Sharon Lennartson can trace her familial roots in the Mendota area back to native elders who fought in the Dakota War of 1862, and generations before that. But in the eyes of the federal government, her Mendota tribe does not officially exist.

Members of the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Tribal Community are finalizing an application to be federally acknowledged by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, within the U.S. Department of the Interior. It’s a long, complicated process of proving the case that a tribe deserves sovereign status. The tribe is also launching a fundraising campaign to purchase their own plot of land, in order to one day build a tribal community center.

“We’ve always been in Mendota. We’ve been here for centuries,” said Lennartson, who serves as tribal chair and is also known by her spirit name Wakiya Waste Win, or Good Thunder Woman.

When the tribe hosts a monthly inipi — a sweat lodge, prayer and feast ceremony — at the historic Hypolite Dupuis House in Mendota, she can run her hands through the earth, and know it was the same ground that passed through the fingers of her great-great-great-grandparents, Angelique Renville and Hypolite Dupuis.

When the 77-year-old feels up to it, on the days that aren’t spent dealing with oral chemotherapy treatments that will sap her energy, Lennartson can walk the grounds of Pike Island and Bdote, the area where the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers converge.

It’s a sacred site for her people. Lennartson’s lineage reaches back to elders like Little Crow Cetanwakanmani — grandfather of Little Crow III, one of the chiefs who led a faction of the Mdewakanton during the Dakota War of 1862.

Walking that area, feeling connected to her ancestors, tears often flow freely, she said, imagining how nearly 1,600 Dakota women, children and elderly were held in an internment camp through the winter of 1862-63, with little food, disease wreaking havoc through her people.

She wishes her Mendota tribe once again had a place of their own.

Finding a home

What does it mean to be federally acknowledged?

Danielle Ross, a Utah State University history professor who has taken the lead on the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota application process, said the process is similar to building a case, gathering and defending evidence that the tribe has existed for centuries and has maintained a presence in the area. It includes a narrative document on the history of the tribe.

The federal process requires that the tribe seeking approval must “comprise a distinct community and have existed as a community from historical times; have membership criteria and political influence over its members; have membership of individuals who descend from a historical Native American tribe, and who are not enrolled in any other tribe.”

The 200-page tribal narrative exists at an intersection of legal brief, historical study and anthropological study, said Ross, who also serves as the tribe’s secretary.

If a tribe is federally recognized, they qualify for certain federal benefits like health and education services from the U.S. government. The tribe would not receive land through federal acknowledgment, but one commonly known benefit is that if a tribe owns their own land, due to their sovereign status, they can potentially open a casino.

That measure has been highly lucrative for the federally acknowledged Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, which was once called “the richest tribe in American history” by the New York Times. The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux opened Mystic Lake Casino Hotel in 1992, and what is now known as Little Six Casino in 1982. Both are located in Prior Lake.

Federally acknowledged tribes are also recognized as possessing legal rights of self-government and, for example, can officially participate in state and local committees regarding the rights of Native Americans.

But without their own land, some of those other options are hard to realize.

“I’ve really cautioned that (federal acknowledgment) is not a magic bullet,” Ross said. “For us, the biggest problem is that we have no place to call our own. For me, getting Mendota recognized is about looking back to those ancestors and saying, ‘We did it. You have a home to come back to, and you have a home that will always be there.’ It’s about creating a community that they can come back to and be accepted.”

The Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Tribal Community has maintained office space around the quaint streets of Mendota for three decades, bouncing from rented space to rented space, trying to continue their legacy.

The first office came in 1994, a room adjacent to the old post office.

“It was maybe 8 feet by 8 feet, but at least it was an office in Mendota,” Lennartson said. “We’ve moved at least six or seven times. I always say the Creator always seemed to make someplace available in Mendota when we had to move.”

Within the push to be federally acknowledged, the tribe is also trying to establish a more permanent home. They are launching a capital campaign to purchase land, and eventually build a community center, a place where the tribe can host programming and events. It’s a heavy lift: the goal is to raise at least $5 million, a large task for the tribe of 97 members.

“We’re just a small community, and our income is very low. We’ve been struggling, but we’re still here. We’re determined people,” Lennartson said.

The campaign kicked off with a recent land acquisition donation of $250,000 from the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary from Dubuque, Iowa.

