A bill to replace Minnesota's derogatory geographic place names that are offensive to Natives, including the "Rum River" name and thirteen other names, was introduced to the state legislature by Rep. Mike Jaros on May 18, 2007. I [Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer] contacted Rep. Jaros and presented him with a list of the derogatory names I wanted to change. He then wrote a proposed bill to change the names. We then received approval from the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council for Jaros to introduce the bill to the Minnesota legislature. It was then introduced. A link to the bill is presented below.

Update: Rep. Jaros retired, a new name-changing bill was going forward and was almost introduced in 2010. We are working to eventually get a name-changing bill introduced and passed.

H.F. No. 2503, as introduced - 85th Legislative Session (2007-2008) Posted on May 18, 2007

link to bill



Click video to watch a video of our director, Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer, talking about the bill to change Minnesota's geographic site names that are offensive to American Indians.

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On April 30, 2012, Indian Country Today Media Network (ICTMN), the world's largest Native news source, published an article titled Students Hope Documentary Prompts Apology in Minnesota . Then, on the 1st day of May, ICTMN approved and posted my submitted comment, the article's only comment. It reads:

"On March 10, 2010, Minnesota Rep. Dean Urdahl introduced a house concurrent resolution expressing regret for conflicts between Native Americans and European settlers. It's a reconciliation resolution that is made up of mostly wording from the draft resolution that I [Thomas Dahlheimer] wrote and Leonard E. Wabasha, a Mdewakanton Dakota hereditary chief, supports. The resolution is located at http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/resolutions/ls86/0/HC0004.htm " A section of it reads: "...and derogatory names were given to geographic places that were extremely disrespectful to native peoples;..."

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On April 16, 2012, Arizona's largest state-wide daily newspaper, The Arizona Republic, publish an article by Dennis Wagner. Mr. Wagner interviewed me for the article and quoted me in it. The article is titled, Tribes embrace native names to preserve culture; its subtitle is: Return to original place names preserves cultures, fixes wrongs. The article is about a national movement to preserve Native culture...by replacing derogatory English place names, such as Squaw, Redskins, Savages, etc., with their (preferably) original Native names and also restoring Native names to sacred places. This same article is published on the USA Today newspaper's website. At this website it is titled: ancient echoes: tribes embrace native names .

The article includes a segment titled, Translation of insults, in it there are three paragraphs about my effort to change several Minnesota place names. "Snake River" and "Rum River" where mentioned.

My effort to change the faulty-English-translation and insulting place name ["Rum River"] is also an effort to return or restore the orginal sacred Dakota/Lakota name [Wahkon] (sometimes spelled Wakan) to this river or sacred Native place.

Wagner wrote: "Thomas Dahlheimer, a Minnesota activist, helped promote an unsuccessful bill in his state that would have changed several place names, including 'Snake River' and 'Rum River'."

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Excerpts from an Indian Country Today Media Network newspaper article about a national movement to replace offensive geographic place names throughout the United States are presented below:

"South Dakota is not alone in its attempt to set a course toward eliminating names that could and have offended many people. From Maine to California and points in between, states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and many others have taken steps to strip offensive names from road signs and maps."

MN geographic places that have had their names changed

In South Dakota, "Gov. Bill Janklow urged the State Affairs Committee to introduce a bill that would change all offensive names in the state and a bill that came through the Senate side will change only the word 'Squaw'."

In Minnesota a bill was passed to established an Act to change the names of all geographic places named "Squaw". If a new Minnesota bill is introduce (and it includes all the names that are on former Rep Jaros's bill) and it is passed, all of Minnesota's derogatory geographic place names that are offensive to Native Americans will be changed.

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County(s)...............Current place name................Place name changed to

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Anoka
Isanti
Surburne
Mille Lacs..............Rum River.....................Wakan River (or Wahkon River)
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Mille Lacs
Benton
Morrison................West Branch Rum River...............West Branch Wakan River
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Lake....................Redskin Lake...........................Native American Lake
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Itasca..................Cut Foot Sioux Lake....................Cut Foot Dakota Lake
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Traverse................Sioux River....................................Dakota River
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Meeker..................Sioux Lake......................................Dakota Lake
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Jackson.................Little Sioux River......................Little Dakota River
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St. Louis...............Indian Sioux River......................Native Dakota River
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Ramsey..................Savage Lake..........................Gathering Natives Lake
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Ramsey..................East Savage Lake................East Gathering Natives Lake
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Aitkin
Kanabec
Pine....................Snake River...............................Mdewakanton River
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Cook....................Devil Track Lake....................Great Spirit Track Lake
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Cook....................Devil Track River..................Great Spirit Track River
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You can find information about the mentioned above offensive names by clicking the Minnesota Historical Society's following link: reference

On the mentioned above Minnesota Historical Society website link there are displays of historical information that reveal the sources of a number of offensive geographic place names. Examples are presented below.

