disgruntled former staff”). And while working there I met my wife who still works there (which causes many interesting family arguments at the dinner table). On top of that the Historical Society published my book We Are at Home: Pictures of the Ojibwe People in 2007. I am sure there are some at the Historical Society who believe that I have been too harsh toward the institution. Others will say that I have been too easy. In fact both of these points of view may be right, depending on the occasion. I can give you examples of both. But it seems to me that I have an obligation to be as harsh or as easy toward the Historical Society as I have been in my writing toward the National Park Service, the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council, the Minnesota Department of Transportation, and the Office of the State Archaeologist. To act any differently is hypocritical. So, despite the complexity of my relationship with “the oldest 501 (c) (3) in the state,” I will try to muddle through, sorting out the issues as they arise.

History that really does matter

Minnesota Historical Society, Minnesota's 150th

For several years now the Minnesota Historical Society has been using an advertising slogan that says “History Matters,” with the phrase appearing on everything, from chocolate bars to postcards, buttons,  t-shirts and sweatshirts. (How about putting it on some good Minnesota butter?) Who can argue with the thought that history does matter? It is certainly an improvement on the previous advertising campaign which said: “History is soooo fun!” Doing history that really matters is something that anyone who does history wants to do. But, it is only natural that history matters to different people in different ways. And sometimes people can’t agree on what it is about it that matters and how one should express the matter-reality of it.

Consider the events of February 16, 2009. On that day the Minnesota Historical Society had an event at the State Capitol in St. Paul to mark President’s Day and to further its agenda in the legislative session. At this gathering there were a number of Dakota people protesting, because of President Lincoln’s role in ordering the execution of 38 Dakota people at Mankato on December 26, 1862. Among the protestors was the daughter of Angela Waziyatawin,a young woman named Wicanhpi Iyotan Win or Autumn who was arrested because of her role in protesting. Later in the week Angela Waziyatawin sent out a statement about the event that included a letter to Nina Archabal, the director of the Minnesota Historical Society criticizing her leadership of an institution that has “only entrenched itself as a colonialist institution and guardian of the master narrative in American history.  Rather than launching an era of reparative justice with Minnesota’s Original People, your administration has continued the anti-Dakota sentiment and antagonistic relationship with which it began.”

history-matters-a-little2

Whether or not I agree with all of what Waziyatawin has to say, it seems to me that it is worth discussing. I am a strong supporter of the Historical Society as a public institution (it did publish a book and a few other things I wrote), but I also have strong differences with the current management of this institution and the various “master narratives” it endorses (whatever they may be). Angela and I are not the only ones who have concerns about this. And it does seem awfully ironic as Waziyatawin points out that “when Autumn was 8, she played the role of her great-great-great grandmother, Maza Okiye Win, to represent one of the Dakota perspectives for the MN Territory exhibit at the MHS.  Now she has been arrested at an MHS event for telling the truth about our ancestors’ experiences.” And what of the irony of arresting someone, at History Matters Day at the Capitol, who really does believe that history matters? 

The issues raised in the letter are important ones, and in the future I plan to discuss them on this site. I want to publish opposing views too. But, to start the ball rolling here I am going to quote directly from Angelan Waziyatawin’s statement and her letter to Archabal

Email from Angela Waziyatawin, PhD

Han Mitakuyapi.  I have pasted below a statement about the events at the state capitol on Monday as well as an “Open Letter to Nina Archabal.”  As many of you already know, Autumn was arrested Monday for expressing corrective truths to the crowd during the MHS’s celebration of colonialism.  Here is a link to the arrest:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYU8lHKPOXE.  Capitol security guards also attempted to yank the camera off my son Sage’s neck (he’s only 11) and I had to physically grab the officer by the chest to pull him away.  They clearly did not want a record of her arrest.  Ironically, when Autumn was 8, she played the role of her great-great-great grandmother, Maza Okiye Win, to represent one of the Dakota perspectives for the MN Territory exhibit at the MHS.  Now she has been arrested at an MHS event for telling the truth about our ancestors’ experiences. Waziyatawin, Ph.D.

History Day at the Capitol, February 16, 2009
History Day at the Capitol, February 16, 2009

On Monday, February 16, the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS) once again demonstrated its disregard for Dakota humanity and its willingness to uphold its racist and colonialist heritage, a heritage that harkens back to the institution’s founding by the imperial fathers of the State of Minnesota such as Alexander Ramsey.  During their “Day at the Capitol,” opportunely falling upon President’s Day, the MHS used their time at the capitol to celebrate U.S. Presidents while paying special homage to Abraham Lincoln with a bicentennial salute.  Replete with the rhetoric of manifest destiny ideology, a Lincoln impersonator reciting the Gettysburg Address, the First Minnesota regiment re-enactors playing Custer’s song, and even children making and donning construction paper stove-pipe hats, it was an absurd event, albeit a recurring one.  Dakota spectators and our allies felt like we stepped into a familiar colonial drama. 

