Hi to ALL my friends and family, does anyone know of a 3 bedroom house in Eagan, Mendota Heights, Bloomington or Richfield? We need to move by the end of February.
Please email me if you know of some place. We will gave details at that time. shar5717@yahoo.com Pidamayaye Sharon, Sean and Joe.
Sharon
DEAR FRIENDS;
The Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community would like to invite you to become a Honorary Member of our Community.
Currently only our members have supported us on a regular basis to help Preserve, Protect and Promote our Dakota Ways. (except for a select few).
We realize that in order for us to utilize all the talent out there, we need to invite people to participate.
This serves several purposes:
Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community .txt food pers They are now doing everything online, and it is much easier to do. If you are interested, go to their website and sign on under Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community. When you do a test, part goes to Mendota. So if you made $35.00, $10.00 goes to Mendota. So far we have about 10 people in the community and outside of the community that do this. You can earn some money and the community gets a little too. It is fun to do, and only take less then an hour for most.
Your tribal council & Sharon
Dear FPI Organization Contact:
Thank you for your dedication to your nonprofit organization and for your interest in Food Perspectives. We are writing you today to inform you that there are great fundraising opportunities ahead. We have an extremely heavy testing schedule in the next few weeks and wanted you to know there will be plenty of testing opportunities ahead. Every time one of your members participates in a taste test, $10 goes to your organization!
Please be sure all testing members of your organization are checking their emails and/or going to our website to check for possible testing opportunities. The more folks who test, the more money raised for your organization!
Need to teach them how to check for available tests? Here’s how:
If you would like a personalized flyer to distribute to your organization members, please simply reply to this email, remember to include your organization name, and we’ll email you a flyer to distribute to your group.
By SUDHIN THANAWALA 01/15/12 03:48 PM ET 
BERKELEY, Calif. — On a bluff overlooking a sweep of Southern California beach, scientists in 1976 unearthed what were among the oldest skeletal remains ever found in the Western Hemisphere.
Researchers would come to herald the bones – dating back nearly 10,000 years – as a potential treasure trove for understanding the earliest human history of the continental United States. But a local tribal group called the Kumeyaay Nation claimed that the bones, representing at least two people, were their ancestors and demanded them back several years ago.
For decades, fights like this over the provenance and treatment of human bones have played out across the nation. Yet new federal protections could mean that the vast majority of the remains of an estimated 160,000 Native Americans held by universities, museums and federal government agencies, including those sought by the Kumeyaay, may soon be transferred to tribes.
A recent federal regulation addresses what should happen to any remains that cannot be positively traced to the ancestors of modern-day tribes. Museums and agencies are required to notify tribes whose current or ancestral lands harbored the remains, then the tribe is entitled to have them back.
Prestigious institutions from Harvard to the University of California, Berkeley have already begun working through storehouses of remains uncovered by archeologists, highway and building contractors and others since the 19th Century. A few are surrendering bones to Native tribes, and others are evaluating whether to do so.
Tribes have hailed the rule, saying it will help close a long and painful chapter that saw native peoples’ bones stolen by grave robbers, boxed up in dusty storerooms and disrespected by researchers.
“Darn it, these are people,” said Louis Guassac, a member of the Kumeyaay Cultural Repatriation Committee. “This isn’t stuff. You don’t do this to people. I don’t care how long they’ve been there. You respect them.”
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 provided for the return of remains connected to modern-day tribes. But it was not until 2010 that a rule on the disposition of so-called culturally unidentifiable remains was finalized by the Department of the Interior. Until then, more than 650 universities and other institutions had no clear guidance about how to return those remains, which account for the bones of about 116,000 people in their collections. That rule is still playing out, sometimes fractiously.
Universities find themselves tugged one way by the law’s mandates, another by faculty research needs.
Some anthropologists say more remains will become off limits, imperiling study of the diets, health, migrations and other habits of ancient peoples without guaranteeing that the remains will wind up with their true descendants. “There really isn’t any balance anymore,” said Keith Kintigh, associate director of the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University. “The public and scientific interest in (the remains) no longer have any weight.”
In recent months, Harvard’s Peabody Museum has received requests for about 500 remains and hired additional staff as they respond to the 2010 rule, said Patricia Capone, the museum’s repatriation coordinator.
At the University of Michigan, officials have decided to transfer the bulk of their 1,580 culturally unaffiliated remains to 13 Native American tribes who want them. In the meantime, they have been put off limits to researchers. “The law is very clear that they will be transferred,” said school spokesman Rick Fitzgerald.
At UC-Berkeley, more than 6,000 of the roughly 10,000 remains that were deemed culturally unidentifiable are now subject to potential transfer to tribes. And the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Archaeology here has added four new staff members to help match remains to tribes if possible and notify tribes whose lands held the remains.
