Reclaiming the Dakota’s Mde Wakan (Lake Mille Lacs) traditional homeland

                                                 Picture of  Mde Wakan (Lake Mille Lacs)

 

by Thomas Dahlheimer

This article is mostly about how and why European Christian colonists used alcohol as a chemical weapon of warfare in their genocidal and ethnic cleansing mistreatment and exploitation of indigenous peoples.

It also addresses the subject of how and why European colonists used the Ojibwe’s weakness to abuse alcohol during the fur trade era to force the Dakota from their northern Minnesota homeland.

By Thomas Dahlheimer

Minnesota Representative Dean Urdahl expects to offer an Apology Resolution (reconciliation bill) that apologizes for the mistreatment and exploitation of Minnesota's Dakota Indians.  And he is also concidering offering an apology resolution that would apologize for the abuse of all of Minnesota's indigenous people.

Urdahl recently informed me that he will work with me along with others and try to find wording that will work. And that when he believes the wording will work, he will introduce the resolution.

Urdall also expects to offer a bill to change Minnesota's derogatory geographic place names that are offensive to indigenous people.

by Thomas Dahlheimer

The unnatural and inhumane regulation of ordinary people's lives by the elite of large organizations and institutions is necessary for the functioning of the current industrial-technological society.

The media is mostly under the control of large organizations that are integrated into the system. Therefore, to make an impression on society with articles, letters to editors, essays etc. is almost impossible for most individuals and small groups. The result is a sense of powerlessness on the part of non-elite members of society who have an important message or insight to share with others.  A message or insight that the elite do not want published or read.

by Thomas Dahlheimer I am a Mdewakanton Dakota rights activist with several Mille Lacs Lake area initiatives. The Mille Lacs Lake area of Minnesota is the sacred ancestral homeland of the Mdewakanton Dakota people. In this blog I present information about the Mdewakanton Dakota heritage in the Mille Lacs Lake area as well as detailed information about my activist initiatives. This blog is also displayed on the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community's website.

By Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer

In a Mille Lacs Messenger newspaper article, subtitled: "300 gather to note the toll by alcohol abuse", Melvin Eagle, the traditional Chief of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe is quoted as saying: "Alcoholism is not our traditional way. We need to try to pull together and away from alcohol because it is destroying our people."

I am a Mille Lacs area Indigenous Peoples' rights activist who is spearheading a local (MN), national and international movement to change the faulty-translation and profane name of a Minnesota river, the Rum River.

The reason why there is a movement to change the river's name is because the current name is both, as stated in a book published by the Minnesota Historical Society, a "punning perversion" of the sacred Sioux (Dakota) name Wakan, which is translated as Spirit or Great Spirit - Wakan is not correctly translated to mean the alcohol spirit (rum), and the other reason why the current name is inappropriate is because "rum brought misery and ruin, as Duluth observed of whisky, to many of the Indians".

by Thomas Dahlheimer

On May 9, 2007 Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Brazil for his first visit as pope to Latin America, where more than half of all Catholics live. During his visit he made perverse and morally obscene remarks which described the genocidal destruction of the Western Hemisphere's pre-Columbus cultures as a "purifying" act which gave the indigenous peoples just what they were "longing" for. His historical revisionism whitewashes genocide, ethnocide, slavery, land theft, and the continuing subjugation of Indigenous Peoples.

The Pope declared that "the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean" were "silently longing" to receive Christ as their savior. Colonization by Spain and Portugal was not a conquest, but rather an "adoption" of the Indians through baptism, making their cultures "fruitful" and "purifying" them. Accordingly, "the proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbian cultures, nor was it the
imposition of a foreign culture."

In a United Nations World Conference against Racism document there are statements that radically contradict the Pope's remarks. "Historians and academics agree that the colonization of the New World saw extreme expressions of racism - massacres, forced-march relocations, the 'Indian wars', death by starvation and disease. Today, such practices would be called ethnic cleansing and genocide."

"In the fifteenth century, two Papal Bulls set the stage for European domination of the New World and Africa. Romanus Pontifex...declared war against all non-Christians throughout the world, and specifically sanctioned and promoted the conquest, colonization, and exploitation of non-Christian nations and their territories. Inter Caetera...officially established Christian dominion over the New World. It called for the subjugation of the native inhabitants and their territories,..."

"The Papal Bulls have never been revoked, although indigenous representatives have asked the Vatican to consider doing so. These 'doctrines of discovery' provided the basis for both the 'law of nations' and subsequent international law. Thus, they allowed Christian nations to claim 'unoccupied lands' (terra nullius), or lands belonging to "heathens" or "pagans". In many parts of the world, these concepts later gave rise to the situation of many Native peoples in the today - dependent nations or wards of the State,..."

According to Pope Benedict the invasion and conquest of the Americas, which caused the deaths of upwards of 90 percent of the indigenous population of around 100 million, was something the natives had been pining for all along. They weren't just "asking for it," as some male rapists depict the women they raped. They were actually "longing" for it, since salvation and "purification" came with it. The Pope's logic is similar to the following statement. If a man brutally rapes a woman and she gives birth to his child she should be grateful and thank the rapist for raping her since their child came with it.

