What do “everyday Minnesotans” want?
Padma Lakshmi is on it:
Damn right.
Let’s read that op ed from October 2017:
Over this past summer, I met with virtually every homeowner who lives directly along Lake Calhoun, plus another couple hundred neighbors who live within a few blocks. Why? To listen to what they had to say about the renaming of Lake Calhoun to Bde Maka Ska. The results were surprising.
About 20 percent of the people I met told me that they feel that the name Calhoun is problematic and that they’d like to see a “more inclusive” name.
Surprisingly, they feel that there is nothing inclusive about the name “Bde Maka Ska.” They are upset that American Indian activists seem to have hijacked the discussion and that public officials have not made a bigger effort (and process) to enroll the entire community in a discussion about what alternative names are “more inclusive” than Lake Calhoun.
These people raised a good question: What exactly have the Dakota Indians done that is a positive contribution to all Minnesotans? What is the heroism or accomplishment that we are recognizing in order to justify renaming the lake to Bde Maka Ska? Unfortunately, nobody had any answers.
Is that the criterion for place names? They have to be named after people who have made a positive contribution to everyone in the state where the to-be-named place is? Well then what contribution did the number 7 make to the people of Washington state? I live on one of several 7th Avenues in Seattle and I would like to know. There are of course also questions about the other numbers, which run up into the 200s if you follow them out into the burbs.
Fortunately, I also met eight people who specifically supported the name Bde Maka Ska. This was an interesting group. With the exception of one person, they were angry at the “white establishment” and felt that we Minnesotans need to atone for history’s wrongdoings. Ironically, none of them was able to provide specifics of what exactly we needed to atone for, other than “Calhoun was racist and we stole all of this land from the Indians.”
He does sound like a charmer, doesn’t he.
I’ll bet that lake had a name bestowed upon it by the original inhabitants of what ended up being Minnesota. Guess what? That name just happens to be Bde Maka Ska. So the original name is actually being restored. Huh. Whaddya know? Calhoun is the Johnny-come-lately designation, usurping centuries of use and history.
I’m really surprised, given the nature of his latest shennanigans, that Mr. Austin isn’t a big fan of the lake’s first name which translates as:
…wait for it…
Lake White Earth*
*Or Lake White Bank, but for white clay deposits found there, not the complexions of European settlers who
uprooted, destroyed and supplanted the peoples already living there .There are a few other names that had been used before the lake got saddled with Calhoun’s sorry moniker.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bde_Maka_Ska
What YNNB said…and it is actually really weird that it was named after Calhoun. He was one of the ante bellum politicians most responsible for laying the foundations of the American Civil War, in which 2,500 Minnesotans died fighting against his ideas.
Well, you know, over time those Southern generals morphed into Gallant Heroes even in the north…
Probably the only war in which the losers were allowed to write its history.
Well, this handy. Now we can observe what the consequences are for this guy’s behaviour. Will he lose his job? Be banned from the gym? Receive death threats? Or is all that reserved for women, I wonder.
I first read “‘belong’ to you” as “belong to you”, which…yeah.
Correct me if I am wrong, or my reading comprehension is poor, but it seems to me that they did provide specifics of what we need to atone for. “Stole land” is pretty specific. “Calhoun was a racist” maybe less so, since specific examples could be provided, like “Fought on the side of the south to maintain slavery even as much of the world was realizing it was a barbaric custom that needed to end”. “Fought against Minnesotans” perhaps would be more specific still. But I think they provided adequate specifics; it’s just that Austin didn’t like the specifics they provided.
Yeah, that’s a good point Iknklast. It’s the ‘but that’s not a real reason argument. I’ve had similar with associates…
What have we ever done to Maori that they complain so much?
You mean apart from swindling and cheating them out of their lands; stealing what we couldn’t cheat them out of and setting up Government controlled entities to administer (to the advantage of white folk) what we couldn’t take by guile or force? You mean like waging war on those who wouldn’t co-operate, killing thousands? You mean like killing vast numbers with introduced diseases? You mean like shattering there cultural and tribal structures leaving the survivors adrift in a changed world? You mean like abrogating or ignoring treaties, breaking the law and finding leaders guilty in kangaroo courts? You mean like setting up, running and maintaining against overwhelming evidence legal, educational and health systems that are structurally racist and result in consistently worse outcomes for Maori over multiple generations? You mean like fighting against every attempt to even apologise for the past, let alone actually make redress? You mean like criticise and pillory the faltering attempts of woefully under resourced and under prepared Iwi to self-administer lands and money recently granted in reparation?
Yeah, apart from that, what have they got to complain about?
It’s like a fucking Monty Python script, but less funny.
The really sad thing is that compared to many indigenous peoples Maori have been comparatively well treated. The reality is that NZ society can never make adequate recompense for past wrongs, but there is much that can be done and the biggest part would be fundamentally rebuilding our justice and health frameworks to address the systemic bias that exists there.
@iknklast #7
Calhoun died in 1850, a decade before the American Civil War.
Colin, you’re right but so is iknklast. Calhoun was agitating for secession right up to the eve of his death. The last bee in his bonnet was about the plans to admit California and New Mexico to the Union as free states, which Calhoun claimed would strip the slave states of any power in government forever. Very shortly prior to his death his final speech had to be given for him as he was too weak to speak, but he still insisted on being present (possibly in Congress).
It was Calhoun’s arguments that were used to justify secession, and in fact those arguments are still used by certain factions to this day. The claim that telling people to wear masks during a pandemic and therefore dictating what citizens wear is federal over-reach and tyranny, for example, is little different to Calhoun’s claim that banning slavery was the federal government telling men what property they were and weren’t allowed to own.