Dakota Leaders Partner with MN Historical Society to Reimagine the Ft. Snelling Historic Site.
Transcript
The Minnesota Historical Society is asking the state legislature for $30 million dollars to revamp the historic Fort Snelling site.
The new plan for the site was created in partnership with a committee of Dakota people from the midwest.
Reporter Melissa Townsend talked with Lonna Hunter who is Dakota and Tlinket [klink-ett] about the new plan.
Last year, in 2017, staff from the Minnesota Historical Society reached out to a number of Dakota people around the midwest.
They asked them to come together and give feedback on a plan already in progress to revamp the Fort Snelling historical site in Minneapolis.
Lonna Hunter was there.
HUNTER: Some folks around the table shared - well, we don’t want this kind of reaching into our community and gleaning advice or information and kind of doing what you want to do anyway. (:12)
The Dakota group decided they wanted a real partnership in reshaping the stories that are told at Fort Snelling — and reshaping HOW they are told.
HUNTER: From that first meeting they were absolutely willing to do that. (:06)
Together the Dakota Community Council and the Historical Society staff have created a plan that includes new buildings, new landscape design, and new educational programming.
The site is part of the Dakota homeland, the site of a Dakota concentration camp, the place where two Dakota leaders were hung - Shak-peh and Medicine Bottle,
It was also a Japanese internment camp, a place where slaves worked and a military outpost.
Lonna Hunter says she is hoping the new plan pays respect to all these stories.
HUNTER: We’re just making space at the table for everyone’s stories to be told. And we believe that if our Dakota story of the relationship to this land - if that can be told, that makes room for every single voice to be at the table. (:19)
The Minnesota Historical Society is requesting 30 million dollars from the state legislature in this year’s bonding bill.
The goal is to unveil the new Fort Snelling historic site by 2020 — when the Fort turns 200 years old.
For Minnesota Native News, I’m Melissa Townsend.