During a Coldwater Springs site interview of Jim Anderson, Jim said: “Where we are is the center of the world. If you look from the stars, at the United States, we call this Turtle Island. We are at the exact center of Turtle Island where the Minnesota and Mississippi river come together. Our creation stories tell us that we were put right on that Island. This is our Garden of Eden. We are about a half-mile from that area.

The Dakota creation stories do not tell the Dakota people that they were put on that island. [One] Dakota creation story tells the Dakota people that they were put on the island where the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers come together. Another Dakota creation story tells the Dakota people that they were created at the sacred Coldwater Springs site. And still another Dakota creation story tells the Dakota people that they emerged from Mde Wakan (Mille Lacs Lake) as human beings into this world.

And the island near the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi river is not located at the “exact” center of Turtle Island. The island creation story site, the Coldwater Springs creation story site and the Mde Wakan (Mille Lake Lake) creation story site are all located in the general area of the center of Turtle Island. And the island creation story site is only a part of the Dakota's “Garden of Eden”. The Coldwater Springs creation story site and the Mde Wakan (Mille Lacs Lake) creation story site constitute the other parts of the Dakota’s Garden of Eden.

Recently, when referring to the Dakota creation stories associated with the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers and the Coldwater Springs site, Jim was quoted in a Star Tribune article: “We have a right to be here because our creation stories are here.” During a meeting with the mayor of Anoka, I told the mayor that there is [a] Dakota creation story that says Mde Wakan (Mille Lacs Lake) is the site where the Dakota people were created. And during this same meeting, Jim told the mayor that the Mde Wakan (Mille Lacs Lake) Dakota creation story is “one” of the Dakota people’s creation stories. In that private conversation, Jim acknowledged that the Dakota creation stories are at three sites, the two Mendota area sites and the Mde Wakan (Mille Lacs Lake) site. In public, Jim proclaims that the Dakota creation stories are at two sites, the Mendota area sites. And he fails to mention that there is also another sacred site where there is a Dakota creation story, the Mde Wakan (Mille Lacs Lake) site.

If Jim Anderson, Chris Mato Nunpa and Angela Wilson were to publicly tell the truth about where all of the Dakota’s creation story sites are located, a lot of people would probably come to believe that because the Mendota area is not the only place where there is a Dakota creation story (or creation stories) that therefore the Mendota area IS NOT AS IMPORTANT to the Dakota people as it would be if it were the ONLY PLACE where there was a Dakota creation story, or creation stories.

Jim, Chris and Angela are often quoted in articles, and in the articles, they are often quoted as saying that the (singular) Dakota creation story says the Dakota people were created in Mendota, or that the Dakota creation stories say the Dakota people were created in the Mendota area. And by doing so, they make their activist work in the Mendota area seem more important than it is.

They lie and distort the Dakota people’s history in Minnesota to gain leverage to accomplish their goals in the Mendota area. And their lies are hindering me from accomplishing the goals that the Great Spirit has given me to accomplish in the Dakota people’s sacred Mde Wakan (Mille Lacs Lake) ancestral/traditional homeland. I believe that the Great Spirit and the Dakota people are being hurt by their lies.

I sent Angela Wilson a number of quotes, including Leonard Wabasha’s Mille Lacs Kathio State Park interpretive sign quote, a quote by Wilhem K. Meya, a nationally renowned anthropologists who works with the Lakota people and a quote from the Prairie Island Mdewakanton Dakota Community website. These quotes proclaim that there is a Dakota creation story that says Mde Wakan (Mille Lacs Lake) is where the Dakota were created. Unfortunately, Angela Wilson is still telling people that the Dakota people have only one creation story (or two creation stories in one area) and that it says (or they say) the Dakota people were created in the Mendota area.

The three-day Dakota conference in Marshall had an agenda that totally left out [ignored] the history of the present-day Dakota people’s ancestors in their sacred Mde Wakan (Mille Lacs Lake) homeland. The conference started with some Dakota people living in Mendota.

