Though the Chain of Lakes attracts many people near and far, I doubt there is
any data to show that Lake Calhoun is a brand with "immeasurable value in its
name" and I doubt that tourists from all over the world who visit our lakes can
recognize the lakes' names.
And whether Lake Calhoun has some name recognition outside our region, does not
change the good reasons to change the name.
Changing the name is not an attempt to "change history" or "erase history" but
to acknowledge history--that our culture/society has evolved beyond the darks
days of slavery when white supremacists were so honored. In fact, restoring the
Dakota name is actually a good way to respect the true history of this region,
beyond the white man's "impoverished version that did more to obscure than
reveal events of the past" as described by historian Mary Lethert Wingerd's in
the prologue to her Minnesota Book Award winner, North Country: The Making of
Minnesota (2010):
"But heritage does not suffice as history….History must come to terms with
injustice and tragedy as well as achievement, asking hard questions that
heritage, steeped in nostalgia, tends to obscure.
"Thus, in 1958 [when Minnesota celebrated its state centennial] advocates of
history rather than heritage found no voice in the public forum….Indians had
actually been written out of the state saga decades earlier. The first
generation of treaty makers, land speculators, politicians, and boosters had
consciously rewritten the story of their acquisition of Minnesota, selectively
crafting a chronicle of development that supported a dual agenda: to justify
the new order they imposed on the land and the people who had called it home
and to reassure potential residents that Minnesota was a safe and civilized
place to put down roots and prosper. Subsequent generations thus came to
believe as 'history' this impoverished version that did more to obscure than
reveal events of the past. The centennial script only carried forward an
already embedded narrative, grounded in the moral certainty of manifest
destiny, the quintessential American story.
"….To avoid confronting the trail of coerced treaties and broken promises that
purchased the timberlands and farmsteads so central to Minnesota's subsequent
prosperity, the state saga expunged much of the richness of the region's past
as well. Few centennial celebrants had any idea that the state they held so
dear (to paraphrase the official anthem) was built on the ruins of an earlier
society…
"Much as changed in the fifty years since that one-dimensional centennial
frenzy of self-congratulation. As Americans, we are no longer unwilling to
acknowledge injustices or mistakes of the past as we strive toward that 'more
perfect union' of our democratic ideal."
Of course, changing the name by itself will not dismantle our racist system;
but this action would at least acknowledge our intention to add to the
historical record that many people's eyes were opened --even in
Minnesota--after the terrorist act in Charleston, South Carolina, that left
Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Rev. Clementa Pinckney, Cynthia Hurd, Tywanza
Sanders, Myra Thompson, Ethel Lee Lance, Rev. Daniel L. Simmons, Rev. Depayne
Middleton-Doctor, and Susie Jackson dead.