Category Archives: Minnesota’s 150th

A new house built of stone: New information on a Coldwater landmark

March 18, 2009Bdote: A Public EIS, Minnesota's 150thBruce White

New information has been found about the stone house of the fur trader Benjamin F. Baker, located above Coldwater Spring from the 1830s to the 1850s. The house, which was the site of many firsts in Minnesota history, was destroyed by fire in March 1860. The new information shows that the house was built as early as 1836, prior to the Henry H. Sibley house in Mendota, which makes the Baker House the first recorded private residence made of stone in Minnesota. It later housed other traders, merchants, missionaries, a hotel, and the first public school in the region of Minnesota (in 1837-38).

The site of the Baker House is on a hill just to the west of Coldwater Spring on the Bureau of Mines-Twin Cities campus property. It is likely that it was located near the current site of the long metal building known as Building 11. Missionary Samuel Pond stated that the Baker House was the “first stone house erected in Minnesota except those belonging to the Government.” On the other hand, Henry H. Sibley, in his later years, stated that his own house in Mendota was “the first and oldest private residence, in all of Minnesota, and Dakota,” though he may have meant that it was the first such residence still standing.

At the bottom of the image, the Baker house is shown on the bluff above Coldwater Spring, in a detail from the October 1837 map of the Fort Snelling area done by Lt. E. K. Smith — At the bottom of the image, the Baker house is shown on the bluff above Coldwater Spring (where Baker had his trading post), in a detail from the October 1837 map of the Fort Snelling area done by Lt. E. K. Smith

The new information about the Baker house comes from notes taken by the French geographer and mapmaker Joseph Nicollet, who, on October 10, 1836 visited Coldwater Spring at mid-day to take some barometric readings, first near Benjamin F. Baker’s trading post, above the spring and the stream that flowed from it. Then he climbed up to the “summit of the hill on which is the new house (built of stone) of Mr. Baker.” On the same occasion Nicollet noted other information on the spring and the area around it. He noted that the “the beautiful spring [la belle Fontaine] at Mr. Baker’s, has a temerature of 46 [degrees], while that of the air was 56 [degrees] today at 2.” He also noted the formation of the ground above the spring, stating that “the deposit of sand which forms the summit of this hill and which rests on the limestone formation which begins at the level of the spring [fontaine] of Mr. Baker is 18 feet thick, the first layer made of limestone mixed with shells, the second without shells. The whole rest of the height from the level of the stream is filled with sand.”

One of the failures of the archaeological survey done on the Bureau of Mines property in 2000 was that it provided no new information about the location of the Baker House. The later historical study done for the Park Service around the same time discussed the later history of the house, but there is a great deal more information available about the house’s history and important events that occurred there. In the weeks ahead we will put more of this information online.

Note: The date of the destruction of the Baker House was supplied by Bruce McKenzie, who has been doing a great deal of new research on the later history of the house.

A crude drawing by Indian agent Lawrence Taliaferro showing Coldwater Spring and the Baker House as it looked in 1852 when it had become a hotel owned by Kenneth McKenzie — A crude drawing by Indian agent Lawrence Taliaferro showing Coldwater Spring and the Baker House as it looked in 1853 when it had become a hotel owned by Kenneth McKenzie and operated as the St. Louis House

Reclaiming Minnesota–Mini Sota Makoce, the Dakota homeland

March 17, 2009Bdote: A Public EIS, Minnesota's 150th, Reclaiming Mini Sota MakoceBruce White

One hundred and forty six years after most of the Dakota were exiled from Minnesota, reclaiming Minnesota–Mini Sota Makoce, the Dakota homeland–is a goal of many Dakota people, even those who disagree on particular goals and tactics. Some are doing it with money, buying back the land one parcel at a time. Others, who do not have the money are using their bodies and their voices, risking and suffering arrest. Still others are working more quietly, using research, education, negotiation, and engagement to recover and re-establish the presence of Dakota in this region. All them are making an important contribution to the process. Successful movements to achieve change require all these complementary skills.

