Ya Sure, You Betcha -

Ya Sure, You Betcha - If there's one thing I really, really hate, it's the way local media reflexively cite "Minnesota Nice" as an all-purpose description of our culture, and the constant referral to that groll-farbed 1973 Time magazine cover of Wendell Anderson holding that damned fish.

Yeah, I know that's two things. That's how bad I hate it. And on this, the thirtieth year since that issue hit the stands, the local media have been obsessing about it; does, indeed, Minnesota still measure up to...whatever Minnesota was thirty years ago? The question is inevitably couched in partisan rhetoric, of course; had Roger Moe won the gubernatorial election and continued the Ventura spending spree, I'm sure we'd not be hearing word one about it.

I'm not surprised to find I'm not the only one that feels this way. I am surprised that one other person that does is PiPress stentor Nick Coleman.

In 1973, I had never heard of Thai food, the 12 steps, Woodbury, Garrison Keillor or Eurasian milfoil. I had never met a Somali, a Hmong or — even more exotic — a transplanted Californian. In 1973, life was simple and sweet: My father and my grandparents were alive, I still was dating my high school girlfriend (she married another guy in 1974), and I was a cub reporter for The Minneapolis Tribune, getting paid $147.50 a week and driving a Chevy Nova I had purchased off the showroom floor for $2,150. Cash.

Ah, yes. Minnesota was pretty decent back then, what I can remember of it. And dull.

And worse than dull, for some:

Life was good in 1973, for the right people. Minorities were still fighting for a place at the banquet table. Other than a reference to Indians living in "the only really shabby area" of Minneapolis, the Time article that gave Minnesota a big head skipped over the grinding poverty on the reservations: the tarpaper shacks, the lack of running water and electricity, of jobs, health care and education. And the bigotry that Indian people faced.

I don't remember many Minnesotans complaining back then about the not-so-good life that Indians were experiencing. Today, though, it's increasingly common to hear grumbling from many quarters about the money generated by casino gambling on a few of the more fortunately located reservations in the state, as well as crude griping about the public resources that are spent on immigrants and other new arrivals to Shangri-La.

Yeah, Coleman uses this column, like so many others, as a vehicle for bitching about Minnesota's swing to the right. And the sun rose in the East, I'm told, this morning. Still, the column is a great one - a message I wish the rest of the regional media would pay attention to.

The column focuses on Minnesota's Native Americans - and with good reason:

The gaming revenue [from Minnesota's first Indian gambling establishment] even helped pay for a lawsuit that forced Prior Lake, which had annexed all the land surrounding the Shakopee tribe's small reservation, to permit Indians to vote in municipal elections.

Yes, folks: The 8th District of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that our Indian neighbors in Prior Lake had the right to vote. The year was 1985. Aren't we proud?

Largely worth a read. Especially if you're one of those people who waves that damned Time magazine in peoples' faces...

Posted by Mitch at September 15, 2003 07:49 AM