By Jon Voigt
The Dakota
I chose to create a curricular unit on the Dakota tribe of Southern Minnesota because that is where I grew up and plan to teach. It also seems to me that other minorities have a great precedence over Native Literature and oral traditions in a typical English classroom. Of course the study of literature from African American, Latin American, and many other canons offers interesting and essential perspectives for students, but I see a great need for a more honest and probing study of Native American people at the high school level. Too often people talk about Native people in the past tense, as if they are conquered and gone – but we know that Minnesota was their home long before the Europeans came along, and they continue to live and contribute to their communities still today.
1. The Dakota War of 1862.
• I think that a great place to start talking about the Dakota is a point in history where conflict between white settlers and Native people came to its boiling point. There are so many binary concepts that could be flushed out in a class discussion to find out exactly how different the worldview, values, and cultures of these two groups of people actually were/are.
• This conflict was the main reason that the Dakota were expelled from their homeland onto reservations.
• Charles Eastman was a young boy during this conflict, so much of his life and philosophical development was directly affected. Eastman is an author I’ve featured for this unit.
2. The account of Wenona’s Leap
• Before any honest approach at interpreting Native Literature can be taken, students will need to understand the differences between traditional Western literature and the oral tradition upheld by many Native American tribes.
• Wenona’s Leap was written down by Mary Eastman, wife of Seth Eastman, an Army officer stationed at Fort Snelling in 1830. Mary Eastman immersed herself in Dakota culture, and reading her account is of particular interest because she offers many insights on Dakota myths, legends, and stories.
3. Big concepts
• Colonialism – Without concrete understanding of this word and its implications, students will be unable to fully grasp the grave effect that Europeans had on the Dakota.
• Decolonization – A term with a working definition that won’t be fully realized until the end of the unit. Student essays, group projects, and discussions will aim to gain a fuller understanding of this term (see poster).
4. Life and work of Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa)
• The Dakota worldview is fully realized in the writings of Eastman. I would use selections from An Indian Boyhood, The Soul of the Indian, and From the Deep Woods to Civilization, which are all autobiographical in nature.
• Eastman was also an extremely influential figure in Dakota life. He helped bridge the gap between Natives and non-natives.
• He was the grandson of Seth and Mary Eastman.
The Dakota War
Thirty-eight Dakota people were executed the day after Christmas in 1862 in Mankato, Minnesota, a city about forty miles from my place. This execution was the U.S. government’s response to the murders of white settlers and soldiers during the Dakota War from August to September of the same year. This event marks the largest mass-execution in our nation’s history, but the gravest result of the war for the Dakota was the “expulsion from the land where they and their ancestors had lived since the immemorial past, and, more than that, it meant the shattering of whatever unity the Santee bands had possessed” (Meyer 132).
The word “Santee” is the term for the various Dakota tribes that lived in the area at the time, including the Mdewakantons, Wahpekutes, Sissetons, and Wahpetons. The expulsion of the Dakota spread their people north into Manitoba, south to Nebraska, and west to South Dakota, with hundreds of miles were between them.
I picked up an almanac called Faribault County 1855-1976, a Panorama. Only the first few pages are dedicated to the Native people of my home county, and a particular section caught my attention. This section briefly narrates the Dakota Uprising, saying, “All was fairly quiet for a while, but in August 1862 the uprising of the Annunity Sioux commenced. They began murdering men, women, and children for no apparent reason and often burned homes of the settlers” (16). The colonialist frame of mind that contrived the words “for no apparent reason” made me laugh at first, but only because it is so sad that is how some people used to think and continue to think today.
Big Eagle, a Dakota chief who participated in the Dakota War, was asked thirty years after the war why he thought his people started a conflict with the white people:
“Then the whites were always trying to make the Indians give up their life and live like white men – go to farming, work hard and do as they did – and the Indians did not know how to do that, and did not want to anyway. It seemed too sudden to make such a change. If the Indians had tried to make the whites live like them, the whites would have resisted, and it was the same way with many Indians” (Meyers 116).
