"During Minnesota's Sesquicentennial, Woman from the North has been arrested three times for telling the truth. The year isn't over. I'm not betting against a fourth.

Her name is Waziyatawin, a Dakota (or Sioux) word meaning Woman from the North, and it fits her: Woman from the North has blown fiercely across Minnesota all year long, spreading a provocative message about the genocide and racial oppression that helped pave the way to statehood.

It's not easy to talk about this kind of thing, but there was nothing easy about the way Minnesota was violently torn from its aboriginal tribes.

So Waziyatawin teaches, she talks, she writes and she walks. On Wednesday, she was among a few dozen Indian activists who were on Day Six of a cold and snowy 125-mile march to retrace and commemorate one of the state's least-recognized tragedies: the forced march of hundreds of Dakota into years of exile, starvation and disease after the 1862 Dakota War."

Get the Story:
Nick Coleman: Marking another part of our state's history that some prefer to forget (The Minneapolis Star Tribune 11/13)

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