The small, eclectic museum recently celebrated the 100th anniversary of a recording made by Ishi – the last surviving member of the Yahi tribe who emerged from hiding in Northern California in 1911. The museum displays artifacts such as Pomo baskets, an Achumawi rabbit-skin blanket and arrowheads Ishi made out of obsidian and glass_ but not the remains of native peoples.
The collection of bones _one of the country’s largest – is in storage. Officials declined to show them to The Associated Press during a recent campus visit on grounds that that could be offensive to tribes.
The university currently has four pending requests for remains. And Museum Director Mari Lyn Salvador said the regulation change has caused concern among researchers.
“There are very important opportunities to understand contemporary medicine … information that could be very useful to these (Native) communities themselves in terms of better understanding diabetes and other illnesses,” she said.
The university presents such information to tribes, she said, but lets the tribes decide whether to allow researchers to work with the bones.
Tens of thousands of individual Native American remains have been collected since the mid-19th century. Some grave sites were looted or excavated to support scientific research, including a study of skulls purporting to show that Native Americans were inferior to Caucasians, according to Robert Bieder, an Indiana University professor who has written about the phenomenon.
The bones in dispute at UC San Diego have long since been out of the ground. They were excavated more than three decades ago from land around the university chancellor’s house in La Jolla by a professor from another school. But a photo of the original discovery shows the outlines of two skeletons with skulls, buried head to toe.
Since their discovery in 1976, they have been studied at the Smithsonian and carbon dated at the University of Oxford, according to Margaret Schoeninger, a professor in the Department of Anthropology at UCSD and the university’s representative on Indian burial issues.
When the Kumeyaay Nation – a dozen native bands with reservations in San Diego County – first demanded the remains, the university rejected its claim that they were the tribe’s ancestors.
Researchers have said Kumeyaay remains were cremated early in the tribe’s history, not buried. They have also questioned whether the remains are even Native American, given their age, although the university has concluded that they are.
“In terms of what the Kumeyaay have put forward, the only thing I’ve heard is their belief, their deep tie to the land and folklore,” Schoeninger said. “We need empirical evidence.”
Tribal representatives say they have an oral history that goes back thousands of years and connects them to the remains.
In light of the recent rule, university officials did a reevaluation, concluding that the skeletons came from the Kumeyaay’s ancestral lands while still maintaining they were not the Kumeyaay’s direct ancestors.
In a filing in December, the university said it would turn the remains over to the Kumeyaay although it gave other tribal groups until Jan. 4 to come forward and dispute the Kumeyaay’s claim.
Kumeyaay repatriation officials say they will accept the remains.
“It’s pleasing to know that these are going to finally be returned and properly taken care of,” Guassac said. “They are going to be getting the respectful treatment they deserve.”
One option, he said, is that the remains will be reburied.
On December 26, 1862, the U.S. military lynched 38 of our Dakota patriots in the largest mass execution in United States history. On November 7, 1862, a group of about 1,700 Dakota, primarily women and children, were forcibly marched from the Lower Sioux Agency to a concentration camp at Fort Snelling.
Saturday February 4, 2012.
Jim Anderson, Mendota’s Chairman, and Nick Anderson Culture / Historian will light the sacred fire at 11:00am. The ceremony is at 12:00pm.
Where
Fort Snelling State Park.
The park entrance is off Highway 5 at Post Road near the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport.
Drive down into the park, go inside the building to get your free pass, thanks to the DNR and the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community.
Following the ceremony a potluck feast will be held at the Minneapolis American Indian Center, 1530 East Franklin Ave. Minneapolis, MN. (Please bring a dish to share)
If you need more information please call the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community office 651-452-4141.
“Dress warm, the ceremony is outside, women should wear skirts. Please bring some tobacco for an offering”
Pidamaya from the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community!
It is an honor to have him come to our culture class. Dan Veesenmeyer set this class up. Thank you Dan! Jim Rock will talk about the Big Dipper constellation & and how it relates to Native Americans.
Come and enjoy, everyone is welcome. Please bring a treat if you want.
From the language class members, and the Mendota Community.
Sharon
Media Contact: Liz Hill (202) 744-7629; liz@lizhillpr.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CALENDAR LISTING
WHAT: “Why Treaties Matter: A Professional Development Opportunity for Minnesota Educators” will be held in conjunction with “Why Treaties Matter: Self-Government in the Dakota and Ojibwe Nations” exhibit on view at the Minnesota State Capitol from Jan. 24–31, 2012. This professional development opportunity will feature content presentations on tribal sovereignty, treaties, and treaty rights, and resources that educators can incorporate into their classrooms. The program includes a trip to the State Capitol to view the exhibit. Registration fee is $15, which includes content materials and light refreshments.
