Recommended Reading: Mni Sota Makoce: The Land of the Dakota by Gwen Westerman & Bruce White

Throughout this process of having conversations and building new relationships, we are constantly learning. Questions lead to more questions. Yet it is about more than having all the answers but rather a willingness to lean in...a willingness to be vulnerable enough to consider a different perspective about what we believe.

During these conversations, we learn about resources that we feel are valuable to this process. We hope you find them useful. We encourage you to continue to learn and lean in.

RECOMMENDED READING

Mni Sota Makoce: The Land of the Dakota by Gwen Westerman & Bruce White

Much of the focus on the Dakota people in Minnesota rests on the tragic events of the 1862 U.S.–Dakota War and the resulting exile that sent the majority of the Dakota to prisons and reservations beyond the state's boundaries. But the true depth of the devastation of removal cannot be understood without a closer examination of the history of the Dakota people and their deep cultural connection to the land that is Minnesota. Drawing on oral history interviews, archival work, and painstaking comparisons of Dakota, French, and English sources, Mni Sota Makoce tells the detailed history of the Dakota people in their traditional homelands for at least hundreds of years prior to exile.

Gwen Nell Westerman lives in southern Minnesota, as did her Dakota ancestors. Her roots are deep in the landscape of the tallgrass prairie from Oklahoma to Minnesota and reveal themselves in her art and writing through the languages and traditions of her family. She has worked as a proofreader, a waitress, an editor, a sandwich delivery driver, a technical writer, and a teacher.

Bruce White is an award-winning historian and anthropologist with long experience in research and writing.