Mille Lacs Lake Image

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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