Letter of the day: Two different views of Dakota Uprising

I would like to comment on Waziyatawin Angela Wilson's Dec. 2 commentary, "Time to level."

My Dakota ancestors fought on both sides of the Dakota War of 1862. A few hundred hostile Indians started this war. Others joined -- many under threats of death. But the majority of the Dakota either opposed the war or remained neutral.

In traditional Dakota warfare, it didn't matter if you were a man, woman or child. It was this mass murder, rape, torture and mutilation that angered the white citizens of the state. This is why most of the Dakota Indians were removed from the state. This is why Gov. Alexander Ramsey offered bounties on Dakota scalps. And this is why about 200 loyal Dakota men eventually joined the army to help hunt down the hostile Indians.

Indians killed more than 500 white civilians. At least that many whites died after the war from injuries and from epidemics that swept the crowded refugee towns. This war came to an end due to the efforts of Dakota Indians who remained loyal to the United States.

Using words like "genocide" and "concentration camps" is an attempt to compare early Minnesota to Nazi Germany. This isn't true. Minnesota never committed genocide against the Indians.

The state doesn't owe me or my Dakota ancestors anything except to tell our Dakota history as accurately and respectfully as possible.

JOHN LABATTE (WASICUN NAZIN), NEW ULM, MINN.

Patrick Hill, reading from the "how to" manual of the obedient colonial, espouses Minnesota history as written by the conquerors. Let's hope that Hill's rationale is a not a barometer of the state's moral code. If so, it would read, "No progress in 150 years."

Hill criticizes Waziyatawin, a Dakota woman, calling her a racist for asking that, as part of the state's 150th birthday party, Minnesotans admit that, in the creation of a state, the Dakota Nation was destroyed.

Hill says the Dakota Uprising was "a murderous plot," but he has it backwards. The truth is ethnic cleansing of the Dakota was part of a larger national policy of genocide. On Sept. 9, 1862, Minnesota Gov. Alexander Ramsey declared, "The Sioux Indians of Minnesota must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the state."

The treatment of the Dakota people, including the hangings of 38 of them in Mankato in 1862 and the forced removal of all Dakotas from the state, were the first phases of Ramsey's plan. His plan was further implemented when bounties eventually reaching $200 were placed on the scalps of Dakota people, to keep them out.

Minnesotans in 2008 should take the unique opportunity that the sesquicentennial brings to come clean on the issue of Minnesota's history, rather than the entire white population having to bear the guilt of their ancestors, just as Hill is doing, and writing articles trying to somehow absolve them of their crimes against the Dakota.