On Sunday Sept 12, there will be an honorary for Marie Nordin, and Clarice Gombond. Their family will be having a small giveaway.

If interested please call the Mendota office ASAP, 651-452-4141 Scotty Browns Eyes had to cancel.

Sharon

Jeff made our last 3 slide shows of the Wacipi  (Pow Wows)

When Jeff sends me the 9th slide show, I will add it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJisW7muG90

Wicoie Nandagikendan Early Childhood Language Immersion Program(2)

Click to make the picture bigger.

http://www.chaskaherald.com/news/activities/wacipi-fills-chaska-park-traditional-song-and-dance-108

MENDOTA

Help with Pow Wow

Donations and volunteers are needed for Mendota’s 11th annual Welcome Home Traditional Wacipi.

The Pow Wow is scheduled for Sept. 10-12 at St. Peter’s Church grounds in Mendota. Donations are needed for the raffle. Water and soft drinks are needed, as well as volunteers.

The traditional Pow Wow is open to the public. It will include dancing ceremonies as well as a unity feast. The event organizers recommend bringing lawn chairs. If you are able to help, call 651-452-4141.

Mendota needs donation for the raffle, we could use pop and water too. If you can make a donation to the raffle please call the office for more information. We need lots of volunteers to help with the Pow Wow.  We need someone to call people to help with the Pow Wow. Sharon

We have two drums Little Thunder Birds and Many Nations. Mike Scott, and Mary So Happy are the lead dancers. Grand entry will be at 1:00 and we will go till 7:00 or so with a feast to follow. We needed to move to McKnight Park in Chaska. To get to the park, take 212 west to 41/Chestnut Street north, go to the 2nd stop light, that will be Pioneer Trail. Turn left, go up a little hill Jonathan Elementary School on your right, guests may park in the school parking lot. Dancers and Vendors go to the next street to the right, then take next right to parking lot that is reserved for you.

Please tell as many people as you can, there is no charge for vendors to set up, all dancers are welcome. Please come and enjoy the day.

Thank you all for your support, If you have any Questions please email stoneripp@yahoo.com

Wally

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The two-story house in dot-on-the-map Mendota (population: 197) is more ragged than rustic.

White paint is peeling off doors. A side porch has collapsed. On the front lawn, weeds have won the turf war against grass.

But on Wednesday nights, supporters of the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community try to forget they have trouble making rent on their ramshackle community center. There is important work to do here along Hwy. 13: There’s a language and culture to preserve.

The band of 200 to 300 people is working locally to increase the dwindling number of people who know the Dakota language and nationally to gain federal recognition as an independent tribe, a designation that would bring much-needed financial help.

Fewer than 10 Minnesotans speak fluent Dakota, tribal leaders and academics estimate. In a state with more than 5 million residents, that means one in every 500,000 people, at best, have command of the indigenous language whose roots date back centuries.

The weekly Dakota language classes are attended by five to 30 people, and the Mendota Dakota are trying to increase that number. Dakota speakers also teach weekly courses at Little Earth Neighborhood Education Center in Minneapolis on Mondays and American Indian Family Center, in St. Paul, on Fridays during the school year.

“It’s a very hard language,” said tribal council member Sharon Lennartson. “My brain just does not comprehend.”

The Mendota Dakota trace their plight back to the Dakota Conflict of 1862, when the Dakota waged war to protest unfair treatment. Afterward, the United States exiled most of them, removing their reservations in the process.

Tribal leaders estimate that fewer than 100 Dakotans remained. A people and their language suffered here as a result.

“Language is what holds and communicates a culture,” said Beth Brown, program associate for Dakota language at the University of Minnesota.

“The stakes are high now; people aren’t going to let it die.”

‘We’ve lost a lot of things’

At the Mendota community center, students and their instructor, who is more learner than learned, pore over their notebooks and crack open Dakota-English dictionaries.

Substitute teacher Brian Nackerud has studied Dakota for a couple of years; by his estimate, he has the language skills of a 4- or 5-year-old.

When spoken properly, Brown said, the language is nasal and guttural, with many sounds articulated in the nose and throat.

“It’s a real cool language,” Nackerud said. “There’s no swear words. The concept just isn’t there.”