An Example: reference ...Click "R" and then scroll down to Rum River, and then click "Go", and then scroll down to Mille Lacs County.

The name of Rum River, which Carver in 1766 and Pike in 1805 found in use by English-speaking fur traders, was indirectly derived from the Dakota. Their name of Mille Lacs, Mde Wakan, translated Spirit Lake, was given to its river but was changed by the white men to the most common spirituous liquor brought into the Northwest, rum, which brought misery and ruin, as Du Luth observed of brandy, to many of the Indians. The map of Maj. Stephen H. Long's expedition in 1823 has these names, Spirit Lake and Rum River. Nicollet's map, published in 1843, has "Iskode Wabo or Rum R.," this name given by the Ojibwe but derived by them from the white men's perversion of the ancient Dakota name Wakan, being in more exact translation "Spirit Water."

Another Example: reference ....Click "B" and then scroll down to Big Sioux Lake, and then click "Go".

The Little and Big Sioux Rivers, the latter forming the northwest boundary of Iowa, were named for the Dakota or Sioux, who inhabited this region. 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. Another reference: "'Sioux' is the name given this tribe ('Blackfoot Sioux') by the US Govt, who got it from a bastardized version from the French, who shortened the Algonquin compound, nadowe ('snake') plus siu ('little'), spelled Nadouessioux, by which a neighboring tribe, the Ojibwa or the Ottawa, referred to the Lakota/Dakota/Nakota people. This term was meant as an insult, but today the Federal Government of the United States has applied this name to represent this entire group of Souian people."

Another Example: reference ...Click "S" and then scroll down to Savage Lake, and then click "Go".

New Canada has Silver Lake, adjoining North St. Paul, and Savage Lake in sections 6 and 7, the latter being so named because "the Indians frequented its shores in large numbers."

Redskin Lake..."Redskin" was the word used when European Americans were murdering. They were collecting bounties with the severed ears, noses, pieces of skin and scalp, from the bodies of Native Americans, pleasuring themselves with the thrill of ethnic purging. The hunted "redskinned" animal was forced to run before the tide of hatred. The goal was to exterminate the Native American. No distinction was made between babies, children or adults, they were only seen for their redskins. reference

Another Example: reference ...Click "D" and then scroll down to Devil Track Lake, and then click "Go".

"Devil Track River," wrote Gilfillan, "is Manido bimadagakowini zibi, meaning the spirits (or God) walking-place-on-the-ice river." The Ojibwe applied this name primarily to Devil Track Lake, and thence, according to their custom, to the outflowing river. The name implies mystery or something supernatural about the lake and its winter covering of ice, but without the supremely evil idea that is given in the white men's translation.

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Snake River gets its name from the Ojibwe word Kanabec, or snake, naming it after their enemies, the Dakota, who lived upriver, and who they later displaced.reference

Minnesota DNR information:
"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." reference

White people instigated fights or used the Ojibwe to force the Dakota from their sacred homeland near the source of the river that is currently named "Snake" River. They then translated the derogatory Ojibwe name for this river (Kanabec) into English, it means snake. The white people then named the river Snake, which is an indirect derogatory name.

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Another geographic place name that should be renamed:

Hockamin Creek "In a related vein is the native Algonquian word for the Devil -- 'Hockomock'..." "Franzoni has found a total of ten places in the US named "Hockomock," six in Maine, two in Massachusetts, one in New Jersey (Hockamik), and one in Minnesota (Hockamin Creek). ... I first talked to Hockomock-area residents and Native Americans about the meaning of the name "Hockomock" to discover its link to the word "Devil."

In the native cosmogony there is no single evil spirit comparable to the devil. In the mind of the settlers though, all this "heathen" spirituality had to be the work or the sign of the devil. So the name Devil was given often to native areas known formerly by names meaning Sacred or Spirit or Mystery." As is Minnesota's Devil Track Lake and Devil Track River. The native Algonquian word Hockamin means "evil spirit" and after white Christians came in contact with the native Algonquians, the word Hockamin was sometimes used to refer to the devil. Therefore, Minnesota's Hockamin Creek (Devil Creek) or (Evil Spirit Creek) is also a profane name and should be give a new name.

