When Waziyatawin was a young girl, she would sit on her grandmother’s lap and listen to anecdotes about the history of her Dakota Indian heritage.
“You won’t see that in a history book,” was how her grandma would end.
Last Thursday at Winona State University, Waziyatawin gave a presentation titled, “Rebirthing Our Nation: Dakota Women & the Struggle for Justice”.
Before discussing the legacy of the Dakota women, Waziyatawin told the attentive audience that one “can’t understand justice until (they) understand injustice.”
In an attempt for the audience to understand the meaning of injustice, Waziyatawin spoke of the Dakota War of 1862 and the Dakota Death March of 1862.
Waziyatawin said the Dakota people declared war on the United States as a last resort.
“It was a way to protest the invasion of Dakota land,” said Waziyatawin, which resulted in a depletion of land and food for the Dakota.
After the war ended, Gov. Alexander Ramsey called for their extermination, where the men warriors were shackled and held in military tribunals.
On Nov. 7, 1862, 1700 Dakota people were forced to march 150 miles in seven days with soldiers by their sides.
38 Dakota men were hanged in Mankato, Minn. on December 26, 1862 under the permission of President Abraham Lincoln.
On their march, the Dakota people walked through the main streets of many small towns. The town’s reaction to their presence was the same everywhere.
“People would line the streets and bombard the Dakota people with rocks,” said Waziyatawin.
Both events caused large dents in the population of the Dakota people in Minnesota. But Waziyatawin said it wasn’t enough for Gov. Ramsey.
During spring of 1863, the March continued to Davenport, Iowa as a way to effectively deport the Dakota people.
Waziyatawin showed a newspaper clipping that advertised bounties on the scalps of Indians. The clipping came from an 1863 issue of “The Winona Daily Republican”, the former newspaper of Winona, Minn.
It advertised a price of $200 for one Indian scalp – enough money for a 160-acre homestead in Minnesota during the 1860s, said Waziyatawin.
Waziyatawin compared these events to the terms under Article II of the United Nations Convention Prevention of Genocide. The five subsections are all applicable to the treatment of the Dakota people in the 1860s.
Prior to the Dakota War, 54,017,532 acres of Minnesota were Dakota land; the number reduced to 3,281 acres, or 0.0006% of their original land.
In 2002 and 2006, Waziyatawin and others walked 150 miles, called the Dakota Commemorative Marches, in order to “publically honor and remember Dakota ancestors.”
Walkers stopped and placed prayer stakes every mile. They would call out the names on the stakes, invoke spirits and offer prayers to their ancestors.
“It caused a reconnection with ancestors and the land that would not have been possible in any other way,” said Waziyatawin.

Contact Dana at DJKudelk7481@winona.edu