Although thousands of people across North America speak Dakota, a member of Siouan language family, University of Minnesota staff peg the number of fluent Minnesotans at between five and eight. But even that is tenuous.

One of those people, Faith Bad Moccasin — the former instructor at the Mendota class — suffered a stroke this year that left her right arm paralyzed. She now uses a wheelchair and has daily therapy to fully restore her speech.

“It’s dying out,” said Bad Moccasin, 64. “We’ve lost a lot of things. Not only the language but our values and traditions.”

Tribal council member Lennartson, like many of her peers, wasn’t raised Dakota. When her grandmother was forced to leave Minnesota for boarding school in Carlisle, Pa., staff there tried to beat the Dakota language and culture out of her.

When she returned, she refused to speak the language or even talk about that period of her life. She chose not to teach her children or grandchildren out of love.

Now, Lennartson clings to whatever is left of her culture. For years, she’s volunteered at the community center.

As other tribe members have lost interest or hope, the 63-year-old has taken on bookkeeping, maintenance, receptionist and webmaster duties while battling chronic pain from fibromyalgia.

A recent renegotiation of the tribe’s lease allowed the council to afford a $25 weekly salary for Lennartson. By her calculations, that’s just enough for gas money.

“This might be our critical stage,” she said. “I just keep going. I’m here until the doors are shut and locked.”

Recognition and survival

The Mendota Dakota petitioned for federal recognition of tribal status in 1996; the designation would bring federal dollars, support and opportunities for expansion.

The funds could allow them to buy land, build their own cultural center and more aggressively pursue language education, among other things.

The effort appears to have fallen flat. The federal Bureau of Indian Affairs issued a letter requesting more information in 1997. “We haven’t heard from them since,” said Nedra Darling, bureau spokeswoman.

In the past 30 years, close to 300 groups have petitioned for federal recognition. Few have met the demanding criteria.

“If you don’t have many people working on it, it’s going to be difficult,” Darling said.

There are more than 500 federally recognized tribes in the United States, including 11 in Minnesota.

Mendota Dakota council members plan to renew their campaign this fall, cultural chairman Jim Anderson said.

But with their lack of resources and manpower, “I don’t think it’s going to happen in my lifetime,” Lennartson said.

For now, rent for the community center is paid for this month and next. And like their language, the Mendota Dakota are hanging on in Minnesota.

“Our culture will not be lost on the generations to come,” said Martha Fast Horse, a language student and community activist.

“It will not.”

Corey Mitchell • 612-673-4491

We need generators badly. If you have one we can borrow for the Wacipi or Pow Wow,  please call or email us. If you want to donate one to the community, we can give you a tax deduction donation form. Pidamaya,  The Mendota Tribal Council.

Sept 11,12,13, 2010.

Phone: 651-452-4141

Email: mmdc01@comcast.net

Web Site: www.mendotadakota.com

Hello to all our members and friends. We are looking for volunteers at the Pow Wow. If you are interested please call or email the office. We are looking for a Pow Wow coordinator to get people to help with the Pow Wow, also another person to help the coordinator in making calls, and help put people in time slots. We always need more people for the evening time slots. For every 4 hours you volunteer,  you will get a voucher worth $10.00 in food.

Remember for every 4 hours you volunteer you will get one of Connie’s delicious indian tacos for FREE, or what ever you want. Don’t forget Sharon’s fry bread and maple butter. Yum Yum!

Sharon and the Pow Wow committee.

mmdc01@comcast.net

mendotadakota.com

Here they are, the new MMDC postage stamps. They are available in a sheet of twenty, self stick stamps with our logo on them.

The tribe earns 10% of every item sold so you can show your support by sticking these stamps on your mail.

Yes, they are 100% legal, post office approved stamps.  (more items in our STORE page)

They can be downloaded from the DOWNLOADS PAGE

5/3/2010
Mendota Dakota face loss of center
Grants, dues for rent have dried up

Danielle Cabot
Review Staff

The Mendota Dakota community faces the loss of their community center in upcoming months due to a downturn in grants and donations.

If the community leaders lose their rental space at 1324 Highway 13, they have few other locations within the tiny suburb to pursue, and face having to leave what they consider their sacred ancestral home entirely.

Even if the community were to secure money to pay the $1,200 rent, the building – a converted house – is up for sale by its owners.