For any people dispossessed of their lands or exiled from their homeland, it takes the talents of many to reclaim what was taken from them or return to what they left behind, even though all who are involved may not appreciate that they are separate, complementary pieces of a larger struggle. It is a process that proceeds in fits and starts, concentrating sometimes on one place or another. At the moment a great deal of attention is being paid to the area of Bdote around the mouth of the Minnesota River, and specifically the Coldwater/Bureau of Mines property. The only unfortunate aspect of this current struggle to reclaim this area is that it may lead people to believe that this is the only place the Dakota care about. But in the months and years ahead, Dakota people, and those who support their efforts, will engage over many places in Minnesota, seeking to educate, to confront, and to reclaim. We hope to keep track of all the developments as they take place.

A plea from the Little Feather Indian Center at Pipestone

March 16, 2009Minnesota's 150th

I just received this email from Chuck Derby of the Little Feather Indian Center at Pipestone, Minnesota, a place devoted to educating people about the Pipestone quarry, the use of pipestone for making pipes, and the proper use of pipes in ceremonies. The is the introduction from the center’s website:

Hau Koda, welcome to the Little Feather Center, we are located in Pipestone, Minnesota, the home of the genuine stone that our sacred Pipestone Pipes are made from. The Center is Dakota owned and operated and the site is full of information on the Dakota culture and other Native American issues. If you continue through this site you will, I hope, learn much about the Pipestone Pipes and the authentic Catlinite stone that they are created from. By the time you leave you should be able to tell the difference between the genuine stone from Pipestone and the look-alike red stone from Jasper, and also know about the various styles of pipes, the sacred pipestone quarries, quarrying and the history of Pipestone. You may also have signed a petition or two!

Below is the message I received today from Chuck Derby:

Hello everyone,

These economic hard times have affected many people with loss of jobs, housing and economic stability. The high price of gas for automobiles last year reduced the number of visitors to this area. It has affected the Little Feather Indian Center as well. We have not been able to keep up with the taxes on the Center and our ceremonial/powwow grounds. If we cannot pay the taxes we will be losing all that we have strived to perpetuate for many years. The loss of the Center where our museum, dedicated to Native American Women, the Sacred Pipe and the true history of this Sacred area will be gone. We did not put a price tag on all that we have done for the people Indian/non-Indian, other than a small amount to compensate for the labor in the quarrying and pipemaking.

We have been trying to help the people for the last 15 years to learn about the true Sacredness of this area and the Sacred Pipe. We honor and respect all religious beliefs and try to do what we can to assist those who choose the Sacred Red Road. Native American culture and especially the Sacred Pipestone area has been my life for many, many years. That will be gone. Gone too will be the pipemaking from the Center, that has been ongoing for the 15 years that we have been at the Center.

The ceremonial/powwow grounds is the site location where many of our ancestors camped while at the Pipestone quarries. The teachings from elders, spiritual leaders, medicine-men and research, have determined that this is the ancient campgrounds. This site has been used by Native people for over 4,000 years and petroglyphs found at the sacred ceremonial site now called the Three Maidens date back at least 4,000 years. Many pieces of worked pipestone have been found on this camp site and they have been worked with stone tools, indicating usage prior to metal tools and white contact. The pipestone specimens were found in a wide spread area, so this rules out that it was a dump site. We found partial pipes and stone that looks like ancient ancestors were in the process of making a pipe.

Along with the recession, I have, as many of you know, been ill and had to have surgery, I have diabetes also and so the medical costs did nothing to help our situation. Gloria is stuck in England right now with no money to return until she sells her Mother’s house, which is today’s market seems impossible. I am on a fixed pension which is just enough to live on and basically keep the Center going, except for the taxes. I have tried to get a job but with the illness and my age (68) I am no longer viable in the workforce. I am at my wit’s end right now.

We need $5,500 in total, and we have asked a Minnesota tribe who have a casino for help in this but haven’t heard back from them. We need the cash by mid April and time is creeping on and we are all starting to really worry. If this cannot be done we will have to take down all of our displays and move them to our homes for safe keeping, we cannot allow those things to be sold and lost as many of them are historical items about the local Dakota people and the area.

So as much as I hate to do it, I am putting out a plea to anyone who wishes to help us keep the Center. Please could you manage to throw a few dollars together and donate it to us, anything will be used to pay the taxes off. We are not a 501c3 never had the money or ability to do all of that, besides we preferred not to have big brother keeping an eye on what we did, we liked to be able to give someone the money for a pair of shoes, or for their gas cost to a funeral, or just some cash to survive. We didn’t keep a record of those things we just did them, so there is no tax deductable donations, they will just be love donations.