The nearly millennium long history of the present-day Dakota people’s ancestors living in their sacred Mde Wakan (Mille Lacs Lake) homeland...the Mde Wakan (Mille Lacs Lake) Dakota creation story...the history of the “doctrine of discovery” associated with DuLuth planting France’s Coat of Arms in the sacred ground of the ancient Dakota people’s main Mille Lacs Lake area village and then claiming all of the Dakota people’s Minnesota homeland for France...the history of how the European colonists tricked and used a band of Ojibwe to violently force the ancient Dakota from their sacred Mde Wakan (Mille Lacs Lake) homeland and spiritual center...the history of how the European colonists used the Mille Lacs Dakota people’s weakness to abuse alcohol to lure many of them from their sacred Mde Wakan (Mille Lacs Lake) homeland to far away trading posts...the establishment and history of the Rum River name-change movement...the work to regain the Dakota people’s sacred Mde Wakan (Mille Lacs Lake) ancestral/traditional homeland...Jim Anderson’s Rum River name-change movement activist activities...and Jim’s work to regain his Dakota people’s Wakpa Wakan (Rum River) watershed ancestral/traditional homeland were not mentioned by any of the conference’s organizers, nor quest speakers. (ref.)

When addressing the subject of Lakota/Dakota creation stories, Wilhelm K. Meya, one of the most active anthropologists working with the Lakota today, wrote: "The Mdewakanton are considered in the oral tradition, one of the most ancient divisions of the Sioux Nation or Ocetisakowin 'Seven Council Fires'. The sacred lake (Mille Lacs) figures prominently in Lakota/Dakota creation stories. The lake is considered sacred because the Dakota people emerged from it as human beings into this world. You may want to look up the story itself in some of the Dakota mythology collections." (ref.)

The following interpretation of the name Mdewakanton, an interpretation that incorporates the Mde Wakan (Mille Lacs Lake) Dakota creation story, is displayed on the Prairie Island Mdewakanton Dakota Community website. "The Mdewakanton, 'those who were born of the waters,'..."

Jim Anderson, Chris Mato Nunpa and Angela Wilson know that their Dakota ancestors lived in their sacred Mde Wakan (Mille Lacs Lake) homeland for nearly a thousand years and that Mille Lacs Lake was their spiritual center, and that there is a Dakota creation story that says the Dakota people emerged from Mille Lacs Lake as human beings into this world. However, they do not publicly proclaim this to be true.

When referring to where Jim, Chris and Angela believe the Dakota’s primary traditional spiritual center is located, they say it is in the Mendota area. Hence, they teach that the Mendota area is the Dakota people’s “center”, or center of the world.

I believe that evidence indicates that Mde Wakan (Mille Lacs Lake) is--within the mentioned above context--the Dakota people’s “center” as well as the primary sacred site associated with the Dakota people’s creation stories. And I believe that the Mendota area is a very sacred Dakota site, although less important than the Dakota people’s Mde Wakan (Mille Lacs Lake) site. Even the Dakota name, Mdewakanton, meaning people of Spirit Lake, indicates that Mde Wakan (Mille Lacs Lake) is the Dakota people’s primary traditional spiritual center.

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, LeMoine LaPointe, director of the Healthy Nations Program at the Minneapolis American Indian Center, is quoted: (1.) "Their 165-mile paddle from Mille Lacs Lake to Minneapolis commemorated many important aspects of Dakota history and culture..." (2.)"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."

"Father Louis Hennepin visited the Sioux at Mille Lacs Lake in 1680 and reported that it was the sacred lake of these Indians and the focal point of the whole nation, from which the tribes and bands spread out over a wide area. (Wilford 1944:329)."

More information about this topic can be viewed and read by clicking http://www.towahkon.org/Dakotahistory.html and/or
http://newsfornatives.com/blog/2008/02/16/mdewakanton-rights-activist-initiatives/