“For 15 years, it’s been a struggle,” said tribal council member Sharon Lennartson. “We always seem to get some kind of help, but with the [slumping] economy it’s been really bad.”

The community’s monthly operating budget of about $1,800 including rent and utilities is supported through dues, donations and foremost, grant money that has become scarcer by the day. The community is registered as a non-profit 501c3 entity.

On their current trajectory, she said the group will lose its lease in July.

Lennartson said she has literally gone door-to-door looking for open rental space in Mendota, and found nothing.

For the organization, this is more than a real-estate quandry, it’s a spiritual one as well.

Cultural leader Jim Anderson said that the community, officially known as the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community, began 15 years ago in his uncle Bob Brown’s kitchen, but traces their roots back much further. “It’s like our garden of Eden is right there,” Anderson said.

Roots go deep
“Many generations ago, our elders prophesized that a time would come when their descendants would return to the birthplace of the Dakota Nation to protect its sacred sites and bring Dakota culture back to its place of origin,” states an open request for help on the community’s website. “This place is the b’dota (mistranslated by the French as Mendota), the joining together place, of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers.”

Anderson said that in 1862 when most of the Dakota were forced out of the area, about 100 Dakota people stayed behind on 12 acres owned by Henry Sibley, known at the time as “Sibley’s Indian Homes.” The Dakota farmers were promised additional land and money by the Act of 1863, but never received that additional space. Because land in the Mendota area was too expensive, they were eventually offered land at Prairie Island.

For some however, Mendota was too important to leave.

When Henry Sibley died in 1891, the remaining tribe members were pushed out, and many settled on the river flats, Anderson said. Eventually, other settlers joined them, building businesses and homes. When repeated flooding destroyed the river flat development, most of the Dakota dispersed throughout the Twin Cities and the land was turned into Fort Snelling State Park.

Eventually, the local Dakota people, most of whom stayed within 30 miles of the rivers’ confluence, began to search for their identity. Anderson said his uncle went so far as to ask to join the Shakopee tribe, which asked them why they do not form their own, unique community. So, they did.

Preserving their heritage
And while they are not officially recognized as a Dakota tribe by the U.S. government, Anderson and other local families have been working to preserve their language, protect sacred sites and connect to others ever since.

From Brown’s kitchen table, the leaders moved to a small office at the VFW. From there, they moved to a space behind the post office, before finally renting three years ago the older house with a wooden front porch that they now reside in.

The building now can barely contain the community meetings, Anderson said, but it keeps the tribe grounded in Mendota.

They host weekly language classes for people of all ages, classes on constructing regalia for ceremonies, meetings on preserving cultural sites and regular council meetings at the center. They built a sweat lodge in the backyard.

“We’re working at helping people understand the native community, and we’re just trying to get by,” Anderson said.

But now, just as in 1863, securing a home in Mendota may prove too expensive. The community once had a pull-tab location near St. Cloud that helped pay the rent, but mismanagement resulted in that source of income being shut down, Anderson said.

The property is currently on the market for $245,000.

The property is jointly owned by three individuals, one being the property’s real estate agent, Mary Ann Buelow. Buelow recently suffered a stroke, Lennartson said, and the council leader, Curtis LaClaire, didn’t think it was the right time to discuss reducing its rent or make other arrangements for the building.

A sale would threaten the already tenuous hold the Dakota community has on its lease.

Ideally, Anderson said, the members would like to build their own center someday in Mendota with space for all of the community’s activities. Right now, they are still at home, but far from that dream.

Danielle Cabot can be reached at southwest@lillienews.com or 651-748-7815.

Dear Friends,

I just uploaded a video onto YouTube I made called: The Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota story.  I’d like to invite you to watch it and, if you’re so moved, to do what you can to help the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community.  Here’s the YouTube address:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b6aRa9xfeM

Also, I would be delighted if you were so moved to send the YouTube web address of the video to others who you think might also be interested.

This is the first time I’ve created a video such as this and my first YouTube upload, and I’d be welcome feedback on the video of any kind you would like to give me.  An enormous amount of learning by doing went into this project, especially learning the ins and outs (and more outs) of working with Windows Movie Maker.

Thanks Much,
Cheers,
Lennie