A Colonial Past

The linked explorations of our department’s collection history arose from a trio of interweaving factors. 

• In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in late May of 2020, some of our graduate students asked me to help research our department’s collections and their history to see if there were any materials that should be repatriated. Although none of our present holdings came from what were Indigenous lands at the time of their collection, all of us were concerned to discover what the department once held.
• The 2023 TRUTH Report called upon the University of Minnesota to formally recognize the harm and genocide committed against Native American peoples, including the theft of language, culture, community, and land that led to the depression of social determinants of well-being among Indigenous peoples including education, healthcare, and housing. While the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences cannot speak for the University, we can honor some of the Truth Project’s requests by investigating what was taken from Indigenous people and especially from Indigenous burials. We can also discover the stories within our department’s history that involve past harms committed against Indigenous people.
• While the TRUTH Report was in progress, Kat Hayes of Anthropology and Elena Holte-Werle of University Archives began a Colonial Collections Across the University working group to recognize the colonial nature of our university’s collections and attempt to craft guidance as to how to ethically address the resulting concerns. The General Museum, the University of Minnesota’s first large collection, naturally became a focus for that working group. 

While all three communities provided information for these pages, any errors are entirely my own and none of the preceding groups bear any responsibility for these pages. 

The linked pages below explore some of the background of the department’s collections and highlight the troubled history our department shares with Indigenous communities.

Our department began as a legacy of the first two Minnesota Geological Surveys. 

The first Minnesota geological survey’s co-leader was a pre-emptor of Ojibwe land. Someone who sent men out to explore Ojibwe land for mineral wealth and townsites even before the land was formally ceded.

However, the second survey did far more harm, sparking a false good rush at Lake Vermilion that led to the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa’s loss of their ancestral lands about Lake Vermilion and their coerced relocation to Lake Nett. The failure of the Lake Vermilion Gold Rush, along with its associated scandal and corruption, indirectly led to the third state geological survey. Newton Winchell’s Geological and Natural History Survey of Minnesota, being run through the University of Minnesota rather than the Governor’s office. Hence our department and the present Minnesota Geological Survey both share a common origin with the forcible dispossession of the Bois Forte people. 

Within two years of his initial appointment, Winchell served as the Scientific Corps co-leader for the 1874 Black Hills Expedition led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer. The expedition’s subsequent reports of abundant gold, which Winchell contested, led to the theft of the Black Hills from the Lakota people. That land theft in turn touched off a widespread conflict that led to Custer’s defeat at the Battle of Greasy Grass and the massacre at Wounded Knee as well as the forced relocation of the Lakota to reservations.

One of Winchell’s original charges, which would continue through his twenty-eight years at the University, was the establishment of a General Museum for the state. Given Winchell’s interests, the University’s General Museum naturally focused on geology and natural history, but it also served as a home for the University’s early archaeological collection. The latter collection had many items, from burial goods and locks of hair to skeletal remains taken from burial mounds across Minnesota, which should never have been held by the university. For decades, the General Museum even displayed a beam that was purported to be from the scaffolding used at Mankato to murder thirty-eight Dakota men. 

These things need to be acknowledged and the linked sites will continue to evolve as more stories are discovered. 

Let me know of any suggestions or concerns. 

email: Kent Kirkby ([email protected])