Shakopee Mdewakanton leader had last words to share
Here's an advance look at my column for Wednesday -- already online, actually, but we ran out of room in print today:
When I talked with Stanley Crooks, the Shakopee Mdewakanton tribal
chairman, a few weeks ago by phone, I was struck by how he wanted to
tell his life story. He was ready to talk, as if he had things to say
that he wanted on the record.
I had never met or interviewed him
before, but Crooks was chairman of the Shakopee tribe for 20 years and
was re-elected earlier this year to another four-year term. The tribe
has an especially powerful historical connection to the Dakota War of
1862, which is why I asked for an interview.
I was surprised when he took my call; a few other Dakota tribal leaders didn't.
We had a wide-ranging talk about those tragic events of long ago and
how they had shaped his own life and all of Dakota history. As I wrote
in a story published Aug. 18,
on the 150th anniversary of the day the conflict began, he said, "I've
thought about it all my life. Here in my later years, it's more on my
mind than ever," especially at this time of year, when in 1862 Dakota
warriors attacked the Lower Sioux agency and killed white settlers.
The causes of the war can be debated endlessly, though historians say
the immediate spark was Dakota frustration and anger over delays in
badly needed federal payments that were due under treaties. Those
payments arrived just hours after the outbreak began.
There's no
doubt about the outcome of the six-week rebellion, though. The outcome
was the forced removal of thousands of Dakota people from Minnesota; the
quick execution of 38 Dakota warriors in Mankato, and more later; the
exile of all Dakota people from Minnesota; a bounty paid by the state
for the scalp of any Dakota person; "punitive expeditions" in Dakota
Territory to kill and drive the Dakota people further west; the
termination of treaties and the taking of all Dakota reservation land in
Minnesota.
That's what the brief conflict meant to the Dakota people: Near-total destruction.
"The removal is still a traumatic issue for a lot of people," Crooks
said, from his office at the tribal headquarters in Prior Lake. "It's
the fact that everyone was removed, when all we were doing was
protecting our homeland. We see a great injustice in the warriors being
treated as war criminals. They were doing what any soldier would have
done."
A conquered people
He spoke
eloquently, in some quotes I didn't use in the story, about how the
Dakota people survived that era. "You're a conquered people...your land
is taken away, your culture is changed, your religion is attacked...as
conquered people, you're either supposed to fall in line and be like the
conquerors," or you're marginalized, he said.
"First they tried
to exterminate (us). Then there were some good religious people who
said we can't do that, so maybe we'll confine them in an area. And here
we are, 150 years later, and it's still an issue."
When he was
growing up on the Upper Sioux reservation near Granite Falls, "we never
talked about the outbreak. We didn't talk about being on the
reservation. I didn't even know we were on one until I was 10 or 11
years old. My grandmother spoke Indian all the time but didn't have me
learn it. You need to learn the white man's world..."
He talked
about the act of Congress in 1863 that terminated the treaties and
banned the Dakota people from Minnesota, a law that's still on the
books. That act of Congress "is not meaningless," Crooks said.
"Certainly those tribes would want that banishment lifted. The majority
of them wouldn't move anyway" from other reservations, he said, but they
"have to be accepted by the communities" that purged them in the 19th
century.
Through the Dakota people, "the state became a
reality," he said. "But they were displaced — very harshly displaced —
and (Minnesotans) don't really speak to that."
In his own life,
"I was right on the track of assimilation," he said. "I didn't deal with
the language, the culture, the ceremonies." He lived on the reservation
in Prior Lake and worked at the now-closed Whirlpool factory in St.
Paul. "My day was consumed with driving back and forth, interacting in
the workplace and having minimal interaction with the community. After I
left Whirlpool, I did some contract jobs, then got into (tribal)
politics...and then I began going back to my history, who we were and
how we got there."
Crooks, 70, was as responsible as anyone for
the Shakopee Mdewakantons' revival, which was due in large part to
casino gambling at Mystic Lake. He also was interviewed by a New York
Times reporter recently. A few minutes after we talked on Aug. 9, I
happened to look at the Times website and there was a story on the front
page regarding the Shakopee tribe and how it was "believed to be the
richest tribe in American history as measured by individual personal
wealth: Each adult, according to court records and confirmed by one
tribal member, receives a monthly payment of around $84,000, or $1.08
million a year."
Crooks was quoted as saying, “We have 99.2
percent unemployment” in the Shakopee tribe -- "it's entirely
voluntary," because of the payments.
In our interview, he talked
about "the economic resources that we now have," which "make us more
equal." But he was more proud of "our philosophy" of helping other
tribes gain traction economically. He said the Shakopee tribe has given
more than $243 million to tribes and charitable organizations since 1996
and has loaned more than $450 million for economic and community
development.
He pointed out that money, personal wealth and "the
idea of going out and earning a living, by being productive as the
white man would say," was "really foreign to our culture ... the land
provided everything and we didn't have the issue of money."
Last testament
I assumed he was in poor health; his voice was weak, he coughed
frequently and seemed to tire at the end of the interview. I asked if
he'd be interested in having pics taken if we sent a photographer to
Prior Lake and he was. I wanted to join P-B photographer Michele Jokinen
but ran out of time.
This past weekend, I realized why he had
taken my call: He died Saturday at a Shakopee hospital. A statement from
the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community said he was known for "his
decisiveness, quick humor, fierce defense of tribal sovereignty and
self-determination."
I don't claim to know the details of
Stanley Crooks' career, what he did well and what he didn't. But I
believe he talked to me and a few other reporters as a kind of last
testament, especially regarding the Dakota War and its impact. He knew
he was just about out of time and he wanted a few more words on the
record.
He wanted his story known. That's all any of us want, in
the end, and when I heard that he had died, I wanted to honor his wish
more completely.
"More understanding and education" are the
paths to reconciliation with history, he said. For the Dakota tribes,
"our people need to be educated, about who they are and why."
+++
About a half-dozen readers have contacted me to say they have family
connections to the events of 1862. They, too, want their stories known,
and most have never been published. Merlin Mestad, of rural Rochester,
came in Monday, for example, with journal notes on how his
great-grandfather Knute and family were attacked by Dakotas in Jackson
County.
I'm gathering these up and we'll publish them in late
September, with more stories looking back at the events of 1862, which
remain a living presence for many Dakota people.
Those events
are "certainly on the minds of a lot of Dakota people," Crooks said in
an interview with Twin Cities public TV this month. "It's very close to
us."
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