Wicanhpi Iyotan Win or Autumn with an actor representing Abraham Lincoln
Wicanhpi Iyotan Win or Autumn with an actor representing Abraham Lincoln

Given the fact that Lincoln’s most spectacular legacy in the state of Minnesota is the largest, mass, simultaneous hanging from one gallows in world history, he is better known here as the Great Executioner rather than the Great Emancipator.  Our 38 Dakota warriors lynched in Mankato on December 26, 1862 are not merely a blemish on Lincoln’s otherwise unblemished career (as one of the politicians suggested), nor is it evidence of the “complexity” of the man (as Nina Archabal, the MHS Director stated).  Rather, his hanging of Dakota warriors in this record-breaking and record-setting heinous crime against humanity, can best be seen as a logical outcome of Lincoln’s previous interactions with or policies regarding Indigenous populations.  He began his adulthood as an Indian fighter during Black Hawk’s War, as a presidential candidate that ran on a “free soil” platform (the “free soil” to be stolen from Indigenous populations), and as part of an administration that passed the Homestead Act and the railroad acts (which opened the way for massive flooding of white and black populations onto Indigenous lands and land theft from Indigenous Peoples).  Further, the Lincoln administration routinely violated the terms of U.S. treaties with Indigenous populations and regularly withheld annuities, pushing Indigenous Peoples, including the Dakota, into starvation and war.  Thus, the mass hanging of Dakota patriots was no blemish or uncharacteristic blip in Lincoln’s career, it was simply par for his colonial course.

Dakota people and our allies showed up to contest this colonial representation and to raise the critical consciousness of participants and spectators, or at least make those who continue to organize such events uncomfortable.  We hung two large banners over the second story rail (“Take Down the Fort: Icon of American Imperialism” and “Site of Dakota Genocide”) and we had a large sign with Lincoln’s picture that read “The Great Executioner.”  While several of us were yelling corrective truths to the crowd, Wicanhpi Iyotan Win was targeted by security, arrested and held in Ramsey county jail (an appropriately named oppressive, colonial institution) for about eight hours.  She was charged with disorderly conduct.  Like other familiar colonial dramas, no matter how offensive are the words and actions of the colonizers, Indigenous people are the ones criminalized by colonial society.  In this instance, free speech was granted Wasicu people in the capitol rotunda, but our truth-telling was labeled a crime.

An Open Letter from Angela Waziyatawin to Nina Archabal, Director of the Minnesota Historical Society

On February 16, 2009 I attended the Minnesota Historical Society’s “Day at the Capitol” where, once again, I was astounded by the institution’s total lack of critical engagement with historical figures, ideas, and events. Instead, the MHS continues to present a simplistic and myth-laden history of great, white, male leaders, characteristic of 1950s elementary school textbooks and construction-paper social studies projects.  More importantly, the historical interpretations the institution continues to promote are ones laden with imperialistic manifest destiny ideology and racist assumptions. 

Perhaps you believe that in persisting with such anti-Indigenous projects you will convince the critical thinkers among us that Indigenous Peoples were indeed savages who did not know how to properly exploit the land and that the processes of invasion, conquest, and colonization and the policies of extermination and ethnic cleansing were necessary, inevitable, and righteous because the proud civilization that has replaced us in our homeland represents the pinnacle of progress and enlightened consciousness.  In fact, you would have to believe these myths to promote the level of historical education evident in the absurd event at the capitol on President’s Day.  But, you could not be more wrong. 

Just as there have always been Dakota people who have contested the theft or our homelands and the killing of our people, as long as some of us continue to breathe we will continue to use our voices and our bodies to contest those who would justify the violence against our people, lands, and ways of life.  We will continue to be present to attest to the tremendous losses we have suffered so that the invading population could occupy, exploit, and desecrate our beloved lands and to call attention to the ongoing injustices we suffer.  Your belligerence in perpetuating colonialist ideology does not serve to silence those of us with the critical eyes who see what you are doing, it only serves to radicalize increasing numbers of our youth and rally support from non-Dakota allies who want to distance themselves from your brand of racism. 

Under your leadership, the MHS has only entrenched itself as a colonialist institution and guardian of the master narrative in American history.  Rather than launching an era of reparative justice with Minnesota’s Original People, your administration has continued the anti-Dakota sentiment and antagonistic relationship with which it began.  From the time it first displayed Little Crow’s bounty scalp to its most recent celebration of the Great Executioner, it seems the institution does not miss a chance to attack our people.  On your watch, you have only served to alienate and anger each new generation.

Before I left the event at the capitol, I congratulated you on once again assaulting the humanity of Dakota people and upholding the racist and colonial legacy of your institution.  You said, “Thank you,” and I told you I knew you would take that as a compliment.  Your anti-Dakota positioning and colonialist sentiments could not have been more clearly expressed.

Sincerely, Waziyatawin