August Thoughts -- Preparing for 150 Years Commemoration and Healing

As the heat of August follows upon the heat of July, and famine is eating up thousands and thousands of families in Somalia, I think about Ohiyesa's family and community in Minnesota in 1862. Hunger ruled then also, here in the Midwest. Not because of drought but because new settlers had moved in and Dakota lands had been lost, and the government had not paid its debts. At that time, too, the problem was a war. Because of the American Civil War, the U.S. government had in many ways "shut down" its legal payments and services to the Native American peoples to save money. Tragedy resulted.

The question now is -- shall we learn from our past? Shall we try to heal some of the wounds that remain?

Next August marks 150 years since the first bloody skirmishes of the Dakota-U.S. War. It also begins a four-year journey for healing in Minnesota in which representatives of the Dakota communities, members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) and "many public servants who represent the citizens of the State of Minnesota, leadership from the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights, Rotary clubs and the Global Athlete Village are seeking appropriate ways to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the U.S.-Dakota Indian War of 1862."

The first major step occurred this June solstice, when many of the leaders of these organizations met and Governor Dayton proclaimed June 21, 2011 as World Peace, Prayer and Sacred Sites Day. The state agreed "to create the Bdote Peace Park and to engage in dialogue with indigenous leaders which will lead to the creation of new policies designed to bring peace and healing." [For more on the 2011 Bdote Peace Accords and Four Years of Healing and Minnesota, go to http://sites.google.com/site/athletevillage/world-s-largest-group-hug ]

Stephanie Hope Smith, a Minnesota Rotarian, has been essential in working on the mediation to move the dialog forward and try to make this healing both living and concrete -- http://hopefulpeacemaker.blogspot.com/p/61911-worlds-largest-group-hug-attempt.html

At this heated time of August, it seems a time to join in prayer for this process and our own part in it -- and in cosmic empathy with the Dakota (and the settlers) who suffered and the Somalians who are suffering today. We must use the past to teach us how to live this present and our future in more respectful and harmonious ways -- living places, and people, and cultures healthier than we found them.