Without a home

Sharon Lennartson, front center, wrapped in a towel, takes part in an inipi in Mendota on Saturday, Aug. 10, 2024, sharing that she is tremendously happy to be able to once again take part in the sweat lodge ceremony. Lennartson was not raised in a traditional Native household and is thankful for the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Tribal Community where she has spent years reconnecting with her culture. (Devanie Andre / Pioneer Press)

The creation of the Mendota tribe’s community office in 1994 came as they found themselves without a tribal home.

How did their members get so spread out? It’s a complex story.

Here’s a brief retelling, based on interviews with Mendota Dakota tribal elders and the work of Native American history experts:

The Mendota Dakota community believes they are distinct from the other Mdewakanton tribes in that they are composed mostly of descendants of what the government referred to as the Sioux Mixed Bloods of the Mississippi – now considered an offensive term – or the Sioux half-breeds and quarter-breeds of the Mississippi.

The U.S. government made treaties with these communities in 1830 and 1837, promising these Native Americans land in what was called “The Lake Pepin Reserve.” The Mendota community also includes descendants of Dakota people who did not take up arms against the U.S. government or the settlers in the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, Ross said, and in many cases fought on the side of the government or tried to rescue settlers from the other Dakota tribes.

But after 1862, the U.S. government terminated all treaties with the Dakota or Sioux tribes in Minnesota, which was technically a violation of international law. About 1,300 Dakota people, many of whom were Mdewakantons, were taken from Minnesota to the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota.

Those who stayed were rendered landless and homeless, Ross said.

In the aftermath of the war, the Mdewakanton Dakota communities were spread across federally recognized reservations in Minnesota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and one unrecognized community in the Mendota area.

Others were forced into assimilation through boarding schools or oppressive governmental actions like having their land and treaty rights stripped away.

In the 1880s, the federal government purchased land for Minnesota Mdewakantons, and eventually those lands were placed in control of federally recognized communities of the Lower Sioux, Prairie Island and, later, Shakopee people. The first tribes to be federally recognized came after the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, when the U.S. government acknowledged more than 200 tribes that had organized governing structures.

“That’s the happy side, but it doesn’t tell the story of everyone else, to which the government says, ‘We don’t want to recognize you right now. You’re too small, or we’re not sure what to do with you.’ So those other tribes are not recognized,” Ross said.

The Mendota Dakota were the only community of Dakota remaining in Minnesota after 1862 for whom there was no land purchased by the U.S. government in the 1880s.

Without federal acknowledgment or their own land, the Mendota Mdewakanton people were passed over.

Through the 1960s and 1970s, unrecognized Native tribes sought to be included in that designation, leading to creation of the Federal Acknowledgment Process in 1978 by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

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In 1969, the Shakopee Mdewakanton Dakota tribe was federally acknowledged.

“In the 1980s and even more so today, most legal rights, services and opportunities that the government and other organizations extend to Native Americans are open only to those who are enrolled in a federally recognized tribe,” Ross said. “The rise of the casino business gave an additional motivation for Mdewakanton people to want to be enrolled in one of the federally recognized communities.”

During the 1980s, many of these unenrolled Mdewakantons applied for enrollment in the three federally recognized communities, Ross said, but they discovered that it was not enough to simply meet the lineage requirement.

“In the defense of these communities,” Ross said, “each of them had an enrolled population of no more than a few hundred and then they were suddenly inundated by tens of thousands of applicants. This created a situation that left many of Minnesota’s Mdewakantons unenrolled and bitter toward the federally recognized communities that did not enroll them.”

Limited rights, limited resources

With limited resources coming from the federal government for acknowledged tribes, it has created a process whereby local municipal governments often contest these claims, and also where tribes themselves turn against one another when it comes time for federal acknowledgment.

“Pretty much any tribe working toward federal acknowledgment is going to experience backlash from local and related tribes, and also typically from the local and state government,” said Jimmy Sweet, an assistant professor of American studies at Rutgers University.

His latest book project is “The ‘Mixed-Blood’ Moment: Race, Law, and Mixed-Ancestry Dakota Indians in the Nineteenth-Century Midwest.”

In terms of the state of Minnesota’s opinion on the Mendota tribe’s efforts, the Pioneer Press reached out to the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council, but the council does not comment on tribes seeking state or federal recognition.

