On July 1, 2009, the Mille Lacs Messenger, a Minnesota county newspaper, published the following letter of mine about my effort to prepare the way for the Dakota people to reclaim their sacred Mille Lacs ancestral homeland.

by Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer



Sacred homeland

I believe that it is radically wrong for our state to have a state park that is located within the Mdewakanton Dakota's Mille Lacs traditional and ancestral homeland named after Father Hennepin, a subjugator of indigenous peoples and religious sectarian proselytizing bigot and villain who denied indigenous peoples their fundamental human rights to religious freedom, absolute root ownership of their homelands, and full independent sovereign nations status and rights.

Father Hennepin was a Roman Catholic missionary and French explorer who believed in Pope Alexandra VI's 15th century papal bull (Inter Caetera), or this pope's "moral" directive to "subjugate the barbaric peoples (indigenous peoples) and bring them to the faith." Hennepin also believed in the European colonial nations' "Doctrine of Discover" which was based on Inter Caetera.

In other words, Hennepin was a white racist or white supremacist and religious sectarian proselytizing bigot and villain who came to the Dakota Indians' Minnesota homeland to prepare the way for European immigrants to take possession (steal and occupy) the Dakotas Minnesota homelands, including their sacred Mille Lacs Dakota homeland, and to also put an end to their traditional religion in the Mille Lacs area, by forceful means if necessary.

Christopher Columbus was a devout Catholic and in his journal he wrote: "The Taino people were "very friendly," "an inoffensive people," "they could be much more easily converted to our holy faith by gentle means than by force," "weapons they have none," and that "with weapons and 50 men I could enslave the entire population." We often honor villains to justify our own present-day injustices. We need to give the aboriginal native people's natural resources and homelands back to them.

What Hennepin "prepared the way for" actually occurred. In respect to the Mille Lacs area, Euro-Americans (and a band of Ojibwe, who Europeans tricked and used to force the Dakota from their Mille Lacs homeland) are now occupying the Mdewakanton Dakota's Mille Lacs homeland and their traditional religion is no longer being practiced in the Mille Lacs area. And added on to this despicable situation, there is a Mille Lacs area state park named Father Hennepin State Park.

And on a Father Hennepin State Park interpretive sign titled "History of Mille Lacs Lake," there are deceptive words that whitewash the history of this area, so that white Euro-Americans (and other people) who read it and who do not know the true history of the area will believe that the European explorers, early Christian missionaries and settlers did not have anything to do with the Mdewakanton Dakota being forced from their sacred Mille Lacs homeland that they had lived in for hundreds of years. The deceptive words on the interpretive sign read: "In the mid 1700s people of the Ojibwe Nation began moving into the area, competing with the Dakota for the rich variety of natural resources. As the Dakota moved south and west, the Ojibwe became established in the area."

An invading and trespassing band of Ojibwe were stealing the Dakotas' natural resources not "competing" for them. And the Dakota did not "move." They were forced from their Mille Lacs homeland. This occurred after Europeans gave the Ojibwe guns and (as stated on our state's DNR website) "The French instigated fights between the Ojibwe and Dakota so as to ally themselves with the Ojibwe." Europeans and a band of Ojibwe forced the Dakota from their Mille Lacs homeland, and it has not yet been given back to them. The Mdewakanton Dakota people are coming back to reclaim their sacred Mille Lacs homeland, and I am preparing the way for them to return and reclaim it. They're coming to reclaim their sacred land, lake, river headwaters and full independent sovereign nation status and rights.

Thomas Dahlheimer,
Wahkon