Dakota Sioux

Despite being known by Minnesotans as a “second civil war,” and as a campaign of ethnic cleansing by Dakota, the 1862 U.S.-Dakota War remains an understudied event in the history of U.S. imperialism. Through readings of Dakota prisoners’ letters, this essay examines how Dakota experienced and resisted state power in the concentration camps that were created following the war. By focusing on the slippages between English and Dakota languages, languages which of course mediated the mass conversions of Dakota prisoners, I argue that we may see more clearly what I call the “transgressive adoptions” of White culture by imprisoned Dakota. Transgression appears under the guise of compliance or “assimilation” (converting to Christianity, learning to write and read, practicing vocational trades), where the adoption of forms of Whiteness did not mean relinquishing Dakota values, but instead merely afforded some of Whiteness’s privileges. These transgressions importantly cleared space for forms of solidarity and resistance that were unintelligible to non-Dakota, but were latent in norms and practices of the tiyospaye, or Dakota/Lakota extended family.  Writing letters to family imprisoned elsewhere, some Dakota prisoners were able to maintain, and even extended the reach of, kinship relationalities and so reclaimed an important basis for remembering, decolonizing, and remaking a wounded Dakota peoplehood.

In the early 1800s, Joseph Renville II maintained a squad of 15 to 25 guards for his farm and trading post and Reverend Williamson’s Mission at Lac Qui Parle, Minnesota. These guards were known as Renville’s Soldiers, also known as the “Tokadantee.” Joseph Renville II adopted Gabriel Renville after Gabriel’s father was killed in 1833 leading a Dakota war party against the Ojibwe. Later, his nephew Gabriel Renville would evolve the “Tokadantee” group into what became known as the Renville Rangers. The Renville Rangers, largely made up of Dakota-Métis men, worked on the government side during the great Sioux outbreak of 1862.

This has been a mosaic analysis on an important chunk of American and native American History. This story has been told a hundred and thousand times from a hundred and thousand perspectives, but never from this view. It is not ironic, that the story of America begins with the dream of India. In the Mahabharata, the Hindu’s epic poem of creation, which may be comparable to the mythological literature coopted by religious orders from all over the world, both structurally and thematically. Arjuna, the great warrior, had just returned from a gladiator match and shouted in excitement to inform his mother, Kunti, that he had won something so precious. Kunti, in her wisdom, surmised that since Arjuna had gone with his brothers, the Pandavas, said in her authoritative mode that "Whatever it is, share among all 5 of you". ‘Mother, but I have won my bride’, said Arjuna; her name is Draupadi. Kunti, who wouldn’t go back on her words, said:“You must share her with your brothers.”

This  battle  took  place  between  a  Metis  buffalo  hunting  party  from  St.  François  Xavier, led  by  Jean  Baptiste  Falcon  and  the  Cut  Head  (Pabaksa)  Yanktonai  (Ihanktonwanna), Dakota, led by Chief Medicine (Sacred) Bear, on July 15 to 16, 1851.

Dakota author Charles Alexander Eastman’s early collection of stories for children, *Red Hunters and the Animal People* (1904) was largely viewed by Eastman’s critical contemporaries as a politically-innocuous analogue to Kipling’s *Jungle Book Stories.* Through consideration of the Dakota oral-historical genre of hituŋkaŋkaŋpi (“long ago stories”), and of Dakota peoplehood more broadly, this article proposes an alternative view of Eastman as a resistance writer who cited a long-circulating Dakota kinship philosophy to critique the enduring conditions of U.S. settler-colonialism—a critique that would become more pointed in Eastman’s later, better-known autobiography, *From the Deep Woods to Civilization* (1915). In viewing Eastman’s animal tales as being critical of U.S. colonialism, we may see more clearly his innovative translations of Dakota politics into narratives that at once sentimentally appealed to and challenged U.S. settler society, and that these challenges came specifically in relation to Dakota conceptions of peoplehood, power, and gift.

This presentation reflects upon the significance of settlers using the language of ‘civil disobedience’ to describe the ongoing standoff against the Dakota Access Pipeline, centred around the Sacred Stone Camp and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. I assert that the language of civil disobedience is a not only an inadequate discourse within this context, but it also performs a dangerous re-signification of these events, reinscribing them as contiguous with processes of colonization.
This is because the language of civil disobedience, as it is deployed throughout dominant liberal academic literature seems to be inextricably tied to, and instantiate a reification of, the (settler) state. In as much as the canonical literature is concerned, those who commit acts of civil disobedience tend to be conceptually emplaced as subjects within a temporality signified through the state. The civilly disobedient subject(s) are not viewed as resistant to the prevailing political order: they are emplaced within the state and within the state’s claim to legitimate political obligation.
Affixing such discourses to Standing Rock reproduces the logic that the American government is itself a given or apolitical body. This works to disappear the processes of historic and ongoing settler colonization by normalizing the settler colony’s claim to authoritative rule over Indigenous peoples. I propose the ethical and political imperative of abandoning discourses of civil disobedience, in favour of those that more fully respect the anticolonial struggle at Standing Rock.

