The following letter was published in THE FREE PRESS, The Farm's newsletter.

The Farm is a 250 member hippie counter-cultural community located near
Summertown, Tenn.. Some hippies settled there in 1971. Transplants from San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury acid scene, they arrived in a caravan of 50 or so brightly painted live-in school buses. The Farm once had 1500 members, and according to their spiritual mentor, Stephen Gaskin, was going to be a demonstration project for a
sustainable future, a nonviolent ecofriendly cooperative community of pioneers
ushering in a new age.

-----Call for help

-----Greetings from Wahkon, Minnesota, a village indirectly named after the Mdewakanton
-----Dakota's (Great) Spirit. I was a San Francisco Bay area hippy when Stephen Gaskin's
-----commune originated and then moved to Tennessee.

-----While in the San Francisco Bay area, I, and a friend of mine who knew Stephen Gaskin
-----and attended Monday Night Class, were, along with some other hippy friends of ours,
-----forming into a commune, so that we could, in imitation of Stephen Gaskin's commune,
-----move to a rural location.

-----We were successful at establishing a small commune, and we then moved to Wahkon,
-----Minnesota. Our commune soon came to an end; but I remained in Wahkon, and it was
-----not long after the breakup of our commune that I developed a worldview around the
-----word wahkon, more commonly spelled wakan. For 35 years. I have been trying to
-----re-establish the original commune, and it looks like it could come together again,
-----in the near future. My friend who knew Stephen Gaskin and attended Monday Night
-----Class is now an internationally renowned environmentalist. His web site is located
-----at: www.CARTERCARE.com/care.

-----Recently, the Board of Directors of an international Native organization representing
-----over 200 tribes came out in public support for my movement to change the name of a
-----Minnesota river that is derogatory toward Native Americans. It's derogatory because
-----the white men's "punning translation" name for the river is (according to Minnesota
-----Historical Society files) a profanation of the ancient "Sioux" (Dakota) name for the
-----river (Wakan). The primary purpose of this letter is to solicit The Farm's support for
-----the name-change of this badly named Minnesota river, the "Rum" River.

-----There is a temporary and under construction web site for the Rum River name-change
-----movement. It's: http:/7free. hostdepartment. com/M/Mdewakanton/. The new web site
-----will be located at: http://www.towahkon.org/.

-----Thank you for your time.

-----Thomas I. Dahlheimer
-----P.O. Box 24
-----Wahkon, Minnesota 5638

-----To learn more about my worldview around the word wahkon, click
----- worldview

----- HOME