Dakota riders will ride again, continuing a legacy starting in December
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The Dakota riders will ride again this December—and this time under two new groups and a renewed purpose.
After the Dakota 38+2 Memorial Ride ended in 2022, participants wanted the legacy to continue and to find a way to bring communities back together.
Now they are starting the next chapter with two new rides — The Mankato Healing and Reconciliation Ride and The Dakota Exile Ride.
The former will originate in that starts at Fort Thompson in Lower Brule, S.D, the latter in Santee, Neb.
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Wilfred Keeble and Jim Hallum will lead those rides respectively and draw attention to the exile of the Dakota people who were forced off their homeland in Minnesota and represent the tribal nations that were dispersed in different directions as a result.
Todd Finney, whose Dakota name is Ta Can’te Was’te Yuha Omani (He Who Walks With His Good Heart,) said while the rides won’t be the same as the original, they serve as an important reminder for younger generations about their culture and also to others about the plight of the Dakota people.
“That’s really why they’re continuing,” Finney said. “It is because our kids need hope. Our grandkids need hope.”
As with the original ride, participants will travel hundreds of miles on horseback in frigid temperatures to their final destination at Reconciliation Park in Mankato, which is where 38 Dakota men were hanged after the U.S. Dakota-War of 1862. President Abraham Lincoln signed the death warrants. It was the largest single-day mass execution in U.S. history. Two more Dakota chiefs were hanged two years later.
In 2005, Lakota spiritual leader Jim Miller dreamt of Dakota people returning home to Minnesota on horseback. The 38+2 Memorial Ride became a reality in 2008 with descendants of the executed men in the group. Each December, the riders would travel from South Dakota to Mankato on a grueling journey. Eventually many of the original riders retired and Miller’s dream was fulfilled.
Miller passed away from cancer in March 2023.
These new rides also continue raising awareness of an 1863 law exiling the Dakota people from Minnesota that has never been repealed. Finney said it raises concerns from the tribal community about its continued existence and harm.
“We’re not allowed in this state,” he said. “People talk about it like it’s in the past … it’s today. It’s happening now. My kids grew up knowing that we weren’t allowed here …That’s a hard thing to know and just have ‘well, it’s an old law. It’s ineffective.’”
“It’s still a law. It still says in the Book of Law that we’re illegal and that by law, someone could take my life. Could take my son’s life, take my grandson’s life and argue that they were operating within the law in 2024.”
The riders from Nebraska will start on Dec. 14, while the riders from South Dakota will begin their journey on Dec. 10.
The two groups will meet at Land of Memories Park in Mankato on Christmas Day, and then will ride together toward Reconciliation Park in Mankato on Dec. 26.
As the new chapter for the rides continues under a different generation of riders, Finney said he hopes Miller’s dream won’t be forgotten.
“His legacy was to forgive everyone [and] everything,” he said. “We need to be able to learn how to forgive and how to move on … and so the perspective of it for me and my hope is that people learn that there’s power in prayer, and we can learn to forgive everyone [and] everything, just like Uncle Jim did.”