Apology needed

by Thomas Dahlheimer

On September 9, the Mille Lacs Messenger, a Minnesota county newspaper, published the following letter to the editor of mine. 

On Aug. 18, I met with Rep. Dean Urdahl and representatives of two Dakota Indian communities. The meeting was mostly about drafting a resolution that would apologize for the mistreatment and exploitation of our state’s Dakota Indians. We also addressed Urdahl’s plan to modify and re-introduce the bill that I wrote and Rep. Mike Jaros (now retired) offered to change our state’s geographic place names that are disrespectful to natives.

During the meeting I requested that Urdahl change the draft resolution to include an apology for the atrocities committed against the Dakota in their sacred Mille Lacs ancestral homeland, and also acknowledge how those atrocities were primarily responsible for the Dakota conflict of 1862. The Dakota tribal representatives supported my requests.

I also expressed my opinion that our state should adopt an apology resolution that apologizes for the abuse of all of our state’s natives. After doing so, Leonard Wabasha, a hereditary chief of the Mdewakanton Dakota, who is often the chief spokesperson for the Dakota on reconciliatory issues, agreed. Urdahl then asked me for a copy of my 2008 draft apology resolution. I’ll soon be sending him a revised presentation of the resolution.

I also spoke about the Doctrine of Discovery, which was based on a series of 15th century Papal bulls/decrees, as being the source of the past and present-day racism against our state’s indigenous people. I also mentioned that the national Episcopal Church recently adopted a resolution repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery. In addition, I said that if our state is going to adopt an apology resolution it should repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery. Leonard Wabasha agreed and expressed his support for my initiative to pursue an apology resolution which would repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery.

Steve Newcomb is “going through” my draft apology resolution. I am expecting to receive suggestions from him that will help me to improve the resolution. Urdahl knows of Newcomb’s involvement and is looking forward to receiving my revised resolution. Newcomb is an internationally renowned indigenous law scholar who is on the forefront of the world-wide movement to influence Pope Benedict XVI to publicly revoke the 15th century Papal bull [Inter Caetera]. It’s the Doctrine of Discovery Papal bull most responsible for the subjugation of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Newcomb’s work on the Doctrine of Discovery in his many essays and his 2008 book “Pagans in the Promised Land” is the spark that ignited individuals in the Episcopal Church to pursue a resolution repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery.

In Newcomb’s most recent Indian Country Today article, The Right of Christian Invasion, he wrote: “The presumption that the sacred places of indigenous nations and peoples are under the ultimate sovereign control of the United States originates in Christendom’s disrespect for Native nations and spiritual traditions, and in the bigoted presumption that those are merely the traditions and places of ‘infidels’ and ‘heathens.’ That thinking should have no place in U.S. law, and the Episcopal Church resolution successfully raises the visibility of the destructive legacy of the Right of Christian Discovery and Dominion.”

In my draft apology resolution, I write: Whereas, Minnesota native peoples are endowed by the Creator with inalienable or fundamental human rights, including the right to be fully independent sovereign nations and have absolute root ownership of their ancestral homelands. And also the right to religious freedom, which includes the right for native peoples to re-establish their traditional religions in their sacred ancestral homelands.

I am hoping that this apology resolution will ignite a great awakening of the American conscience. We set our nation’s African slaves free from the subjugated state of existence that we had imposed on them. We should now set our nation’s aboriginal natives free from the subjugated state of existence that we are still imposing on them.

Thomas Dahlheimer
Wahkon