DAPL and Coldwater continued
Alan Muller asks, âWhat is the complicity of the âMinnesota Historical Societyâ
(which seems to function in many respects as a state agency)â with respect to
Coldwater.
The Minnesota Historical Society preserves Minnesotaâs past, shares our stateâs
stories and connects people with history in meaningful ways, according to its
website. Coldwater is arguably the most historical site in our state.
Coldwater has been flowing at least 10,000 years according to geohydrologists.
In the Mississippi-Minnesota confluence area, what Dakota people call the
bâdote, the meeting of waters, a 9,000-year-old bison spear point was found in
Mendota. The bâdote is considered to be the Dakota emergence landscape, their
Garden of Eden.
Coldwater is the birthplace of the state of Minnesota, site of the first
Euro-American settlement in the pre-statehood territory. Coldwater furnished
Fort Snelling with water for a century (1820-1920) along with servants,
translators, traders, blacksmiths, meat, lumber, wives, midwives, baby-sitters,
missionaries and liquor.
Dred Scott drank Coldwater while he was a slave, stationed at the Fort between
1836-40. Scott used his residency in the âfreeâ then-Wisconsin territory as
part of his famous case for freedom. Scott lost. He was found to be a slave,
therefore not a person, with no right to bring a case into federal court.
The Scott case set up the âseparate but equalâ U.S. policy that was struck down
legally, if not practically, with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education
decision. Black Lives Matter is educating Americans about the reality of
prejudice but consider that Indian people have the lowest rate of high school
graduation and the highest rate, per capita, of assassination by police.
Indian people became U.S. citizens with the 1924 Snyder Act.
Coldwater is a National Historic Landmark. This year the National Trust for
Historic Preservation recognized Coldwater Springs as part of the âNational
Treasureâ that is âBdote Fort Snelling.â
The National Park Service claims to âownâ this 10,000-year-old site (since
2011). In establishing its vision, NPS clear cut the 27-acre site and reformed
the landscape with tons of dirt fill to create a semi flat prairie atop the
Mississippi bluff. Coldwater was big woods country but prairie planting is
currently in vogue as the fastest, cheapest way to prettify parkland.
Coldwater currently functions predominately as a dog park. In what meaningful
way does the Minnesota Historical Society connect people with Coldwaterâs
history?
In what meaningful way does it preserve Minnesotaâs past by permitting the
diminishment of flow time and time again for each new construction project it
is mandated to review?