WHERE: Minnesota Humanities Center (987 Ivy Avenue East, Saint Paul)
WHEN: 9 a.m.– noon, Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012
WHY: So that educators will have an opportunity to learn more about the themes of treaties and tribal sovereignty and how these themes and subject matter can be incorporated into the classroom.
WHO: “Why Treaties Matter: Self-Government in the Dakota and Ojibwe Nations” is a collaboration of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council, the Minnesota Humanities Center, and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian in partnership with the 11 sovereign nations now residing in Minnesota. The project is funded in part with money from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund that was created with a vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008, and The Patrick and Aimee Butler Family Foundation. For more information and itinerary updates, visit www.mnhum.org/treaties
CONTACT: For more information and details about the program, contact Elizabeth de Soto, Minnesota Humanities Center (651) 772-4263/ Elizabeth@mnhum.org.
It is to cold to work at the office. Can someone please help us with heat, and put up 3 ceiling fans. PLEASE!! 651-452-4141 Sharon
The Mendota Community hopes you had a great HOLIDAY Season. Now back to language class, hope to see you all Wednesday night!
Welcome EVERYONE to our Dakota Classes.
The Mendota Tribal Council.
birthplace.html by Bruce White
Excerpts of the testimony of Eddie Benton Benais, Ojibway spiritual elder, to Minnesota state archeologist Joe Hudak, MnDOT staff and a consultant, under mediation ordered by state Judge Peter Albrecht regarding sacred land and traditional cultural property rights claimed by the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community, the Iowa people (pre-Dakota), Anishinabe people and other indigenous peoples.
March 19, 1999, Minnesota State Office Building, Room 400, St. Paul Capitol grounds
Mr. Benais credentials include:
-Grand Chief of the Mdewiwin Society, also called the lodge or the Medicine Lodge
-fullblood Ojibway (Anishinabe)
-currently living on the Lac Courte Oreilles Indian Reservation in Northern Wisconsin
-works as a Native Education Consultant
-bachelor’s degree University of Minnesota
-Master’s of Educational Administration, California Western University
-25 years in Indian education, notably with the Red School House in St. Paul
-published curricula for Indian education
-Previous to his education career, he worked as a journeyman steel construction worker for 14 years.
-Mr. Benais was active in DFL politics, mentioned his lobby background and said Minnesota was a leader in Indian education in the mid-1980s.
Excerpts
About 900-950 AD the forebearers of the Ojibway people migrated from the mouth of the St. Lawrence River westward across the Great Lakes. These people brought a particular philosophy or spirituality with them. “We have a different relationship with the Creator, and thus with the Creation.” The Ojibway Creator is “kind, forgiving, nurturing, encouraging, it is that kind of relationship.”
Mr. Benais talked about “the rampant use of free will without discretion” which “brings us to where we are today.” He spoke of a 300 year old prophecy, inconceivable at the time, about rivers running with poison. The Mdewiwin [M’day-wi-win] Lodge teaching about the need to protect waters is “to show the world how to love fish….How we take care of the water is how it will take care of us…Water is sacred.” He called for a “covenant or relationship” with the earth as “the mother of all living things.” He invited us to “come to the door of the (Mdewiwin) lodge and ask, ‘How can we stay alive’…There is a new thinking,” he said. It is respect. “The first commandment of our spirituality is respect.”
The elder also talked about the importance of oral history. “The Bible itself is a result of oral history. Yet we hold it to be sacred.” He compared swearing on the Bible to touching the sacred pipe. “Our history is valid….It is time for us to share our story. Our story goes back 50,000 years.” This period of time now, holds the possibility of “a new brotherhood of the nations and the beginning of the Great Peace. Or not.”
Mr. Benais began speaking specifically about the land between Minnehaha Falls and Coldwater Springs, near the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers.
“We know that the falls which came to be known as Minnehaha Falls, was a sacred place, was a neutral place, a place for many nations to come. And that (to) further geographically define (it), the confluence of the three rivers, which is actually the two rivers. That point was a neutral place. And that somewhere between that point and the falls there were sacred grounds that were mutually held to be a sacred place. And that the spring from which the sacred water should be drawn was not very far. I’ve never heard any direction from which I could pinpoint, but that there’s a spring, near the lodge, that all nations used to draw the sacred water for the ceremony. That’s in the words of our water people of the (Mdewiwin) lodge.
“The people that are concerned, the people that are identified are the Dakota, the Sauk, the Fox, the Potowatamie, the Wahpeton Dakotas, the Mdewakanton Dakotas, the Mesquakie people as all having used and recognizing and mutually agreeing that that is forever a neutral place and forever a sacred place. That is confirmed by our oral history.
