Mille Lacs Lake
On December 10, 2014, the Mille Lacs Messenger, a Minnesota county newspaper, published a
letter that I wrote and submitted. The newspaper designated it as the "letter of the week".
It is presented below. It is also displayed on the Mille Lacs Messenger's
website.
Against Humanity
A Thanksgiving Day global research article by Dr. Gary G. Kohls, titled,
"
Why First Nations People Regard Thanksgiving Day as a
National Day of Mourning" presents both, excepts (six paragraphs) from an article of
mine and a linked reference statement that reads: - Thomas Dahlheimer
from his long essay, entitled,
"
A History Of The Dakota People In The Mille Lacs Area."
The "six paragraphs" read: "As Europeans settled the East coast, they displaced eastern
tribes who then migrated to get away from the White civilization, and they, in their
turn, displaced weaker local tribes they encountered, and pushed many of those tribes
farther from their homelands, as they took over their homelands."
"Westward moving Europeans would give the displaced eastern tribes guns and gun
powder and they would then instigate fights between the newly arrived tribes and
the long established tribes in order to force the long established tribes from
their homelands; and in doing so, extinguish the long established tribes' ancestral
ties that they had with the land, their ancestors and the spirit world.
Evidence of this practice has shown itself time and time again throughout the Americas."
"Around 1750, a displaced East coast band of Ojibwe were pushed into the Dakota's homeland
and they then used French guns and gun powder to force the Dakota from their Mille Lacs Lake
homeland."
The European colonists used the Dakota's weakness to abuse alcohol to lure many
of them from their Mille Lacs Lake homeland to distant trading posts. "This was the
strategy the European colonists used to greatly diminish the number of Dakota
in their Mille Lacs homeland, which encouraged and made it possible for a French
weapons armed, alcohol manipulated band of Ojibwe to violently force the
Dakota from their Mille Lacs homeland."
"Grieved by the loss of their lands, dissatisfied with reservation (aka, concentration camp)
life, and ultimately brought to a condition of near starvation, the Dakota people
appealed to US Indian agencies (involving ex-Minnesota governors Sibley and Ramsey)
without success. The murder of five whites by four young Dakota Indians ignited a
bloody uprising in which more than 300 whites and an unknown number of Indians were
killed. In the aftermath, 38 Dakota captives were hanged in Mankato (the day after
Christmas Day 1862) for 'voluntary participation in murders and massacres,' and the
Dakota remaining in Minnesota were removed to reservations in Nebraska [and South Dakota].
Meanwhile, the Ojibwa were relegated to reservations on remnants of their former lands."
[Originally, this paragraph came from a Minnesota - history
article]
"What happened to the Dakota in 1862 and afterward was a grievous crime against humanity.
If it had occurred in this present day and age the United Nations and the international
community would condemn it and declare it to be ethnocide and genocide. A United Nations
world court indictment would be issued and the perpetrators of this ethnocide and
genocide would be rounded up, tried, convicted and punished for crimes against humanity."
Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer
Wahkon
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