So anyways, the white people of America continue to be assholes some 150 years later.
A little museum in Redwood Minnesota shut its doors recently. What was this little museum about? Why is it important to Minnesota? Let me spin you a little tale about a bunch of white folk who were real assholes.
Lets go back to 1860's A.D., the state of Minnesota was part of the great frontier and white folk were grabbing up the fertile land that lay in southwestern Minnesota. Problem was the Native Amercians known as the Sioux were living on the land in question and making a decent living off of it. So the white people in Minnesota said, "hey, we want to farm over yonder, why don't you pack it up and move further west?". The Sioux were like "hey thats not cool because we already live here and we get our food off this land". So the white folks said "If we farm this land, we can make five times as much food as you do hunting and gathering. We will pay you X amount of gold for the land and you can buy as much food as you want!" The Sioux agreed and went further west, got gold every year, bought lots of food, guns and firewater at the trading post that was setup.
Everything was cool, we had land, they had food.
Then one year the gold failed to arrive and the Sioux were hungry and unable to hunt the fertile land they had rented out, or buy any food at the post. So they went to the post and said to the postmaster, "dude, we are so fucked, we need some food and the promised gold from the government has not yet arrived. Could you forward us some food until the gold comes in and we can pay you back?". As they could see the post was bursting from the seams with food to be sold.
The postmaster replied "you can eat grass for all I care" (or to that effect). A very angry and hungry group of Sioux left the post, bound for home with the bad news.
Now the next day, the Sioux returned with guns to "renegotiate" the deal. As hungry people are wont to do some rash things (as the postmaster should have considered).
Soon after that the post was found completely ransacked of all supplies. The post master was found dead, with a large wad of grass shoved in his mouth.
The Minnesota Govenor Henry Sibley imprisoned and attempted to execute 300 Sioux for the "uprising". As luck would have it, President Abraham Lincoln said "are you nuts" and stopped all but a hand full of the executions. Thirty years of bloody war followed.
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Thats why a little tiny museum in bumfuck Minneosta is important. To many lessons to just lock it up and walk away and it is the very least we owe to the Sioux to keep it open. I attached the story from the Minneapolis StarTribune by Nick Coleman. The first thing he says about closing the museum is "The dumbing down of Minnesota accelerates today with the closing of the only museum dedicated to understanding the most awful thing that ever happened here.", well put.
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