Information about the wrongful use of the evil name Satan or Devil for geographic places is presented below. reference

The use of the evil name Satan or Devil for a geographic place is very offensive. "Mijares says it is profane to name a landmark after Satan. And he has taken his fight all the way to the federal government."

"In October, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names will consider Mijares' proposal to change the name of the 3,849-foot mountain to Mount Kawukum, a name Mijares says is indigenous and means "laughing mountain, everywhere seen."

"Place names evoking the Devil reflect a dominant attitude on the part of Euro-American settlers towards the New World during the migration into the wild West. The history of place names is based in mistranslation, deliberate insult and slur..., as well as a Christian notion of the wilderness as the domain of the Devil."

Racial hatred was why many geographic places were given the name Devil:

"The origination of many of the Devils across the United States probably has more to do with racial hatred than anything else. Early white settlers were mostly Christian and viewed Native Americans with their different spiritual practices as heathens (at best) or savages and devil-worshipers (most likely). It's a long- standing tradition across time to demonize your foes prior to taking everything they have ,including their lives, to assuage any possible feelings of guilt."

"Native Americans saw spirits in many shapes and forms and though there was sometimes a Supreme Being, goodness or badness or tricks flowed from a variety of sources. In the simplistic Either/Or view of the early settlers, this mind-set of multiple spiritual sources was tantamount to practicing deviltry, and so settlers tended to put a malevolent spin on the landscape when interpreting native names for the surrounding landscape."

"For example, Devil's Lake in Sauk County (Wisconson) is the white settlers' interpretation of the Ho-Chunk name Day-wa-kun-chunk, meaning "Sacred Lake."

In the Encyclopedia of North American Indians there is an article titled: Place names. reference
The following excerpt was take from this article.

"Manitou and Wakanda are common names on the map as Algonquian and Siouan terms for the Great Spirit. Whites often changed these names to Devil, and so we have Devil's Lake in Michigan, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and elsewhere."

A North Dakota Sisseton-Wahpeton Band of Isanti or Dakota "Indians" changed its name from Devil's Lake Sioux Tribe to Spirit Lake Sioux Tribe.

Articles about a Native American group's effort to rename a tower named Devil can be found at both reference as well as at reference. Note: This group's name is United Native America. It has a membership of 30,000 and its founder is Mark Graham. Mr. Graham has given his support for the effort to rename Minnesota's "Rum" River.

In any case, writes Ed Quillen in the Fort Collins Weekly: reference
"So, no matter what happens with Devils Tower in the future, the devil will still adorn our maps. Out here, we seem more than willing to give the devil his due."

Let us not let the devil adorn our nation's geographic places and maps, we are not "one nation under the devil" we are, as it says in the Pledge of Allegiance, "one nation under God".

Other Minnesota geographic place names that should be renamed:

___________________________________________________________________________________ St. Louis...............Devils Cascade............................no recommendation ___________________________________________________________________________________ Cook....................Devils Elbow Lake.........................no recommendation ___________________________________________________________________________________ Cook....................Devil Fish Lake...........................no recommendation ___________________________________________________________________________________ Rice....................Devil Creek....................................Spirit Creek ___________________________________________________________________________________ Otter Trail.............Devils Lake.....................................Spirit Lake ___________________________________________________________________________________ Murray..................Devils Run................................no recommendation ___________________________________________________________________________________ Kanabec.................Devil's Lake..............................no recommendation ___________________________________________________________________________________ Goodhue.................Devils Lake...............................no recommendation ___________________________________________________________________________________ Douglas.................Devil's Lake..............................no recommendation ___________________________________________________________________________________ Anoka...................Devils Lake...............................no recommendation

After we sent an e-mail to Roger L. Payne, the Executive Secretary of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, an e-mail wherein we presented both our Rum River name-change web site as well as this proposed Minnesota House/Senate bill website we received an e-mail from Mr. Payne, wherein he thanked us for the information that we sent him.

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A "letter to the editor" about our campaign to replace Minnesota's geographic place names that are derogatory and offensive to Native Americans can be found by clicking letter

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Send letters of support to:

Thomas Dahlheimer
P.O. Box 24
Wahkon, Minnesota 56386

Wahkonrainbow@gmail.com