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First published in February 2010 “In our creation story of where we first began as people on this earth, that place was sacred long before anybody from Europe arrived and saw the place. . . . We hold our lands … Continue reading
Category Archives: Bdote: A Public EIS
Three hundred and thirty years ago, give or take a year, on June 29, French visitors to the homelands of the Dakota people, traveled for the first time into the Minnesota River or Wakpa Mni Sota, as it was known … Continue reading
This article was first published on this site in January 2010. The information is also discussed in the new book Mni Sota Makoce: The Land of the Dakota. Although the National Park Service’s final EIS for the Coldwater/Bureau of Mines … Continue reading
Anyone holding a ceremony at Coldwater Spring, a sacred and culturally important place for Dakota people, is required to get a permit from the local office of the National Park Service office in St. Paul, known as the Mississippi National … Continue reading
Could the National Park Service be a fit guardian for the Gettysburg Battlefield if it announced publicly that it did not accept the belief that a profoundly important battle took place there, one that was a turning point in the … Continue reading
It is time for the National Park Service to leave Coldwater Spring in Hennepin County, Minnesota. The NPS, or its local branch, the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (MNRRA), is unfit to manage this sacred and culturally important site … Continue reading
By Jan Dalsin “The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” as William Faulkner wrote. I was not deliberately thinking of this quotation on February 5, 2011, when I again stood in the circle of peoples around the fire, … Continue reading
Mary Black Rogers, an anthropologist and ethnohistorian from Minnesota who studied the culture and history of Ojibwe and Métis communities in Canada and the United States, died in Vancouver, British Columbia, on January 27, 2011. The daughter of Fred R. … Continue reading
The quotation in the title concerning the powerful underwater beings known also to the Dakota Taku Wakan demonstrates the perils of government bureaucrats attempting to substitute their own judgments about Dakota places of cultural importance for the cultural interpretations of … Continue reading
The recent statement by John Anfinson, historian with the National Park Service’s Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (MNRRA), that Coldwater Spring was “latched onto” by various groups including American Indians as a sacred place is merely one more example … Continue reading