Looking forward to my Reykjavík years Here in Minneapolis we are dealing with the issue of slavery, long after everyone thought the Civil War answered the question. The city is changing the name of one of our beautiful lakes from Calhoun to Bde Maka Ska, on the grounds that John C. Calhoun of South Carolina was a wretched man and owned slaves. Bde Maka Ska is the name the Dakotah called it until 1817 when Secretary of War Calhoun sent Army surveyors to look over the territory and, voilà, they named it for their boss. It’s a lovely name, Bde Maka Ska, and over time, as old people die off and young people grow up, it will come into common usage, but these things take time. The Triborough Bridge in New York was renamed the RFK bridge ten years ago but nobody calls it that. To Minneapolitans, Calhoun is a lake, not a man, and if you asked us about John C., we’d have to Google him.
I made the mistake the other day of saying this to the wrong people — that the name change, while harmless, does very little for tribal descendants suffering in the epidemic of opioid addiction, many of whom are homeless and camping in the city. It’s a faint gesture, like if your roof blew off and you sat down and wrote a poem about it. Why not take on the French missionary Louis Hennepin who came in 1680 and lorded it over the natives and barged in and named the Falls of St. Anthony on the Mississippi. What right did he have to do that? Minneapolis is in Hennepin County; if you deHennepinize us and put us in Gakaamikijiwan County, you’ve accomplished something. Read the rest of the column >>> | 