Native American Minnesota

I got this information (PDF) emailed to me today by Denise Niedzolkowski, Public Relations Specialist and Executive Assistant, Mississippi National River and Recreation Area.

She wrote: “Attached is the announcement of the public open house for the Camp Coldwater Spring, the property formerly known as the Bureau of Mines.”

See my Dec. blog post National Park Service recommended to manage Coldwater Spring site for background.

Here’s the text of the Coldwater Spring Open House announcement PDF (I’ve added the photo of Superintendent Paul Labovitz):

January 22, 2009

Please provide an email address for future contact if at all possible. This measure saves paper and minimizes the cost of personnel and postage. Your information will be used for the sole purpose of communicating with you about the Bureau of Mines/Cold Water Springs. You can send that information to denise_niedzolkowski@nps.gov.

Dear Interested Party,

In our letter of December 3, 2008, we told you public meetings would be conducted in the winter and spring of 2009 to help determine some of the details for restoration of the site.

An informational open house has been scheduled to give the public an opportunity to provide comment on planning for the reuse and restoration of federal property formally occupied by the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Mines.

The open house will be held Monday February 23, 2009 from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. in the auditorium on the first floor of the VA Hospital, located at One Veterans Drive in Minneapolis.

National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service staff will be available to provide information concerning the DEIS preferred alternative, historical preservation and interpretation, and to gather input to guide planning for the future reuse and restoration of the site.

Sincerely,

Paul Labovitz
Superintendent

Waziyatawin has letter to the editor in today’s Strib.

As an indigenous person from occupied territory in Minnesota, Obama fever has eluded me. In fact, I find little in Obama’s rhetoric or proposed policies that indicate his presidency will be substantially different from the long list of white guys who have occupied the office before him.

My hope for the future, then, does not stem from my belief that President Obama will address the ongoing denial of freedom to indigenous peoples within our own homelands. Indeed, while many Americans are celebrating what they perceive as a victory over racism in the election of a black man to the White House, my only hope concerning his election is that it will clearly elucidate the difference between racism and colonialism in America.

As he invokes the memory of America’s founding fathers and refers to Americans as the "heirs of those early patriots," he reminds indigenous peoples that America was built at our expense. We paid the price of America’s nationhood with our blood, our lands, and our resources. America lives because indigenous populations were exterminated and dispossessed of much that was dear to us.

WAZIYATAWIN, GRANITE FALLS, MINN.; RESEARCH CHAIR, INDIGENOUS GOVERNANCE PROGRAM, UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA

 
Three youth from the Boys and Girls Club of the Leech Lake Area (Deer River, Cass Lake, Walker) unveiled a large Native American-themed mural at today’s Sesquicentennial closing ceremony in the Rotunda of the State Capitol.

A reception was held at the State Capitol this afternoon to close out the Sesquicentennial and thank everyone involved.

See the album of 15 photos or this slideshow:

The current issue (winter 2008-09) of Minnesota History, the quarterly of the Minnesota Historical Society, arrived in the mail today. It contains a 14-page article titled Survival at Crow Creek, 1863—1866 by Colette A. Hyman, a professor of history at Winona State University.

(The quarterly apparently doesn’t make PDFs of its articles available on its web site but individual issues can be ordered for $5.  See the order page for the Winter 2008-09 (61:4) issue.)

  
Here are photo snapshots of the first 4 pages. Click to enlarge as they’re somewhat readable.

I found it interesting that Professor Hyman used terms like “genocidal attacks,” “ethnic cleansing,” and “genocidal policies and actions” early in her article. The Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) deserves credit for publishing a piece in which those terms are used to describe the state’s treat of the Dakota, particularly in the aftermath of the U.S. – Dakota War of 1862.

Professor Hyman also refers to the concentration / internment camp at Fort Snelling as a “disease-ridden enclosure” and the accompanying photograph of the camp  has the caption, “Tipis of the captive Dakota in a fenced enclosure on the Minnesota River just below Fort Snelling, 1862-63.”

I’ll contact her to see if she’ll comment here about those terms, as well as the larger article and the book she’s working on, tentatively titled Dakota Women in Exile.