Please email me if you are able to help us. Or please send anything you are able to:
PO Box 334, Pipestone, MN 56164

I am thankful for your assistance in this, and you will be in our prayers.

Miukuye Oyasin,

Chuck, along with Alice & Gloria
on behalf of the Little Feather Center

Videos from the Coldwater/ Bureau of Mines open house, February 23, 2009

Here are some videos of the National Park Service open house about the Bureau of Mines property taken at the event on February 23, 2009, from 5 to 9 PM. The event started a 30-day comment period about changes to property around Coldwater Spring, as discussed here before. Early on at this event, Waziyatawin and her supporters hung banners around the room at the VA Medical Center near Fort Snelling. Although as planned by the National Park Service the event was not supposed to have any public speakers, shortly after 6:00 PM that evening, Waziyatawin stood on a chair and began speaking of the importance of giving the property back to the Dakota people. Following her a number of other speakers addressed the crowd, some standing on the chair, others simply standing near the wall. Not all of the speakers were recorded or recorded completely, as far as we know. Also, there were some speakers whose names we did not get. What follows are links to five videos on YouTube. If we find more videos we will put links on here later. The videos here vary in quality although on my computer the sound is ok, so you can hear most of what was said. If you click on the images below you can watch the videos without leaving this site. Otherwise you can watch them at YouTube.

Part 1: Waziyatawin and her daughter Wicanhpi Iyotan Win or Autumn speaking at the Bureau of Mines Open House about Coldwater Spring, February 23, 2009

Parts 2-4: The speech given by Sheldon Peters Wolfchild on the importance of Coldwater Spring and the wider area of Taku Wakan Tipi to Mdewakanton Dakota and to the Lower Sioux Indian Community. It is divided into three parts.

Part 5: Scott DeMuth speaking of the return of the 27 acres of land at the Bureau of Mines to the Dakota people.

Mdewakanton Dakotas in Minnesota and the Wolfchild case

March 11, 2009Bdote: A Public EIS, Minnesota's 150thBruce White

On March 10, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., issued a decision (available here in pdf form) in the Wolfchild lawsuit concerning the lands purchased by the federal government for the benefit of the Mdewakanton Dakota who were living in Minnesota on May 20, 1886. If I understand the decision correctly (and I may have to revise this later), the court ruled in favor of the case made by the present-day federal government that the lands bought for those Mdewakanton and specified as being for the benefit of their lineal descendants, were not held in trust for them, and that therefore the lineal descendants have no claim on the federal government. Further, the court appears to be saying that regardless of any claim any lineal descendant might have had to the land once, Congress took away these rights when it turned the land over to the organized Dakota communities in a law passed in 1980. To these people the court basically says: Tough, get over it.

Even though this decision does not necessarily mean the end of this lawsuit or any others that may be brought on the issue, the decision will be good news for some and it will be bad news for many others. I suspect that the only entity that it will be completely good news for is the federal government, which has thrived since 1862 and earlier on the divisions among the Dakota people.

Were the Wolfchild case to come to an end today it would not magically unify the Mdewakanton Dakotas and other Dakotas in Minnesota. Like many people around Minnesota I first heard of the decision from a Indian-issues listerv, in an email from a Dakota person who sent out an Adobe Acrobat file with the court’s decision and appeared to communicate his feelings about it by ending the message: “Anpetu Waste Yuhapipo, You All Have a Good Day!!” Knowing a little about this person, I had a pretty good idea about what the decision was before I even looked at it. To get another take on what it meant, I looked at the Mohrman Kaardal law firm website, where Erick Kaardal, the chief attorney for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, wrote: “The Federal Circuit issued an opinion today holding that the government won. Plaintiffs lost. Counsel for Wolfchild plaintiffs are reviewing appeal options.”

I am not sure how this is all going to be reported in the media. (Here’s one early report.) One thing that I doubt will get reported very well is the relationship of this decision to the complicated history of the Mdewakanton Dakotas in Minnesota since 1862. There is very little understanding out there about why the Mdewakanton Dakotas and other Dakotas in Minnesota are the divided community they are today. To a large extent this is directly the result of actions taken by the federal goverment at every step along the way. One might even think that the federal government likes it that way and wants it to continue.

