Countless Minnesotans treasure memories of Sunday afternoon visits to Historic Fort Snelling, our state's first national historical landmark and most valuable historic asset. The fort is the birthplace of Minnesota — the reason the Twin Cities are here — and has long been a source of pride.
In the future, however, Minnesotans who visit Fort Snelling may increasingly hang their heads in shame. The Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS), which manages the site, is "re-envisioning" the fort in terms of contemporary identity politics — depicting it, first and foremost, as a place of victimization of minority groups, particularly Dakota Indians. The fort is being reframed as a "concentration camp," a place of "genocide" and a "site of conscience." In the process, its rich, 200-year military legacy is becoming a footnote, a source not of pride but of shame to present-day citizens.
Double standards abound, not only at Fort Snelling, but throughout MNHS exhibits, events and publications. For example, a typical MNHS interactive video for Minnesota schoolchildren — who are required to study Dakota history — depicts white settlers as swarming locusts and settler leaders like missionary Stephen Riggs as malicious, robotic puppets, while romanticizing the Dakota as noble and peace-loving.
Recently, state Sen. Mary Kiffmeyer, R-Big Lake, proposed legislation that would transfer management of 16 state historical sites from MNHS to the State Historic Preservation Office ("Public process must illuminate state history," Opinion Exchange, June 15; "History, in full light, is always changing," editorial, June 14; "This work, like history itself, is messy," Opinion Exchange, June 11). The takeover of MNHS, the highly respected steward of our state's history, by a small group of political activists is the untold story behind the resulting controversy.
In 2016-17, MNHS created a Native American Initiatives department and ceded much of the power to interpret and control activities at Fort Snelling to a new 16-member Dakota Community Council (DCC).
Under this influence, MNHS has promoted a revisionist historical narrative driven by "decolonization" ideology. This holds that today's Minnesotans are here illegally and unethically, and that the Dakota have a right to enhanced control of the land.
We often hear that MNHS's current campaign to revitalize Fort Snelling is just about expanding the stories told there. But MNHS has characterized the $34 million "re-envisioning" as a "sweeping transformation," and Minnesota Monthly magazine describes it as an "indigenous-inspired revitalization" led by the DCC.
By law, only the Minnesota Legislature can change the fort's name. But MNHS has unilaterally chosen to rebrand the fort as "Fort Snelling at Bdote." In fact, according to the historical record, the correct Mdewakanton Dakota name for the site is "Mdote," meaning "confluence of rivers," not "Bdote" — an undocumented name promoted recently by Native American activists.