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Kate Beane, Director of Native American Initiatives for the Minnesota Historical Society, recalled sitting in her apartment a year ago, wishing she owned her own home with her husband and two little girls.
“I was so frustrated,” said Beane (Flandreau Santee Dakota and Creek). “I wanted a big garden and a dog. … I worked so hard for a doctorate. I wanted a home. We couldn’t have that.”
She recalled getting an email one day that summer from a man who owned a new condo development in Bloomington. He wanted Beane to come and give a land acknowledgement to welcome all the new condo owners.
It was a deeply hurtful email.
Land acknowledgement statements honor the land’s original indigenous inhabitants. Such statements are common practice in Australia and Canada, and have made their way to the United States. If done well, they can serve an important educational purpose. They also can do harm. In Beane’s case, she was being asked to welcome new homeowners on her family’s ancestral lands, lands where she couldn’t afford to own a home herself.
This past Indigenous Peoples Day, Beane and other Native American leaders participated in a panel discussion on the value of Land Acknowledgement Statements and what makes a good one. Continue reading
Mysti Babineau, an enrolled member of the Red Lake Nation, endured horrific trauma growing up, one of many unknown stories of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. Babineau is a survivor who lived to tell her story.
“I was raped for the first time when I was 9 by a boyfriend of my foster mom at the time,” Babineau told members of the House Public Safety and Criminal Justice Reform Finance and Policy Division Tuesday. “When I was 12, I witnessed my grandmother murdered in front of me. I watched her attacker go after my mother and after me. I fought for my life … I have the scars on my hands today.”
“When I was 20, I was kidnapped. I was taken over 60 miles from my home. I was held and I was raped. I got away.”
Babineau and other indigenous women shared their painful stories to gain support for HF70, a bill carried by Rep. Mary Kunesh-Podein (D-New Brighton) to create a Task Force on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW), a beginning step in addressing this ongoing crisis.
Hundreds of people opposed to the Dakota Access Pipeline gathered today in downtown St. Paul to ask President Obama to stop the project altogether. They carried colorful homemade signs and chanted in a call-and-response,”Mni Wiconi … Water is Life!” The rally started in Mears Park and participants then marched to the nearby local headquarters of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — an agency that holds a key to the pipeline.
This was part of a National Day of Action against the pipeline, sponsored by indigenous and environmental groups. Locally, the sponsors ranged from the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) and Honor the Earth to the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth. According to an MPR story, this was one of 300 rallies held across the country, including 10 others in Minnesota.
The rallies focused on the Corps of Engineers offices. The pipeline company needs an easement from the Corps to bore under the Missouri River. Yesterday, less than 24 hours before the rallies, the Corps announced that the project needed more study. (More here.)
Following the rally, approximately 50 people splintered off and marched to Wells Fargo Place. It was an effort to draw attention to the fact that Wells Fargo is one of the 38 financial institutions providing credit to the pipeline company, Energy Transfer Partners. This is part of an effort to embarrass these banks into pulling their funding. This tactic has had some recent success. (We recently wrote that DNB, the largest bank in Norway and a pipeline financer, is now doing its own investigation into the project. More here.)
Here are four takeaways from the rally, and more photos. Continue reading
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