As it happens just before I received the email about the court decision I was looking for a copy of a letter that I had found once in a research collection, a letter that really shows the role that the federal government has played in encouraging Dakota disunity. After searching through piles and piles of paper I found it. It from the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington to Minnesota Congressman Al Quie, dated April 19, 1961. Quie had earlier sent the commissioner a letter from a woman at Prairie Island complaining about conditions there. In response the commissioner gave the congressman a summary of a key moment in Mdewakanton Dakota history, when the federal government implemented the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) in the mid-1930s, through which it encouraged bands and reservations to create business-like self-government:

In October of 1935 a constitution for the Mdewakanton Sioux was submitted which proposed a single organization of all the Mdewakanton Sioux communities. However it was subsequently decided by the Solicitor for the Department of Interior that these Indians had under the land purchase acts abandoned tribal relations and therefore were not privileged to organize as a tribe over various reservations. Their only basis of organization was as Indians residing on a reservation.

The decision in favor of a separate organization was agreeable to the Indians, particularly in view of the fact that they had originally begun organization in just such a manner. It was at a mass meeting of the Indians from all of these commnities that a single organization had been decided upon quite spontaneously. However, when the legal and practical difficulties of such an organization became apparent, each group willingly returned to its original plan. It was decided that an annual conference of the Mdewakanton Sioux Indians on matters of common interest would satisfy the commendable desire of these Indians to unite on such matters.

In other words, the Dakota started out wanting to organize as separate communities then when all the communities met together they decided to unify as a people, but then the federal government told them they could not do that, so they decided to make the best of things and organize separately. Given the fact that the IRA was supposed to be about self-government, why did the federal government tell them they could not organize as a single people? At the very same time the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe was re-organizing as a single tribe (except for Red Lake). In the case of the Ojibwe, the individual reservations were subsequently granted charters from the MCT. But in the case of the Dakota, they were only allowed to organize as individual separate communities, which they did. The last community to organize was Shakopee in 1969.

To understand why the federal government forced this decision you have to look at the history of the way the IRA was implemented around the country. And that could go on for pages. One way or another, the Dakota are who they are today, a number of separate communities with different land bases (all based originally on those land purchases in starting in the 1880s), different membership policies, different casinos–each casino with a different level of income from its customer base–all of the communities jealous of their own interests and wary of working together. Not to mention the issues involving all the unenrolled Dakota who have not been allowed to be members of these communities.

These are the Dakota that the Department of Interior thinks about when it says that it cannot give the Coldwater-Bureau of Mines property to the Dakota. Federal officials ask: If we gave the land to the Dakota which Dakota would we give it to? Who are the Dakota? The answer is that the Dakota are the fractionalized people that the federal government made. Given that the fractionalized nature of the Dakota is due in large part to the actions of the federal government, you would think that the government bears a special obligation when working with the Dakota to find better ways of involving all of them in their processes. In the case of Coldwater Spring, this would suggest the need for special efforts at mediation to arrive at a way for the Dakota to work together. But of course, that could only begin if the Department of Interior and the Park Service finally acknowledged that Coldwater Spring is an important place for Dakota people.

Could the Dakota people work together to protect a place like Coldwater Spring under their joint management? It is a question worth thinking about.

Where is Carol Bly, now that we need her?–Minnesota in its 150th year of denial

March 10, 2009Minnesota culture, Minnesota's 150thBruce White

“Minnesota–150 Years of Denial.” That was my motto proposal for Minnesota’s statehood centennial which began in May 2008. All through this year I’ve been thinking of Carol Bly. She died in December 2007, but if there was ever a time that needed her spirited involvement it was the year of Minnesota’s sesquicentennial—the uproar, the arguments, the anachronistic nostalgia, the covered wagons, and the Lincoln impersonators teaching children how to make stovepipe hats. All of this could have used her skills at making people who disagree sit down and talk.

