Native American Minnesota » Site announcements

Discussion Guidelines

Griff Wigley — Wed, 21 May 2008 02:54:27 +0000

I hope to have some helpful and interesting online discussions here via the comment feature that’s enabled on most blog posts.

So I’ve added a page of Discussion Guidelines that I’ve developed over the years so that visitors here know what’s expected.

I’ve been moderating online forums/web message boards since 1986 and created several successful online communities. Currently, I co-host a blog and podcast in my hometown of Northfield called Locally Grown that has a dozen or more active comment threads at any given time. I’m the moderator there.

Let me know if you have questions about my Guidelines. Be forewarned, though — they’re a bit unusual!

New photo gallery

Griff Wigley — Wed, 07 May 2008 11:39:19 +0000

I’ve added a photo gallery for this blog site… a place to put albums that contain six or more photos.

Subscribe to the blog via RSS or email

Griff Wigley — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 03:24:10 +0000

I’ve added a box (widget) to the right sidebar that allows you to subscribe to this blog either via an RSS feed or via email.

A blog is born

Griff Wigley — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 11:35:17 +0000

Back in mid-January, I met with some of the people involved with the Minnesota Sesquicentennial project at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. We discussed what could be done during the Minnesota Sesquicentennial to address how the Native American population was treated during the years before and after statehood in 1858.

Standing, L to R (click to enlarge): Matthew Brandt, VP, Minnesota Humanities Center; Stephen Feinstein, ED, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Feinstein died from an aortic aneuryism a month later); Sheldon Wolfchild, former chair, Lower Sioux Indian Community. Sitting, L to R: Lou Ann Matossian, Program Director, Cafesjian Family Foundation; Megan Jung, Grants Coordinator, Minnesota Sesquicentennial; Jane Leonard, Executive Director, Minnesota Sesquicentennial.

I’ve been a colleague of Jane Leonard’s for many years, collaborating on a variety of civic-oriented online projects. When she learned I was very interested in how the Minnesota’s Sesquicentennial was going to involve Minnesota Native Americans and that I’d been researching my own Dakota roots the past few years, she invited me to the meeting. She subsequently accepted my proposal to host this blog (now titled Native American Minnesota: A journey of learning and understanding) and lead the effort to explore what kind of partnering could be done with Minnesota Indian Tribes to increase public awareness of what happened 150 years ago at the dawn of Minnesota’s statehood.

My Dakota roots? My great great grandparents were Hypolite Dupuis and Angelique Renville. Angelique Renville was the daughter of Joseph Renville and Mary Little Crow, a full-blooded Dakota. Joseph Renville’s mother, Miniyuhe, was a member of Little Crow’s (Taoyateduta) Santee Dakota village of Kaposia. It’s not clear if she was the daughter of a Dakota chief named Big Thunder or a daughter of the first of three leaders named Little Crow (not, however, the noteworthy ‘third’ Little Crow, Taoyateduta).