On December 7, 2011 the following letter was published in a Minnesota county newspaper, the Mille Lacs Messenger.
Dakota Homeland
by Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer
Mde Wakan (Lake Mille Lacs)
In 2012 there will be a commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the 1862 U.S. - Dakota War. In
preparation for this coming 150th anniversary several articles have been published in popular
newspapers. The Twin Cites Daily Planet published an
article of mine about this topic. It is
titled, Healing the Dakota People's Painful Wounds of Ethnocide and Genocide.
In respect to this topic, I would like to inform Mille Lacs Messenger readers that on a
Santee Tribe website where is the following statement: "The Santee's defeat by the
Chippewas (Ojibwe) at the Battle of Kathio in the late 1700s forced them to move to
the southern half of the state which would bring them into close contact and eventual
conflict with the white settlers. From that point on, survival for the Santee Tribe
would become a daily struggle."
The Santee Dakota people's expulsion from their sacred Mille Lacs homeland and
consequential escalating conflicts with the white settlers eventually caused the
1862 U.S. - Dakota war.
In Anton Treuer's book, The Ojibwe in Minnesota, he wrote: The Dutch and
then the British encouraged the Iroquois to attack various Indian tribes
as the Huron and Ojibwe in order to push them westward and obtain exclusive
access to their trapping grounds."
As Europeans settled the East coast, they displaced eastern tribes who
then migrated west to get away from the White civilization, and they,
in their turn, displaced weaker local tribes.
On the Minnesota DNR website there is the following statement:
"Early White/Indian intervention played an important role in the settlement of
the area by white men. The French, instigated fights between the Ojibwe and
Dakota so as to ally themselves with the Ojibwe. ref.
The Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe oral tradition tells that their Lake Superior
ancestors who had migrated to Minnesota from the East coast to get away
from the White civilization invaded the Dakota people's Mille Lacs homeland
and during the mid-1700s "battle of Kathio" used the White colonists' guns
and gun powder bombs to violently force the Dakota from their sacred
Mille Lacs homeland.
I recently created a facebook group
named "Regaining the Dakota Oyate's
Mille Lacs Traditional Homeland". Two leading Dakota activists who are on the
forefront of the movement to regain their people's traditional homelands
in Minnesota have joined my
facebook group. I believe that this movement
will help to heal the Dakota people's wounds caused by the 1862 U.S. -
Dakota war.
*******************************************************************************
The (mentioned above) two leading Dakota activists who are on the forefront of the movement to regain their people's traditional homelands and who
have joined my facebook group are
Wyatt Thomas and
Alfred Bone Shirt.
Bone Shirt organized the
Lakota Oyate's first freedom celebration and information meeting
on his people's declaration of independence
from the U.S. and reclamation of traditional homelands.
ref.
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