The following letter to the editor was published in the Union-Times, a MN county newspaper, on November 19, 2016.

Dahlheimer: Group – Land title to Dakota nullified

by Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer


I am an indigenous peoples’ rights advocate working to rectify injustices against the Dakota Oyate (people) in the Rum (Wahkon) River Watershed. I am the director of Rum River Name Change Organization. The world’s largest Indian news source has published letters of mine on the Doctrine of Christian Discovery. The World Council of Churches and several mainline U.S. Christian churches have denounced this doctrine. The doctrine has been primarily used internationally to support decisions invalidating aboriginal possession of land in favor of colonial or post-colonial governments.

On November 7, 2016, Robert Labatte, an Indigenous Grand Elder at International Center of Spiritual and Ancestral Wisdom (ICSAW), shared my 11/7/16 facebook group post in Regaining The Dakota Oyate’s Mille Lacs Homeland.

My post reads: I changed the title of my article A History Of The Dakota People In the Mille Lacs Area to A History Of The Dakota People In Minnesota. I also added the following paragraph to the article.

In The Circle article titled Dakota Rising its author Jon Lurie describes how Wyatt Thomas (Dakota) traveled to Mille Lacs County from Nebraska where he lives on a reservation as a member of the Santee Dakota Tribe. “Thomas said that Minnesota, and Ogechie Lake in particular, was, to him, home. Thomas was on a mission to scout his tribe’s Minnesota ancestral lands. An important first step in reintroducing the Santee Dakota to their original homeland.”… “Thomas is one voice in a growing chorus of indigenous cultural leaders who agree that the reclamation of traditional lands is crucial to solving the Dakota mental health crisis due to the brutality of their historic treatment.”

To the above paragraph’s words “reclamation of traditional lands” I include a link to a video of a Standing Rock protest. It’s a video link of a Christian delegation of allies to Standing Rock marching on a standoff roadblock. The narrator says that they [the bishops] are denouncing the Doctrine of Christian Discovery and thus nullifying the Christian basis of [U.S.] land title to Dakota territory.

Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer, Wahkon