The Free Press, Mankato, MN

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November 10, 2008

Dakota trace ancestors' steps

Walk is to commemorate 1862 forced trek

By Brian Ojanpa

ST PETER — Gabrielle Tateyuskanskan walks the walk, and it falls upon her to talk the talk.

As spokesperson for Dakota marchers commemorating the 150-mile forced trek of their ancestors in 1862, facts and insights fall trippingly from her tongue.

“This is a spiritual walk,” she said Monday as she and a caravan of 50 Dakota took turns ambling along the shoulder of Highway 169.

Every other year for the past eight, marchers have set out from the Lower Sioux Interpretive Center in Redwood County and walked to Fort Snelling State Park in St. Paul.

The march is in remembrance of the winter journey 1,700 Dakota, mostly women, children and elderly, were forced to take at the end of the U.S.-Dakota war.

An unknown number of Dakota died along the way, and at Fort Snelling 400 Dakota prisoners were tried and convicted of killing settlers and sentenced to death.

President Abraham Lincoln commuted the sentences of all but 38, who were taken to Mankato and hanged.

Tateyuskanskan said the biennial treks pay homage to those groups while also bringing more visibility to a part of Minnesota’s past many would just as soon forget — or ignore.

“I think it’s because it’s such a horrific story, and a lot of people don’t know how to handle stories that are so brutal,” she said. “Even a lot of Dakota people think it’s wrong that we bring up such old hurts.”

Tateyuskanskan, who lives in Enemy Swim on a South Dakota reservation, also thinks many white people are fearful of being blamed for things that happened well before they were alive.

“But once people are informed and aware, they learn that Dakota people aren’t blaming contemporary people,” she said.

Yet there are those each year along the march route who, for whatever reason, don’t take kindly to the walkers, she said.

“People will throw stuff at us, yell ‘Go back where you came from.’ In one town a guy came out and said, ‘I’m gonna shoot your dog,’ and it wasn’t even our dog, just some dog that had been following us.”

On Monday the group marched from Seven Mile Creek between Mankato and St. Peter and ended their day at Henderson, where they were hosted by the Minnesota New Country School.

The march ends Thursday.

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