CHARLES EASTMAN
In a book called The Soul of the Indian, Charles Eastman, or Ohiyesa in Dakota, wrote “Our faith might not be formulated in creeds, nor forced upon any who were unwilling to receive it; hence there was no preaching, proselytizing, nor persecution, neither were there any scoffers or atheists.” Eastman was born in Minnesota in 1858 as part of the Wahpeton Dakota or “Dwellers among the Leaves,” so had to endure an abrupt move from his homeland in the aftermath of the Dakota War, fleeing to what is now Manitoba, but went on to become a highly educated scholar, doctor, activist and philanthropist (Eastman 154). From what I can gather, Eastman was a poet at heart who loved nature. He was raised in the traditions of the Dakota beliefs and often describes his worldview as one invested completely in nature, and overseen by The Great Mystery.
To me this belief seemed deistic in nature, and I saw it as simply opposing the theistic worldview of Christianity, but then I read Eastman’s account of hambeday, a religious ceremony or retreat that a traditional Dakota youth goes through that “may be compared to that of confirmation or conversion in Christian experience” (Eastman 4). The youth would purify himself in the sweat lodge, then set out for the highest peak in the region to face the Great Mystery. He would stand there for two days and two nights facing the elements, chanting ceremonial hymns without words, and return to the village, never to disclose the vision he has had, unless it involved the public at large. Eastman writes “that solitary communion with the Unseen which was the highest expression of our religious life is partly described in the word hambeday, which literally means mysterious feeling” (Eastman 4). It can also be translated as “fasting” and “dreaming”.
Eastman’s discussion of hambeday and other ceremonies within the Dakota religion made me realize that the Great Mystery, as opposed to the supernatural God of theism and the divine architect of deism, is the manifestation of man’s role among other men, the animals, and the planet itself. But at the same time, Vine Deloria, Jr., another member of the Dakota community, says, “from the earliest times, the Indians believed in a Supreme Being who ruled the universe” and that “the religious code of the Sioux Indians was similar, in many respects, to the Ten Commandments (94). This Supreme Being, called Wakantanka in Dakota, is also referred to as The Above, or the Mysterious One.
In Indian Boyhood, Eastman describes the medicine feast, where “The choicest of the game was cooked and offered to the Great Mystery, with all the accompanying ceremonies” (127). I’ve seen movies where Native American hunters will say a sort of prayer over an animal they’ve killed, and I always thought that was beautiful. It makes you realize how vital the game is for the community. Eastman says that his people would whisper, “Great Mystery, do thou partake of this venison, and still be gracious,” and compares this to a Christian “grace” (127). European Americans at the time tended to treat the Earth as something to be exploited and pillaged rather than a giver that must be respected and kept in balance, and the medicine feast offered to the Great Mystery is the opposite of this attitude.
Colonialism
There are two distinct and important definitions to this term as fit for the study of Native peoples.
The first is that colonialism is an economic system based on extraction and export; the environment is seen as a collection of resources to be used. As times change colonialism has changed into terms such as imperialism and globalization.
The second is that colonialism is a way of perceiving the world. Colonization refers to the events of colonialism, and someone can also have a colonialist worldview. When comparing and contrasting a Native person to a European/American person, students would inevitably see that Native Americans lived with a naturalistic, sustainable, and altogether very different worldview than a colonialist mindset that is separated from the natural world.
Decolonization
Native American writings and oral traditions are bound to question the authority of colonialist ideas, attitudes, and perceptions. Decolonization aims to “undo” the harms of colonialism and open the contemporary discussion of history, culture, and politics to Native peoples by actively including them in the process that has made America what it is today. The United States as we know it wouldn’t have existed without the influence of Native people.
People often speak of Native Americans in the past tense, but they live on and contribute greatly to our communities, so the first step of decolonization is remembering that the ills of colonialism still affect Native people today.
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