“A political agenda instead of facts” | News, Sports, Jobs – NUjournal

Dahlin started his presentation by giving an overview of the war and the toll it took. He said in total 650 white people were killed, including 100 children. In contrast, only 100 Dakota warriors were killed and none of them were women or children. On the uprising day August 18, 265 white people and five Dakota were killed. He compared the uprising day to 9-11, saying it was Minnesota’s much worse version.

“For the uprising to take place today, if the same proportion of people were killed, you’d have between 17 and 18,000,” Dahlin said. “You ask yourself ‘Is that a big deal?’ Well, obviously. Those numbers would help us to understand what it looked like to the settlers.”

He then shifted to discussing how the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS) has portrayed the US-Dakota War. He said from the ’60s through the ’90s, MHS put out history correct books and portrayed events accurately. But around the 2000’s, a new crop of historians led the Minnesota Historical Society.

Dahlin said these new leaders are now producing a politically motivated history biased in favor of the Native Americans. He said he was told by MHS director Stephen Elliot whites had told the story for too long, and now it was the Native Americans’ turn. Dahlin said he has no problem with Native Americans being at the table with their stories, but challenged the MHS for their political motivations.

A full crowd of Junior Pioneer members listen to Curtis Dahlin as he presents on the US Dakota War.
Dahlin said the Dakota uprising was arguably a bigger tragedy than 9-11 if you scale the population numbers to today.

“When they come with a political agenda instead of facts, then I have a problem. In preparation for the 150th anniversary in 2012, we were successful in getting the secular advisory board [to hear us out]. “We didn’t get everything we wanted but we got more than we had in other times. In June of 2013 a year after the 150th, seven of us made a presentation to the executive board of the MHS and predictably the board sided with the MHS.”

Dahlin said the MHS no longer returns his emails, and he believes the situation has gotten worse since then. He pointed to several examples of individuals and organizations advancing objectives that sympathize with the Dakota. This includes changing names of places, acknowledging Dakota homelands, transferring land through the Lower and Upper Sioux Agencies, prohibiting the use of Native American logos, and re-writing history. Dahlin said the current perceptions of whites and Native Americans in the US-Dakota War are now lopsided.

“What the objective seems to be is to praise and defend the Dakota as noble, peace-loving victims of land-grabbing white men,” he said. “[They were] ultimately pushed to strike out the white man. [They’re] demonizing the white man. Calling them colonists and making that a bad term. Even making settlers a bad term. Stealing Dakota land, violating treaties, and [forcing] the Dakota to change their lifestyle. There is no reason to disparage one group and try to raise another. We’re all humans and we all make mistakes. None of us are perfect. There’s something very fundamentally wrong with them re-writing history.”

In light of what he has found, Dahlin told the crowd of Junior Pioneers there are actions they should take to stop what is currently happening. He wants people to keep telling the true history of the US-Dakota War, write letters to officials and newspaper editors, establish a monument, band together to unite multiple voices, be factual and reasonable, and focus on the MHS Executive Board and the general public. He ended his presentation by urging the crowd not to stay silent on this issue.

“If we remain silent we will have surrendered,” Dahlin said. Dahlin received a standing ovation from the crowd as he finished his presentation.

For more information on the Junior Pioneers, visit https://jrpioneers.com/