Those who profited from theft of Indian land should show some respect

By Dean J. Seal

Dean J. Seal is artistic director of Spirit in the House, a nonprofit that produces performance about spirituality. He is also a playwright, performer and producer.

I heard a Country Western tune the other night, with a line that stuck in my head: "There are hardly any Cheyennes in Cheyenne, Wyoming." It made me wonder about how many Dakota are still in Dakota County.

Some people in Minnesota don't know much about the history of the state. We are coming up on the 150th anniversary of the greatest mass execution in U.S. history: the hanging of 38 Dakota warriors, all in one swoop, to mark the end of what is called the Dakota Conflict.

This event is buried in my family's history. We had cousins in Minnesota in 1862, and they said, "Don't come yet — they are having a Civil War and an Indian war." In 1868, the cousin said, "Okay, come now."

My mom's family took over land by Willmar, and my dad's took up residence on rented farmland in the Sisseton Dakota Reservation in South Dakota. They grew up 40 miles from each other, both in Dakota territory. The land was cheap, because it was bought from the Indians with promises.

I went to college at a place founded by Norwegian farmers to educate their kids, and they paid a fee based on their acreage. I personally and significantly prospered from the defeat of the Dakota, and the appropriation of their land.

The Dakota had been promised many things — money, food, a place to live in peace — and all of it was given by one white hand and taken away by another. They got to the point where their children were starving, and one day the ax just fell. They massacred many white settlers, and many Indians were massacred back. They were finally cornered, and with a lot of nonparticipants were put in irons and marched to Mankato. More than 300 were sentenced to death, but President Abraham Lincoln cut that back to 38.

This is not the place to get into too many details. But one reason I am talking about it today is that of the 38 hanged, at least a third were Presbyterians, like me. They were singing Presbyterian hymns on their way to the gallows, songs that had been translated into the Dakota language. Those were our guys out there.

It was the day after Christmas. One was quoted as saying, "There are several of us up here who had nothing to do with this, but the Great Spirit knows what we did, and he will remember it, and you people will have to answer for it."

After the hanging, those who were left, many of them women and children, were marched from Mankato to Fort Snelling, to a concentration camp. Many died on the way, many died there. There are Indians today who retrace the march every year, and some will point to a spot and say, "Here is where my grandmother was bayoneted to death by the United States Army, because she couldn't keep up."

There is a movement to make teaching American history more sanitized. Some say that kids are brought up with negative feelings about America, because they are taught that George Washington had slaves. I don't know about the adults, but my experience with young people is that they are much more ready to deal with the truth than to have it be whitewashed. Out of our first seven presidents, five had slaves.

Are we supposed to feel bad for something that happened so long ago? That's not what I am saying. I am saying this: Be aware of what happened. Indians will tell you: They don't blame you for what happened, but they do blame you for ignoring it, for not knowing it and for not teaching it. They quote Sitting Bull, the great Oglala Dakota chief, who said, "Let us put our hearts together, and work for a better future for our children together."

What can we do? We can go to our brothers and sisters in the Indian community, and pay them respect. We can acknowledge their loss, and we can learn about them, and help them recover their history. Gideon Pond was a minister who helped move the Indians off Lake Calhoun. But there is a program now, in the house where he lived in Bloomington, that is teaching Dakota language classes and exploring Dakota history here. Their history is our history.

Ecclesiastes says, "With much wisdom comes much sorrow." If we shield ourselves from Indians' pain we are denying ourselves the understanding that comes from compassion. Compassion means, literally, sharing the pain of another. And that pain is the source of hard-won wisdom. The Indians don't want our apologies. But they do want our understanding and our respect.

They have earned our compassion, and they are ready to teach the rest of us what they know: about the love of the earth, about the value of the tribe over the individual. And many Indians, not all but many, have adopted Christianity. Now it is up to the rest of us in the faith to show that we have accepted them too.

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