In the wake of (1.)...the United Nations statements about the Roman Catholic Church being primarily responsible for the genocide committed against Indigenous Peoples, and (2.)...nation states such as Australia and Canada recently apologizing for the atrocities committed against Indigenous Peoples in their nations, and (3.)...U.S. Senator Sam Brownback's sponsored May resolution which acknowledges a long history of official depredations and ill-conceived policies by the United States Government regarding Indian tribes and offers an apology to all Native Peoples on behalf of the United States, a resolution that is making its way through Congress, and (4.)...the U.S. Colorado state government passing a resolution in April which compared the deaths of millions of American Indians to the Holocaust and other acts of genocide around the world, and (5.)...the recent Minnesota Sesquicentennial Commission's admittance that Minnesota committed ethnocide and genocide against Natives during its early history...the Pope and other high ranking Catholic officials are, unquestionably, looking at dealing with another upcoming big scandal, a scandal that will make the pedophile priests' sex scandal cover up look like a drop in the bucket.

Hopefully, Pope Benedict XVI will soon formally revoke the 15th century papal bulls which were primarily responsible for the horrible atrocities committed against Indigenous Peoples and then lead the Catholic Church and Western "Civilization" through a process of radical transformation, and by doing so, lead humanity into a new age, wherein Indigenous Peoples will be given their due respect.

Sojourners founder Rev. Jim Wallis, while addressing the economic downturn in his keynote address Feb. 28, at the annual Religious Education Congress in Anaheim, California said: "Our goal cannot be to get back to business as usual. We have to say, 'No, we want a new direction. We've tried the greed culture, and it hasn't worked.' We need to create something new, a common good culture, rooted in compassion." This statement by Wallis was published in a recent edition of The Catholic Spirit, an Archdiocesan newspaper.

The current economic crisis, a crisis associated with our failed economic system, a system that is based on greed, along with the current ecological crisis - as well as many other serious problems facing our nation, such as, the alcohol and drug abuse health epidemic and related severe social problems, an imperialistic warmongering mentality and mission, racism, the lack of good family values, the severe lack of respect for life (abortion, embryonic stem cell research, assisted suicide laws, etc.), sexual degeneracy, the obesity health epidemic, the addiction to gambling mental health problem associated with legalized gambling, etc. - indicates that we need a new culture based on TRADITIONAL TRIBAL VALUES. Especially, including the essential core value of traditional tribal culture that rejects our nation's, greedy money loving, materialistic ways - which are the root cause of many of the mentioned above problems. I am hoping that the Minnesota Catholic
Conference will come to understand this and then take the national prophetic leadership role in respect to helping to create this new culture that I am proposing.

Recently, both, my bishop, Bishop John Kinney, the bishop of Saint Cloud Diocese and Archbishop John Nienstedt, the bishop of the Archdiocese of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, sent me letters thanking me for the Catholic activist initiatives of mine that support Minnesota's indigenous peoples. One of my indigenous peoples' rights activist initiatives has gained support from the two internationally renowned Indigenous activists who are on the forefront of the movement that is trying to influence Pope Benedict XVI to publicly revoke a fifteenth century papal bull [Inter Caetera], which is the source of the racism being committed against, both, Minnesota's and our nation's, as well as many other nations', indigenous peoples.

If Pope Benedict XVI would publicly revoke this papal bull and then write and publish a document that states that indigenous peoples have the same fundamental human rights as all other peoples, this would go a long ways toward helping to create a new U.S.A. culture based on traditional tribal valves.

In the summer of 2004, Pope John Paul II lectured American bishops about how their people were "hypnotized by materialism, teetering before a soulless vision of the world."

If the Minnesota Catholic Conference decides to take the national prophetic leadership role in respect to helping to create a new U.S.A. culture, it will require the conference to adopt a peaceful cultural revolutionary mission, which (in part) means  radically repenting from being a part of the culture of greed. Hopefully, the conference will [now] admit how right some youth of the 1960s counter cultural revolution were and how righteous some remaining counter cultural revolutionaries still are. And do so, in respect to our protest against the dominant culture's, money loving, materialistic value system and our assimilation into many of the holy and wholesome aspects of traditional tribal cultures.

Albert Bates is an nationally renowned counter cultural revolutionary. In 1990, he published one of the first books on global warming, Climate in Crisis,  prefaced by Al Gore. He recently sent me an e-mail wherein he expressed, in respect to our efforts to promote the counter-culture's promotion of traditional tribal values, the "brotherhood" feelings we have toward each other.

And Skip Stone, founder and Webmaster of Hippyland, the world's largest counter cultural site (an interactive site with over 23,000 registered members) recently contacted me to let me know that he posted this letter of mine on his site. Stone recently wrote: "So much of what happened in the 60s is repeating itself again. This is because the movement never finished what it set out to do. Well now we have one last chance to change the world. Are the activists from the 60s ready to finish the job with several new generations of activists alongside them?"

Thomas Dahlheimer
Wahkon, Minnesota

 

                                                       By Thomas Dahlheimer

The Sioux, or Dakota, consist of seven tribes in three major divisions: Wahpekute, Mdewakanton, Wahpeton, Sisseton (who together form the Santee or Eastern division, sometimes referred to as the Dakota), the Yankton and Yanktonai (who form the Middle division, sometimes referred to as the Nakota), and the Teton (who form the Western division, sometimes referred to as the Lakota). reference

This blog is about the local, national and international movement to change the faulty-translation and profane name of Minnesota's Rum River back to its sacred Dakota Indian name (Wakan). This sacred Dakota name means Spirit or Great Spirit