The following letter was published in the Mille Lacs Messenger.

 by Thomas Dahlheimer

In an Isanti County News article about a 2008 Wakan Wakpa (Rum River) Canoe Expedition that provided a group of inner-city Dakota boys from Minneapolis and St. Paul an opportunity to paddle the natural artery of their ancestors there are the following statements:

“Their 165-mile paddle—from Mille Lacs Lake to Minneapolis—commemorated many important aspects of Dakota history and culture. The expedition departed from the Mille Lacs headwaters the morning of Tuesday, June 24, with the group getting 32 miles behind them that day. Unfortunately, the low water forced the canoeists to walk over several stretches.”

“The Rum, known for centuries as Wakan Wakpa (Holy River), is an important spiritual and cultural artery to the Dakota who, until 1745, lived at Mille Lacs (Mde Wakan) and considered it the center of their world.”

Healthy Nations, an Eliminating Health Disparities grantee agency of the Minnesota Department of Health, sponsored the expedition.

“These young people are taking the initiative to scout the length of the river in order for their tribe to become familiar with it, and in so doing, reclaim their tribal legacy,” says LeMoine LaPointe, director of the Healthy Nations Program at the Minneapolis American Indian Center.

LaPointe says reclaiming the Rum River is important to the health of the Dakota community.

“Over thousands of years of repeated use of that river Indian people saw something there that was good for them, and infused that into their physical and spiritual health. Knowing and interacting with that river had an enormous positive impact on them.”

LaPointe says it’s also important to the health of Native American people that the river be called by its original name.

“Rum is a pollutant, a destructive chemical. It’s not a poison river, it’s a holy river,” he said. “That river has contributed to the development of successful tribal communities for thousands of years. Recognizing it as Wakan Wakpa, Holy River, reattaches a positive connotation that will be felt in mind, body and spirit in many different ways.”

I am thinking that my movement to change the name of the Rum River back to its sacred Dakota name as well as my online articles about my many Dakota rights activists initiative in the Mille Lacs area, including my article Regaining the Dakota’s Mille Lacs ancestral homeland, were influential in respect to the initiation of the Dakota’s original idea and planning behind the reclaiming the Rum River sacred Dakota expedition on the Wakpa Wakan.