At the Mankato Press, Brian Arola reports in Protesters call for Sibley Park rename in Holiday Lights disruption:
Protesters called for the renaming of Sibley Park during Kiwanis Holiday Lights Wednesday, the anniversary of the hangings of 38 Dakota men in Mankato.
The park is named after early Minnesota leader Henry Sibley, who oversaw the internment, trials and executions of the Native American men during the Dakota War of 1862. President Abraham Lincoln signed off on the order.
The demonstrators Wednesday evening blocked traffic in the park, installed a tripod with a noose around a dummy symbolizing Lincoln, and unfurled a banner reading “Hangman’s Park” over the railroad trestle at the entrance.
Read more about the protest at the Mankato Free Press and on the Facebook page of Anti-colonial Land Defenders in posts here and here.
We've been familiar with the park since early childhood, since the log cabin built by our great-great grandfather George Ott is now located there. The Free Press told some of the story in Little Ott Cabin a big piece of area history in 2017.
Bluestem shares the interest in renaming the park, agreeing with local Dakota leaders Arola interviewed for the paper:
Activists in recent years have increasingly focused on removing or renaming landmarks named after controversial historical figures.
Minneapolis’ Lake Calhoun, named after 1800s politician and stringent defender of slavery John C. Calhoun, became Bde Maka Ska in 2018 to reflect the original Dakota name for the body of water meaning “Lake White Earth.”
Mahkato Wacipi Chair Dave Brave Heart said he’d heard some discussions among powwow committee members about trying to change Sibley Park’s name over the years, although no formal efforts arose from them. While he hadn’t heard about the protest or the group behind it until told about them Friday, he said he would support Sibley Park's renaming.
“There’s always this undercurrent conversation,” he said of the name. “It would be nice if they would look at that and change the name because we all know what Sibley represented back in the day.”
Brave Heart’s father led efforts for years to rename South Dakota’s highest natural point, formerly Harney Peak, to Black Elk Peak. General William S. Harney received the honor in 1855 after leading forces against Brule Lakota in modern-day Nebraska, a campaign marked by the killing of women and children along with warriors.
We'd hope that the name change would be accompanied with an interpretive display somewhere in the park that shared the history of Sibley's role in the forced marches and imprisonment, as well as the trials and hangings that followed the conflict. Our beau's great-grandfather Charles Crawford was tried and acquitted, then nearly shot near Henderson in the forced march to the concentration camp at Fort Snelling.
For ourselves, we're growing impatient with Minnesotans who year after year insist that they've never heard about any of this stuff. The frame is a bit tired.
As for the civic group whose holiday light show was disrupted, they're clear that the action wasn't a protest about the holiday, but the name of the park. Arola reports:
Kiwanis Holiday Lights President Scott Wojcik said the traffic blockage lasted about 25 to 30 minutes. Visitors were curious about what was going on, he said, but it soon became clear the protest wasn’t directed at the light display itself but rather the setting.
“We know as much as anyone else does,” he said. " … From my understanding, when I arrived it had nothing to do with the event but with the naming of the park.”
Photo: A banner hung from a trestle over the road leading into the park. From the Anti-colonial Land Defenders Facebook page here.
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