Story originally printed in the Winona Daily News or online at www.winonadailynews.com
Published - Sunday, June 27, 2004
Hdihunipi brings truth-telling to the forefront
One of the great natural powers of the Dakota people, the wind, blew Saturday through Lake Park.
It carried Dakota oral history — truth telling — to listeners, many of them of European descent, who gathered and listened about pioneer aggression toward the Dakota.
"Some of it is very harsh," said William Ambrose Littleghost. "Some of it we try to live with today. Some of it we try to forget."
Ambrose was one of several Dakota speakers at Hdihunipi: The Great Dakota Gathering and Homecoming. Ambrose recounted his and his ancestors' days in government, church-run boarding schools. Teachers taught English using force.
"That hurt. That hurt for a long time," he said. "Every little mistake we made we got a whipping. We got beaten. But that wasn't a learning a process."
At Fort Totten, N.D., a Dakota boy stole a slice of bread and was strung up and whipped while two nuns encouraged the discipline.
"These are the stories my mother told me," he said. "And each one gets us bitter."
U.S. soldiers imprisoned Dakota people at Fort Snelling, Minn., "in what we call a concentration camp," Ambrose said.
"The holocaust started in this country," Ambrose said. "Whole camps were completely annihilated by (smallpox). Germ warfare. Saddam Hussein gassed his own people. The U.S. government spread smallpox."
Joseph Campbell, a Mdewakanton Dakota from Red Wing, Minn., said his people lost land that supported 10 generations of his family. He passed around a miniature teepee decorated with symbols that told his oral history.
"How will I teach my great-grandson how to hunt deer at this place if it doesn't exist anymore? Is it a fairy tale now?" Campbell said. "What are you going to do? (Are) you going to bring back the buffalo? Elk? You completely destroyed another society in doing what you did."
He said United States developed a contradictory policy of attaining peace through force.
"There is no way that can be done," Campbell said.
Harold Blacksmith from Sioux Valley, Canada, asked people to look up at the forested hills towering over Lake Winona.
"It's not hard for someone to understand that this was a beautiful Dakota Territory," he said.
David Seaboy of Sisseton, N.D., said, "Those spirits are watching us from those hills looking down."
Reconciliation ceremonies continue this morning in Lake Park, followed by a full day of festivities. Many area clergy and government officials attended Saturday and agreed that spirituality forms the core of reconciliation efforts.
Seaboy said the universe and divine creation will return to order "every time we see each other we will smile and shake hands."
Contact reporter Jeff Dankert at (507) 453-3513 or jdankert@winonadailynews.com.
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