Transcript: Perspectives on The Treaty of Traverse des Sioux

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Transcript

Jan Klein, Settler Descendant: As you look at the faces, it appears to be a harmonious group. They all seem to be acknowledging the importance of what they have achieved here and I think that what we're finding today is there's more concern over the process on how the treaty was written and the results of the treaty than they are on the fact that two very diverse groups could come together and come to an agreement.

Annette Atkins, PhD, Historian: My concern about that painting being in the Governor's Reception Room was that it pretended to a kind of relationship that as a white person I might wish had been the case, but as an historian I know wasn't the case.

Anton Treuer, PhD, Ojibwe, Professor, Bemidji State University: The treaty painting, for example, shows really, a kind of romantic portrayal of a dignified land exchange and sugarcoats a lot of this story and completely excludes the understanding that this was a horrible time for Native people.

Darlene St. Clair, Lower Sioux Indian Community, Associate Professor, St. Cloud State University: At this point in time in the 1850s Dakota people had almost no options. It was like: this treaty, get nothing. And that, and once you have sort of limited options, those few options, it really can't be something that we would call a cession. It's really more of a seizure and so I often will call them land seizure treaties.

Rep. Peggy Flanagan, White Earth Band of Ojibwe, Democrat - St. Louis Park: That's perpetuating this idea that, you know, oh, well folks just came together, the United States government and the tribes here and met, signed some papers, and done and done, right, and now we have Minnesota, ta-dah, without talking about, you know, the like intentional deception, the genocide, the colonization. It lets us off the hook. I think it's irresponsible to hang those paintings without telling the truth.

Erika Doss, PhD, Professor, University of Notre Dame: It leaves out the third treaty and the discussion of the fur traders and the fact that millions and millions of acres and tens of thousands of dollars were immediately taken away from Natives.

George Glotzbach, Settler Descendant: The painting itself tells the story of sort of here and now when this thing happened. Not much about how it got to be there or what happened good, bad and indifferent afterwards, but again, it's a snapshot of a, an event in a time and place again painted by a white man from the experience of the people who were there. And let people see it, make up their own minds. It's kind of the American way.

Mark White, PhD, Director, Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art: Frank D. Millet, he was really one of the leading academic artists of his generation. Very well known by that time and as an artist he had actually responded to the dominant trend in both the United States and in Europe of Orientalism, and so he was fascinated with the exotic and I think there is probably a desire on his part to include as many Native artifacts as possible even if that is historically inaccurate.

Gwen Westerman, PhD, Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, Professor, Minnesota State University-Mankato: Do we look at the representation of the Dakota people in that painting? Mayer made a sketch. He was there. He made a painting, and then the artist for the painting that was in the Capitol embellished, had to make it better, but used Plains models of culture and clothing, so it looks like there are Lakota people there, not Dakota people.

Rep. Dean Urdahl, Republic - Grove City: I don't quibble much with, "Is the painting accurate? Is it accurate in terms of what it depicts?" But again, it's what it represents. Why I did want to see that painting remain in the Capitol is that I think, maybe more than any other of the paintings, this one represents the opportunity to teach and inform, to talk about what was happening there and as a result the futures were changed for, for two different peoples. It's important to be able to bring that to schoolchildren as they come through or to others as we interpret. So I think that going into the future that painting can play an important role.