“It is difficult to even estimate when the last sacred ceremony was held inter-tribally there. But my grandfather who lived to be 108, died in 1942. [born 1834] I will tell you this. Many times he retold how we traveled, how he and his family, he as a small boy traveled by foot, by horse, by canoe to this great place to where there would be these great religious, spiritual events. And that they always camped between the falls and the sacred water place. Those are his words….
“And I, having been born into an Ojibway/Anishinabe family, having been raised in this tradition, and having been now entrusted with teaching this tradition and articles of faith, I can say that to you….
“Some of the research that correlates with the oral tradition is from” Indian Notes and Monographs volume IV: A Series of Publications Relating to the American Aborigines, Allison Skinner, 1920, NY Museum of the American Indian, “Medicine Ceremony of the Menominee, Iowa and Wahpeton Dakota With Notes on the Ceremony Among the Punka, Among the Ojibway and Potowatamie People.”
“The lodge to which we refer is now known as the Mdewiwin Lodge– was common to all of those people. And this study indicates that the people known as the Ojibway were the carriers and the people who first brought this belief system and this theology into this area.
“But I want to make special note of this, again, it characterizes something about Indian people, and that is– we share that which we have. There was respect among us, even as different-speaking people. Respect of the land, the same respect for the land, the same respect for the sacred….And the people were given access to this spiritual teaching, to the lodge, and then at some point were given, were given the lodge for them to worship and to practice.
“Within my physical memory, visiting the Prairie Island Dakota Nation as early as the 1940s there were still elders in that community who were still members of the Mdewiwin Lodge, along with the Winnebago of Wisconsin….There was a great dialogue– there was always dialogue among our people and those of the Prairie Island Community regarding the lodge. That’s how we have always known this way of life and practice, as the lodge, meaning the Mdewiwin Lodge, the system of belief.
“With the passing of the Honorable Amos Owen, who was the last person of that community who I ever heard refer to the time, as ‘when we belonged to the lodge.’ He’s the last person that I ever heard of talk about that mutually sacred place, meaning the falls and the spring from which sacred water would be drawn– Coldwater.”
Mr. Benais noted that the Indian Monographs book is centered on the Medicine Ceremony of the Menominee but it also includes Dakota words for the Initiation Ceremony and the Reinstatement, ceremonies of the lodge. “It goes on to describe the Iowa Medicine Dance and includes the Dakota origin myth, the initiation by purchase. In the initiation by purchase I have discovered that the Wahpeton Dakota people actually purchased the rights to have, maintain, and to carry on the lodge from the Ojibway people. That purchase was not monetary. It was not goods of any kind. They purchased to right to have and maintain it, by their faith. Nothing else….
“It is our belief that the prophesies contain a promise. The new people, the new awareness is here among us, among all people. There’s a growing awareness that we need to care for the earth, we need become concerned with the water, the air and all of creation. We need to do this together….We have to begin to reach out and say, ‘Brother, we are of the earth.’ That all prayer originates at the same place and arrives at the same place. That is what I believe.”
I found this on the internet today about Albert at Pipestone Indian School this is what came up.
Sharon
These are some of our newest honorary members in 2011.
Lon Navarre
Joy Navarre
John Varone
Larry Leventhal
George & Marie Crothers
Daniel Reisdorfor
Regi Bradshaw
Linda Brown
Judy Standmark
Barbara Nimis
Bob Nugent
Connie Quinn
Gary Shull
John Pirak
Joseph Pirak
Judith McDaniel
Loren Hoffivs pending
John LeClaire
For those of you who need to get caught up on their dues, the automatic payment works great for some members. For those of you who do pay by automatic payments, the community would like to THANK YOU very much. All dues are appreciated very much. If you are a member or an honorary member, all dues are needed.
Automatic-Payment-Enrollment-Form
The tribal council & Sharon
Sharon & Tribal Council
Posted: 12/25/2011 | Author: marQue | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Dakota 38+2 memorial, Mankato |Leave a comment »
December 26, 2011, tomorrow, will mark the 149 Anniversary of the largest execution in US history. If you are able, come to Downtown Mankato at 9:30 am to witness the riders as they come into town for a memorial time at 10am (when the execution) occurred. Come to South Riverfront Drive near the Downtown Library. The riders will come from the south/west and the memorial will be help around the Stone Buffalo. A meal will follow.
I took the toys to the Indian center on Thursday. I was very sick but the toys needed to be delivered for their party.
Sharon
Class decided a few weeks back that there would be no class Dec 21 or 28. Class will start again at 6:30, on January4th, 2012.
Sharon
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Just think, if YOUR add had been here, thousands of people from all over would have seen it.