Dakota Commemorative March: Thoughts and Reactions

How mitakuyapi. Owasin cantewasteya nape ciyuzapi do! Mato Nunpa emankiyapi. Damakota k'a Wahpetuwan hemaca. Mini Sota makoce heciyatanhan wahi k'a Pezihuta Zizi Otunwe hed wati.

Hello, my relatives. With a good heart, I greet all of you with a handshake. I am called Two Bear. I am a Dakota and a "Dweller In the Leaves" (one of the Seven Council Fires, or Oceti Sakowin). I am from "the land where the waters reflect the skies or heavens" (Minnesota) and I live in Yellow Medicine Community" (in BIA terms, this is the Upper Sioux Community, near Granite Falls, Minnesota).

For the past ten years I have been an associate professor in Indigenous Studies and Dakota Studies (INDS) at Southwest State University (SSU). At the 8th Annual INDS Spring Conference in April2001, the first planning discussion occurred concerning a march to honor the Dakota women and children who were on the forced march in November1862. We had a number of planning meetings for the Dakota Commemorative March at SSU. On the march I served as one of the Minnesota contact persons and as a "gofer": "go fer" this and "go fer" that. One of the Dakota communities, located at Santee, Nebraska, donated a buffalo. This provided about eight hundred pounds of meat. So, I delivered one hundred-pound chunks of meat to the various communities that cooked and fed the marchers.

The marchers who participated in the Commemorative March 140 years after the 1862 event came from South Dakota and North Dakota, from reserves in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, as well as from Nebraska and Minnesota. Most of the Dakota people had relatives or ancestors who were on these forced removals or were killed in the towns along the march, or who were "murdered" in the concentration camp at Fort Snelling or hanged at Mankato. For most of the participants, this march was an emotional and powerful experience.

My thoughts and reflections will be divided into three sections in this article. The first part will deal with some historical background, the concept and policy of removal, forced marches, and/or "ethnic cleansings." The second part will highlight some of the backlash from some Euroamericans and the questions and issues they raised both in the planning and in the actual march. The last part will deal with personal issues, with personal emotions, and the impact of the march upon me.

Forced Marches, Removals, and Ethnic Cleansings

What happened to these Dakota civilians and noncombatants back in 1862 in Minnesota was not unique to the Dakota People of Minnesota. Many other Indigenous Peoples of the United States were forced to leave their traditional homelands, lands that the Creator gave to them according to their creation or origin stories, and to move to strange lands where they would not be a bother or in the way of the Euroamerican citizens of the United States One major proponent of the concept and policy of removal was Thomas Jefferson, who is still regarded as a hero to many white Americans but as an enemy and Indian-hater to many Native peoples. In 1803 Jefferson drafted a constitutional amendment that would allow the exchange of land the Indigenous Peoples held in the east for other lands west of the Mississippi, though Congress did not give serious consideration to the draft amendment until twenty-seven years later.¹

Then, in 1830 Congress passed the Removal Act. Andrew Jackson, elected in 1828, rapidly acted upon it. Although also regarded as a hero among white Americans, Jackson was an Indian hater, Indian fighter, and Indian killer. Clifford E. Trafzer writes in his book that Jackson "pursued removal with unbounded vigor" and that he "treated Native Americans like dependent children who were too ignorant and savage to know that the time had come for them to move out of the way of progress and civilization."²

Andrew Jackson and his successor, Martin Van Buren, entered into [End Page 217...