In the 1970s Carol Bly wrote a series of essays in the magazine of Minnesota Public Radio—first called Preview, then Minnesota Monthly—under the title that was later given to her book Letters from the Country. These letters explored the difficulties of sorting out questions of public culture and interpersonal communication in small towns and in the country. Carol Bly had a reforming spirit. She was not from the area of southwestern Minnesota where she and her husband the poet Robert Bly lived. Born in Duluth, she was educated at Wellesley, had lived in the east, and had gone to graduate school at the University of Minnesota before arriving in Madison, Minnesota.

A page from one of Carol Bly's letters as originally published in Minnesota Monthly magazine in August 1977.

Carol Bly always reminded me of the fictional Carol Kennicott in Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street, an outsider who took life in small towns seriously and wanted to make things better. Personally, when I was younger, I did not care for Carol Bly’s writing. But I was not a real Minnesotan and had never lived in a small town for very long so I did not really understand her work. My mother lived in a small town then and she had a grudge against Carol Bly, which was odd because they were two peas in a pod when it came to speaking up when speaking up was necessary. It is only recently that I have begun to see the profound value in Bly’s forthrightness (and in my mother’s for that matter).

Carol Bly’s letters were begun during the Vietnam War and were continued in its aftermath. Bly was insistent that even people in small towns should confront the nature of the what was going on in the world then, not back away from it. Bly had an unerring sense for spotting hypocrisy and the little evasions of everyday conversation. In this her work is the converse of Howard Mohr’s. What Mohr saw as humorous in how Minnesotans talked, Bly saw as tragic denial.

Bly’s letters are a Babette’s Feast of humanizing strategies for making people become better human beings, better listeners, better talkers, better sayers and doers of hard things. Of course, there is no question that Bly drove a lot of people crazy whether they lived near her or simply read her essays. She admitted in the new preface to the 1999 edition of her book that the first third of the letters were “a little cross,” with an edgy tone, and that the later essays were “directive and even more opinionated,” even though at the end she said she felt more sure of her subject “informally analyzing rural life and trying to figure out ways to live both more seriously and more happily than seemed to be the general custom.” Bly’s work speaks to a larger human condition, about how to confront things and change them. But it also describes the general public culture of this 32d state, this arbitrarily constructed place called Minnesota, the state that is now almost 151 years old.

What makes the Bly’s work even more remarkable is that it was published in Minnesota Monthly, which is now a slick advertising vehicle designed to raise money for public radio. But in those years the magazine was a far cry from what it is now. It had less advertising but it was a far better magazine. It started out as a monthly program guide but gradually turned into a stimulating and ground-breaking journal of opinion and analysis about Minnesota and its culture. One issue from August 1977 that I still have included an essay by Paul Gruchow entitled “Pieces of the Prairie,” illustrated with photographs by Jim Brandenburg, a piece by Bill Holm on “Icelanders, Box Elders, Soybeans and Poets,” along with Carol Bly’s letter from the country on the topic of facing evil. This was a vital magazine that helped to explain Minnesota to Minnesotans. It has left a great legacy, through the work of each of those writers who have now sadly left us and particularly in the work of Carol Bly.

The cover of the August 1977 issue of Minnesota Monthly, an issue containing writing by Carol Bly, Bill Holm, and Paul Gruchow, and photography by Jim Brandenburg

So much of what Bly speaks about in Letters from the Country rings true for public discussions throughout Minnesota, not just in those small towns. There is an evasive quality to the way Minnesotans in general and in particular deal with problems and issues that they share in common. There is an avoidance of conflict and a desire to smooth things over before they’ve gotten out in the open.

In Minnesota when you complain about something that involves society and general but also affects you in particular, you are likely to get the response suggesting that your complaint was motivated by egotism. I think of Carol Bly every time I complain to someone about something I believe to be a public wrong. Often the response is something like: “Why take it personally? It’s not about you.” Often this is said as a consolation but at other times it is intended as crushing retort, as though it answered all objections. What does one have to do to try to change society here in Minnesota, file a class action lawsuit, to prove that you know it is not just about you?

Similarly when things are heating up at public meetings in Minnesota and a few people have gotten angry enough to actually express an opinion, someone is likely to try to look on the bright side of things and say: “Isn’t it nice we have so many opinions represented here?” You want to respond, “Actually, no, it’s not nice, it’s hell, but then that is the price you have to pay for talking about tough topics.”

