Minnesota’s Sesquicentennial: 150 Years of Statehood – 150 Years of Lies
Why Oppose the Sesquicentennial?
This year Minnesota will celebrate its Sesquicentennial (150 Years of Statehood). Dakota people question a historical narrative that ignores the fact that statehood was established through the genocide of Dakota people. So we must ask: “What is being celebrated?”
This is a celebration of forced marches for over 1,700 Dakota women and children. This is a celebration of hundreds of Dakota people murdered in concentration camps. This is a celebration of State-sanctioned ethnic cleansing through forced marches, military expeditions, and bounties.
While the Sesquicentennial could be an opportunity to reflect on these atrocities and pursue a vision of justice, Minnesota will instead ignore its shameful history and celebrate a distorted vision of the past.
Opposition to the Sesquicentennial events is not only a way of Dakota people to honor our ancestors by acknowledging the suffering they endured, but it is also a chance to tell the truth about Minnesota’s shameful ethnic cleansing of its Indigenous people.
We ask Dakota people, other Native people, and Minnesota citizenry to join us in this opportunity to demand truth, land recovery, and justice in the Dakota homeland that is 150 years overdue.
Genocide of Dakota People
After the U.S-Dakota War of 1862, groups of Dakota surrendered themselves to the United States army, believing they would be treated humanely as prisoners of war. Over 300 Dakota men were sentenced to death in 5 minute trials. On November 7, 1862, a group of 1,700 Dakota women, children and elderly endured brutal conditions as they were force-marched from the Lower Sioux Agency to a concentration camp at Fort Snelling.
As groups of Dakota were force-marched through towns on their way to the camps, Minnesota citizens taunted and assaulted the defenseless Dakota. In addition to suffering cold, hunger, and sickness, the Dakota endured having rocks, sticks and even boiling water thrown at them. An unknown number of men, women and children died as a result of beatings and assault by soldiers and citizens.
Thirty-eight of the Dakota men were hanged the day after Christmas in 1862, in what remains the largest mass hanging in the United States history. The other prisoners suffered in concentration camps, through the winter of 1862-63. several hundred women and children were killed in these camps. In late April of 1863, the remaining condemned men, along with the women and children survivors of the Fort Snelling concentration camp, were forcibly removed from their beloved homeland.
After Dakota people were forcibly exiled, $200 bounties were placed on Dakota scalps. This was followed by punitive military expeditions to hunt down those Dakota who had not surrendered and to ensure they would not return to the state.
While a few Dakota people began trickling back to Minnesota by the late 1880s, most Dakota people today remain in exile from their homeland.
Governor Alexander Ramsey had declared on September 9, 1862 that “The Sioux Indians of Minnesota must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the state.” These atrocities were part of planned, State-sanctioned genocide of Dakota people to pave the way for white settlement.
The U.N.’s definition of genocide has been properly applied to Minnesota’s actions against Dakota people, and it is as follows:
(a) Killing members of the group;
* Murder of women and children at Ft. Snelling
* Hanging of 38 prisoners of war
* $200 bounties placed on Dakota scalps
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
* military expeditions to expel Dakota from MN
* Forced assimilation of Dakota people through reservations, conversions, and residential schools
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or part;
* Forced marches and imprisonment of Dakota women and children during winter of 1862-63
* Purposeful starvation of Dakota people by withholding rations and denying hunting rights
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
* Separation of Dakota men and women
* Long-term imprisonment of significant portion of male population
* Forced sterilization of Dakota Women through Indian Health Service
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
* Forced abduction of children to attend federally-mandated boarding schools
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Reproduced from the original "Minnesota’s Sesquicentennial: 150 Years of Statehood – 150 Years of Lies" with permission.
