Letter to the editor:
Published in the Mille Lacs Messenger
February 5, 2003

Still Unaddressed

In response to the Jan. 29 Messenger column "State of the Band disappoints," I would like to say that I agree with a statement made by its author, Bill Lawrence, publisher of Native American Press/Ojibwe News.

He wrote that there are a number of important issues Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe Chief Executive Melanie Benjamin didn't really touch on in her address "including the violence, alcohol and drugs, gang problems, and other abuse on the reservation."

I believe that Melanie Benjamin should have addressed the band's serious alcohol abuse problem, I have provided a forum for the Band's leaders to help them solve their people's alcohol abuse problem with my Rum River name change proposal, but they have neglected to take advantage of this forum.

As I've previously recounted, English speaking fur traders provided a "punning translation" for the Sioux's name for the river, which is Wahkon, translated . ,spirit" as in Great Spirit. The translation degraded the Sioux's Great Spirit to a radically different kind of spirit that spirit being the distilled spirit rum, which brought misery and ruin to many of the Indians.

Thomas I. Dah1heimer, Wahkon