The key problem in Minnesota is that a lot of times people don’t want to talk with people with whom they disagree. Someone will say something occasionally but often the response will be silence. The difficulty is to keep the conversation going until everyone has had a chance to have their say, air their views, find a few things to agree on, identify the real issues and then try to do something about it. Instead grudges will be formed that become a real obstacle to progress.

Carol Bly’s solution was described in an essay entitled “Enemy Evenings.” She wrote that in Minnesota towns “one sometimes has the feeling of moving among ghosts, because we don’t meet and talk to our local opponents on any question.” According to Bly people didn’t air their differences because it was a “hassle,” and people would get upset. The result, she said, was a dismal loneliness, exercised in hypocrisy. Bly’s solutions was the enemy evening, a phrase inspired by Nixon’s enemies list, where people who disagreed with each other on particular issues would come and present their differences as panels of speakers. The event would be moderated by “a firm master of ceremonies in whom general affection for human beings would be paramount, not a chill manner or a childish desire to get the fur flying.”

Bly wrote that rural Minnesotans needed more “serious occasions” and serious discussion, such as these enemy evenings. Minnesota manners were pleasant and friendly but at a price to individual Minnesotans:

To preserve our low-key manners they have had to bottle up social indignation, psychological curiosity, and intellectual doubt. Their banter and their observations about the weather are carapace developed over decades of inconsequential talk. [Take that Howard Mohr!]

She concluded the essay stating: “I commend frank panel evenings with opponents taking part: let’s try that for a change of air, after years of chill and evasive tact.”

A former non-Minnesotan like myself ought to point out that the phrase enemy evenings betrays a lot about Minnesota culture. It implies that if you disagree with someone here you may soon be classified as an enemy. But Bly’s strategy was to figure out how to make enemies into co-conversationalists. Elsewhere in her letters she proposed further ways of airing disagreements. For thing she noted that one evening was not enough to really cover these kinds of discussions. Overnight conferences were the solution, allowing people to meet casually during breaks, sleep over and meet again the next day, providing an opportunity for those with “out-of-control agendas” to get it out of their systems, and generally to allow people to “concert together,” as Tocqueville had put it, and “have a go at the ‘mutual awakening.’”

Much of Carol Bly’s insights in dealing with differences of opinion here offer lessons for the Minnesota sesquicentennial and its aftermath. There may be some who would condemn the work that Angela Waziyatawin has done over this sesquicentennial year, making use of all the evasions of Minnesota-Nice-speak. Her opposition to the idea of “celebrating” events that were tied to the goal of wiping out Native American communities in Minnesota, may have been viewed as evidence that Waziyatawin is taking things personally and believing it is all about her. Many would prefer to see her go away and stop complaining.

For example, it is interesting to note that the reports I’ve read so far about the open house at the VA Hospital on February 23, have said very little about Waziyatawin’s role at the event. A new article in the Southside Pride, does not mention that, at this open house she got up on a chair and spoke to those assembled at some length, followed by speeches of her supporters and other Dakota people. The response to what she said, it may appear, is silence. (Of course there are some who will point out that MinnesotaHistory.net has not yet said anything about the event in any detail either. That is a reasonable criticism. Why doesn’t somebody send me an account? I’ve been too busy to write it myself.)

One can certainly disagree with Waziyatawin’s manner of raising the issues that she raises or disagree about the solutions that she is seeking, but one should never make the mistake of believing that these are not serious issues and that after 150 years of silence they not should be ones of continuing discussion. Minnesota’s history matters because it continues to have an effect on people today. The evils of the past as well as the good have helped make Minnesota what it is now. Acknowledging the past is an important step to take.

Carol Bly wrote that it was worthwhile for a community to get together and discuss how we might praise those we admire, even if we disagreed on who to praise and how to praise them. She added: “We could do some condemnations too. I like a fight.” I’m with her there, especially about history. Let’s talk about our history here in Minnesota. Let’s get it all out. No one gets to tell anyone else to shut up. Let’s agree, let’s disagree, let’s agree to disagree and disagree to agree, but let’s keep talking. After 150 years, it’s time to end the denial.

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

March 7, 2009Minnesota 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

February 28, 2009About this site, Minnesota Historical Society, Minnesota's 150thBruce White

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

February 22, 2009Minnesota Historical Society, Minnesota's 150thAdd new tagBruce White

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

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

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

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