On Friday, descendants of Chief Wabasha and city of Winona officials received awards from Diversity Foundation of Maple Grove for their efforts to remove racist divisions and for creating the one-hour documentary, "Wapasha Prairie."

At the ceremony in City Hall were Ernest Wabasha VII and his wife, Vernell; their son, Leonard; and their cousin, Rodney Steiner.

The foundation's executive director, Lyle Hustad, presented the "Bridging the Gap" awards, which he said represent "overcoming some of our racist ignorance."

Norm Ellig of Aitkin designed the awards.

Hustad emphasized the disparity between the past European threat to American Indians' homeland security and what has been repeated as historical doctrine.

The U.S. government imprisoned Dakota people at Fort Snelling and then shipped them to South Dakota and Nebraska. At the end of the Minnesota-Dakota war in 1862, 38 Dakota were hanged in Mankato, Minn.

"It's a pretty sad part of our history, and now it's time to do something about it," Hustad said.

Racial conflicts have flared recently in the Minnesota cities of St. Cloud, Worthington and Rochester, Hustad said.

"There's a lot of places that haven't handled it so well," he said. "I think Winona has handled it good."

Hustad asked Leonard Wabasha to recite a prayer in Dakota Sioux. Wabasha then spoke briefly. Hustad asked him to translate what he had said.

He said he told his mother and father that he loves them.

Ernest and Vernell Wabasha's cousin, Rodney Steiner, also received an award. Formerly of Winona, Steiner lives in Kansas City, Kan. He was born on the Santee Dakota Reservation in Nebraska, where Chief Wabasha III died in 1876.

Steiner handed out miniature medicine wheels, which he said represent the "four stages in life, four directions, the four seasons and to live in balance."

The documentary should be completed next year, Hustad said, and will be shown in schools and on public television stations. "Wapasha Prairie" is named after Chief Wabasha III, his father and grandfather, and for the site settled by whites and renamed Winona.

Events honoring Winona's American Indian history are being planned for the 2004 Grand Excursion, a steamboat celebration on the Mississippi River that will recreate an 1854 trip by President Millard Fillmore to recognize the westward construction of the railroads.