What Does Justice Look Like? The Struggle for Liberation in Dakota Homeland (review)

Perhaps the most important question posed in this regional text about the development of the state of Minnesota is this: “What does recognition of genocide demand?” (75). The question is asked because, as the writer documents, most U.S. and regional historians are loathe to write and speak the word:

The Minnesota Historical Society continues to resist using appropriate and accurate terminology such as “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and “concentration camp”, preferring instead more benign terms that diminish the horror of Minnesota history. This is not a reflection of ignorance, since the Minnesota Historical Society houses a lot of evidence within its archives.

It is a deliberate historiography, this writer asserts, perpetrated by a significant academic institution in the region. Furthermore, she says, this Society, which was founded by the former state governor, Alexander Ramsey, is steadfastly upholding its corrupt legacy of generations of racist and colonial policy cloaked in democratic ideals toward the indigenous peoples of the region—the Dakotas. And it does so almost without critical assessment from other historical establishments. The question asked here in this significant historical work could be asked of the indigenous policy of extermination initiated by President Thomas Jefferson in 1807, who declared: “if we ever are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down until that tribe is exterminated” and again in 1813, when he wrote that “the American Government has no other choice before it than to pursue [the Indians] to extermination.”

This is a text that will replace the histories that are used in the schools in this region. What this writer, Waziyatawin, points out is that the unnecessary and immoral policy of the federal government of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries quickly became state policy throughout the land. This continues even today, and it can—indeed, it must—be challenged. To make that point, this writer suggests that the nation of America might have been developed otherwise, were it not for greed, avarice, racism, the acceptance of brutal capitalistic colonial interests, and the coveting of indigenous lands. That may not be a comforting thought for those who have been taught to love a fantasy history about America, but it does give a blueprint for a more just future.

American historians, in general, fail to take up the business of land theft as a function of brutal colonization. For instance, in his highly praised 1776, David McCullough says of George Washington: “he was said to be the richest man in America, his wealth was in land, upwards of 54,000 acres, including some 8,000 acres at Mount Vernon, another 4,000 in Virginia’s Dismal Swamp, nearly all of which he had acquired for speculation” (47). In other words, as McCullough intimates, the theft of the lands taken over by the occupants of the thirteen colonies was simply a matter of the law laid down by the members of the Continental Congress (of which Washington was a member) and the Virginia Legislature—and there is no reason to question the law. In reiterating this theme, McCullough follows the well-trodden path of general American historiography.

However, unasked questions linger in the air of this stifling history. Who lived here before Washington—who brought with him his family and his black slaves? Were there no native populations in the colonies? Were there no indigenous nations? Was this land unoccupied? How did Washington acquire it? McCullough does not answer these questions (and neither does he ask them), nor does he speculate about the decimation and death of thousands of indigenous peoples during these periods of conquest and colonization. American historians have always failed to ask such questions, and they continue to neglect these crucial questions even today. If we are expecting a clear, concise recognition of the genocide that is at the heart of the development of America, we are continually disappointed. The points Waziyatawin makes are long overdue, and her question “What...