Dakota Rising

By Jon Lurie

Wyatt Thomas stood on the shore of Ogechie Lake, gazing down its distinctive hooked shoreline, lost in thought. He had never seen this lake before. He traveled to Mille Lacs County from Nebraska, where he lives on a reservation along the Missouri River as a member of the Santee Dakota Tribe. But Minnesota, and this lake in particular, was, to him, home.

 
Thomas was on a mission to scout his tribe’s ancestral lands, an expedition that covered a wide swath of Minnesota. It was a small but important first step in reintroducing the Santee Dakota to their original homeland. “The lands and waters here are very sacred to us,” he said. “They have a meaning that no one else will understand. And in those meanings are the teachings that the creator has given Dakota people as a birthright.”

Turning to face the saddle-shaped burial mounds rising from the trees in the distance, Thomas identified the clearing between the shoreline and the woods as the village site of his direct forebear, Chief Wapahasa.  “This is
where we first lived before we were exiled.”

For centuries the Dakota Nation lived in this village and a handful of others along Wakpa Wakan (Holy River), the waterway that runs from Lake Mille Lacs (Mde Wakan, Spirit Lake) to the Mississippi River. In 1745, they were driven into the Minnesota and Mississippi river valleys by Anishinabe tribes invading from the east with French firearms. Then, in 1863, the Dakota were forcibly removed again after a bloody five-week conflict known in textbooks as the Dakota Uprising, a tragic chapter of Dakota history from which the nation has yet to recover. Today the descendants of the expelled tribes live primarily on two reservations: the Nebraska location and the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota. Buffalo County, home to Crow Creek, is the poorest county in the United States, with a per capita income of $5,213. Unemployment stands at 57 percent and many homes lack plumbing and kitchen facilities. The Santee Dakota Reservation in northeastern Nebraska—established in 1866 by Dakotas fleeing Crow Creek for more favorable living conditions—also ranks among the most impoverished communities in the United States. The Dakota who live on tribal lands in Minnesota are largely descended from “friendlies”—a small group of Dakota families who, following the U.S.-Dakota war, were deemed non-threatening and allowed to return. They established four tiny reservations that represent an infinitesimal fraction of their former Minnesota empire.

Compared to any other ethnic group in Minnesota, Dakota people experience shorter life spans, higher rates of infant mortality, higher incidences of diabetes, heart disease and cancer, and poorer general health. They also grapple with skyrocketing suicides. The suicide rate among American Indians in Minnesota is two to three times higher than any other ethnic group. Among American Indians in Minnesota ages 15–34, suicide is the second-leading cause of death. Suicide rates for American Indian youth between the ages of 10–15 are four times higher than those for all other races combined in this age group.

Poverty and poor health are not the typical state of affairs for the Dakota. Prior to exile, they thrived in Minnesota, having developed a way of life based on a sophisticated understanding of the rich natural world around them. They were canoe builders, farmers, healers, hunters and gatherers whose prosperity allowed them to develop a complex and enduring spiritual worldview, and a comfortable lifestyle that carried them through the long, harsh Minnesota winters.

Thomas believes that the only way for the Dakota to regain their former status as a prosperous, powerful and healthy nation is for his people to embrace their traditional culture. To that end he works with tribal elders on the Santee Reservation crafting a Dakota immersion curriculum with the hope that young tribal members will once again grow up speaking their native tongue. Because the language evolved along the lakes and rivers of Minnesota, Thomas says, it’s crucial to revitalization efforts that Dakota youth reestablish strong ties to their ancestral home. “Our language is almost gone,” he says. “It is fading away. Our ceremonies are being slashed, generation to generation. Some ceremonies are completely lost.”

Thomas is one voice in a growing chorus of indigenous cultural leaders who agree that the reclamation of traditional lands—including prime real estate in the Twin Cities area—is crucial to solving the Dakota crisis. Places like Lake Calhoun, Uptown, Loring Park, Nicollet Island, Minnehaha Creek, Lake Minnetonka, Harriet Island, Grey Cloud Island, Mendota and the picturesque and pricy Minnesota, Mississippi and St. Croix river valleys. There are innumerable forces working against the reclamation of Dakota Lands, but tribal leaders like Thomas say they must succeed—that the very future of the Dakota Nation hinges upon it.

“When I go home to Santee,” Thomas says, “I will tell the relatives that everything we seek for healing—the herbs, the medicines and the stones—are still there in Minnesota, and we must return to them. I will tell them to remember that all of Minnesota is Dakota land. Even though they took it from us, one day we will have it back. One day it will be ours again, when the time is right.”

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A letter about this same topic can be viewed and read by clicking:

https://newsfornatives.com/blog/2010/08/05/open-letter-to-the-shakopee-mdewakanton-sioux-dakota-community-tribal-council/