On November 2, 2005, the Mille Lacs Messenger published the following letter to the editor about my effort to replace our state's geographic place names that are derogatory and offensive to Native Americans.

TAKING ISSUE

I read Matt Eggert's Oct. 15, Mailbag letter in opposition to changing our state's geographic place names that are offensive to Native Americans and found it appalling. Several states have already changed their geographic place names that were offensive to Natives. And there are a lot of Natives working very hard to help influence the states that have not yet changed their offensive names to change them.

Not only is their a national movement to change all of our country's geographic place names that are offensive and derogatory to Native Americans, there is also a United Nation's led international movement to change all racist and offensive geographic place names throughout the entire world.

Mr. Eggert stated in his letter that even though Natives do not like the names redskins and savages have been used to refer to Native Americas in a derogatory manner, "Even though we don't like it, it is a part of our history as a country and trying to change things to make them less offensive does nothing more than hide the fact that mistakes have been made in the past." When it comes to changing offensive geographic place names, the value of rectifying injustices that occurred in the past seems to allude Mr. Eggert's reasoning process.

Mr. Eggert mentioned in his letter that he read my letter to a group of 250 people at a South Dakota multicultural center and that even though most of them were natives, not one agreed with my letter, and that they compared my effort to change our state's offensive names to taking the same approach as suing families whose ancestors owned slaves. After listening to Mr. Eggert read my letter to them, they would not have known how big of a support base there is for my effort to rename the Rum River, and neither would they have known that the other geographic places with offensive names are located in remote areas and therefore the act of changing their names would not require much sacrifice. If they would have been provided this information, I believe they would have agreed with my letter.

In Mr. Eggert letter, he expressed that he believed that the name Sioux is not a derogatory name for the Dakota/Lakota/Nakota people and then he presented some information (information that I believe is incorrect) describing why he believes it is not a derogatory name. According to the Minnesota Historical Society's website: "The name Sioux is the terminal part of Nadouesioux, a term of hatred, meaning "snakes, enemies," which was applied by the Ojibwe and other Algonquians to this people." The derogatory meaning of the name Sioux has not changed, but some Native Americans have been desensitized. Therefore the derogatory name Sioux does not offend them, nor do other derogatory names. And this is a problem that I am trying to resolve.

Mr. Eggert also stated in his letter that changing sports teams are one thing, "but these landmarks that have been on the map for longer than any of us have been alive, and will remain for much longer." The derogatory name "squaw" for landmarks were on our state's maps for longer than any of us have been alive, but our state recently replaced those offensive and derogatory landmark names. And I believe that the rest of our state's landmark names that are offensive and derogatory to Native Americans will be changed in the near future.

Thomas Dahlheimer
Wahkon