Asked And Answered
By Mitch Berg
Fundraising for Minnesota’s Sesquicentennial “celebration” seems to be lagging:
As Minnesota enters its sesquicentennial year today, the state board established to direct the celebration has taken in about $1 million — a quarter of what had been anticipated and far less than the $8.5 million that Wisconsin raised for its sesquicentennial in 1998 and the $1.1 million ($8 million in today’s dollars) that fueled Minnesota’s centennial 50 years ago.
“For many of us, it’s a lifetime opportunity to honor the state we love and do some things that promote us for the future,” said Jane Leonard, executive director of the Minnesota Sesquicentennial Commission. “I do think we’re doing a remarkable job with what we’ve got, but we could use more help.”
State organizers last year had talked about $4 million for the yearlong celebration — half from the state, half from private contributions — and Gov. Tim Pawlenty included $2 million for the Sesquicentennial Commission in his recommended 2008 budget.
Why, oh why, could that be?
Some Minnesotans already are arguing — on opinion pages and in letters to the editor — over the Dakota War. If you thought the Sesquicentennial was going to be a Whiz Bang party celebrating Wheaties and Scotch Tape, you have been eating bad lutefisk. I mean, really bad lutefisk.
Minnesota was baptized in blood, and reminders are scattered across a vast landscape: A monument in a cornfield that marks the spot of a small settlement whose settlers — all of them — were surprised and killed on the first day of the war. A marker in a woods where more than 1,000 Indian women and children were imprisoned in a pen. A barren place on the Missouri River where hundreds died of starvation and disease after being “deported” by a new state that exiled the people whose language gave the state its name.
“Dear crackers; we’d like to have a state-financed orgy of recrimination. Please send us money to make this possible. Thanks. Signed: Native American activists and their Guilty White Liberal friends”.
The Dakota War deserves a look. It’s one of the key events in Minnesota’s history.
One of them.
On behalf of my ancestors – dirt-poor Norwegian farmers who came to America 40-50 years after the Dakota wars and raised bumper crops of rocks until they learned better trades, let me respectfully point out that there is more to the story.
January 7th, 2008 at 9:10 am
Good grief. I’ve got terrific memories of visiting the Minnesota Centennial train as a small child, when it came to my home town, Montevideo. It was a marvelous experience, a celebration of our state, not an indictment. My Norwegian ancestors settled in Wisconsin and Minnesota, as with Mitch’s, after the Indians had been defeated. I bear neither personal nor collective guilt for the treatment the native peoples received. Let’s move on and acknowledge with gratitude the native peoples’ contribution to the formation of Minnesota. The old Minnesota history textbooks I had in grade school gave significant coverage to the native peoples. Let’s provide such education to our current and future children.
January 7th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
It ‘s worth pointing out that the Ojibway & Dakota were at war with one another in MN long before the white man was a significant presence there.
January 7th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Face it, the socialists have won. They have so perverted our history that we longer have any desire to celebrate our sucesses. This is the second or third step on the way to re-writing our history to suit their needs.
In a few generations no one will have any knowledge of our real past, only the liberal version of it.
Marx would be so proud.
January 7th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
I guess too many people miss the point of what we call a “celebration”.
At Christmas, or Thanksgiving, or Easter, or WhatTheHeckEver we do not sit around and mope over every bad thing that happened around that time of year, or every bad thing around the same time as the “original” event. In fact, we try not to “celebrate” bad things at all.
Is “not celebrating” the same as “ignoring”? Is this supposed to be a celebration of the Indian Wars? Leave it to Nick Coleman to try and make it one.