The goal of this thesis is twofold. The first step was to perform archaeological test excavations on the Fort Fair Haven site in order to confirm that we had, in fact, located the 1862 historical site of Fort Fair Haven. Once we successfully determined that it was indeed the fort, then the second step was to analyze these findings and use them in conjunction with archival research in order to better understand what kind of actual defensive function it could have provided. A specific way of doing this is to compare the civilian fort’s design with those of military fortifications of the period.

The data recovered strongly suggests that we did indeed successfully locate Fort Fair Haven. Because of the somewhat haphazard placement of the posts and their overall lack of uniformity, however, the so-called fort may have better been considered a makeshift barricade. With this in mind, the structure contrasts greatly with contemporary military fortifications, though it does share some similarities with other frontier outposts and palisades of the same period. The fort’s structure may have therefore served some practical function of slowing down—if not entirely repelling—potential intruders.

Nos, las gentes de la nación del diseño, procuramos con cariño e inteligencia cuidar, transformar, recuperar y preservar en servicio de las demás para que "Todo lo antiguo reaparezca y permanezca renovado. Todo 'buena medicina', en sentido lakota (¡y de diseño!), sanadora de todos los pueblos, seres y artefactos de la tierra que se mueven a ritmos diferentes de los del progreso". Medicina sin laboratorios farmacéuticos, ni tratamientos, ni doctores. Agradezcamos a todas nuestras relaciones, por la curación del frenesí y de la ambición, por negar el estatus de basura despreciable a cualquier partícula material. Diseñemos no para volver a la cotidianidad, sino para asumirla en su “perennemente-estoy-aquí” como laboratorio del diseño que permite a cada ser humano y a cada criatura de la naturaleza y la artificialeza existir, con el valor de uso y la función que le corresponde en el sinnúmero de la circunstancia.

Palabras clave: Diseño, Diseñadores, Lakota, Gert Selle

Discussion of metal-inlaid catlinite gunstock club, c. 1850s, associated with the "conjuror" (probably "Medicine Bottle") of the Mdewakanton chief Shakopee (probably Shakopee III) in the context of the comparative evidence on catlinite gunstock clubs and on metal inlays on catlinite items.

James McFetridge, Esq. late United States Collector at Pembina, gives the particulars of the bloody fight between the Sioux and Chippewas, of which he was an eye-witness, at St. Joseph, on the Pembina River, on the June 10, 1861. Also a report on the remains of Shoggan and Mule, Chief Red Bear's son both killed at a skirmish with the Dakota at Jean Baptiste Wilkies house in St. Joseph's (now Walhalla).

What is the issue that underlies youth suicide among Native Americans? Why is this group of young people coming to such tragic ends at dramatically higher rates than those of other ethnicities? Furthermore, are the systems in place to combat this plague substantial and effective?

The United States Army tried to kill off Fort Peck's Assiniboine population, and they nearly did so. Granted, the reservation was more of a place for refugees, mainly Sioux Indians (There is not one dominant band of Sioux or Assiniboine on the reservation today) this was the Assiniboine homeland and they were nearly killed off by disease. This is something everyone should know and nobody should forget.

In January of 2012 I was given the opportunity to work in the archives of the Center for Western Studies through a course offered by Professor Harry Thompson. During this time, I transcribed a total of three letters: the first from Frederick “Feike” Manfred to John R. Milton in January of 1959, and the last two from Bishop William Hobart Hare to a Reverend Heckaliah Burt and Commissioner Newton Edmunds written in December of 1882. Although the three have no true connection to the events of Wounded Knee, they do have a lot to offer. Through them we can hear the inner thoughts of a renown author and the inspiring story of how two Anglicans stood up for the rights of Natives in the Dakota Territory.

En el “territorio imperialista” también hay lucha de clases, violencia desmedida y crisis de derechos humanos. En “territorio yanqui” también se denuncia a la ‘prensa vendida’ (no es que sólo esté vendida, es que desde su origen ha fungido como el mecanismo de los gobiernos para autorizar qué se dice y cómo se dice). En “gringolandia” también hay chairos, revoltosos y los tan malcomprendidos encapuchados que se dan cita a manifestaciones, marchas, y, los más comprometidos, resisten a costa de golpes y humillaciones en un conflicto como el de Standing Rock. Incluso, las estrellas se bajaron de su nube para apoyar a su manera esta lucha.

During the Standing Rock protests in North Dakota, USA/Turtle Island, a group of military veterans knelt in front of Oceti Sakowin Elders asking forgiveness for centuries of settler colonial military ventures in Oceti Sakowin Territory. Leonard Crow Dog forgave them and immediately demanded respect for Native Nations throughout the U.S. Lacking such respect, he said, Native people will cease paying taxes. Crow Dog’s post-forgiveness remarks speak to the political context of the military veterans’ request: They seek collective forgiveness amidst ongoing occupation and harms committed by the collective they represent. In this chapter, I examine this case study and argue that ongoing harm undermines requests for forgiveness on behalf of collectives. I look to the work of Glen Coultard, Waziyatawin, and Leanne Simpson to consider what a responsible request for collective forgiveness would entail.