A federally recognized tribe has a right to apply for federal funding in terms of educational, health and transportation needs, Sweet said, and if a tribe owns land, those lands would fall outside of state jurisdiction. A federally acknowledged tribe can seek to have human remains or historical artifacts held in a museum returned to the tribe.

“There is a lot at stake to gain federal recognition,” Sweet said. “There can be a lot of competition for those funds, which aren’t enough as it is.”

That competition can be why established tribes will turn other people away from being members, or why they might not support a tribe’s push for acknowledgment.

Another form of competition is over future gaming revenues.

According to figures from the American Gaming Association, 250 tribes operate 515 tribal casinos or gaming locations across the country. Of those 250 tribes, many operate low-stakes gaming centers such as bingo halls.

The Shakopee tribe’s Mystic Lake Casino Hotel is an outlier to that.

Asked by email and telephone about the Mendota Dakota community seeking federal acknowledgment, representatives from the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community declined to be interviewed, but released a statement.

“The three federally recognized Mdewakanton tribes in Minnesota have well documented histories of governmental interactions with the United States dating back to the 1800s. The same cannot be said of the group at Mendota,” the statement said. “The burden for obtaining federal recognition is high. From the records we are familiar with, we believe it will be difficult for the Mendota group to meet such a high burden.”

In 2021, Shakopee Mdewakanton tribal representatives released a statement to Tribal Business News contending that the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Tribal Community had no factual basis to pursue federal acknowledgment.

“Land was purchased at Prairie Island, Lower Sioux, and Shakopee,” the Shakopee community wrote in the 2021 statement. “Land was never purchased at Mendota. Based upon our understanding of the tribal recognition process, there is no factual basis for a tribe to secure recognized government status at Mendota.”

On their part, the Prairie Island Indian Community Tribal Council declined comment for this story.

Lennartson approached the Shakopee Native American community about joining in 1995, but was turned away. Her grandparents Albert and Lilly LeClaire farmed in the area, known back then as the Prior Lake Indian Community, until 1942 when Albert LeClaire was in a car accident on the reservation.

Sharon Lennartson, 77, has spent years of her life working to serve her Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Tribal Community — a tribe that has yet to receive federal recognition but continues to gather and keep their traditions alive, seen in Mendota on Saturday, Aug. 10, 2024. (Devanie Andre / Pioneer Press)

“No local hospital would take him because he was an Indian,” she recalled. Her grandfather died a month after the accident at a Native American hospital in Pipestone, Minn.

Culturally, the larger question is if people are still connected to their Native American communities, not just people who have ancestry in their past. Due to non-Native Americans trying to infiltrate the process and potentially seek tribal benefits, becoming enrolled can be an onerous process. That contributes to the controversy, as well.

“This bitterness and division is sad because in many cases, the Mdewakanton people on both sides of these arguments are related to one another and come from the same extended families,” Ross said.

The established tribes also want to make sure people are connected to the Native community, Sweet said, rather than just reciting a family tree.

“You might have native ancestors, but if you haven’t identified as Native American for generations, are you really Dakota today?” Sweet said, theorizing generally.

And yet another question remains: Is it fair to penalize people for being disconnected from their ancestry due to forced assimilation, exile and displacement?

Forgotten through time

So this is how the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Tribal Community, a group with a history that stretches centuries into the past with deep connections to tribal elders in other communities in the Midwest, ends up with few members, no land ownership and no federal acknowledgment. “The forgotten tribe,” as some members call it. “The orphans,” other Mendota call themselves.

The tribe first pursued federal acknowledgment around 1995, but needed to properly compile all of its historical information for the application process. The work trickled along slowly until Ross became a member in 2021, with the historian knowing how to connect the puzzle pieces of the tribe’s history and context.

They say that the process for federal recognition can take a generation on its own.

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There are currently nine different tribes with open petitions for federal acknowledgment, with three of those stretching back to 1994. There are another five tribes that plan to submit their applications, according to the Office of Federal Acknowledgment.

Since the office was established in 1978, only 18 tribes have received acknowledgment. The latest tribe to be affirmed was in 2016, the Pamunkey tribe in Virginia. Other tribes have sought to be acknowledged through congressional action, but that brings its own difficulties.

Lennartson can’t worry about these timelines, though. She has worked in a variety of roles for the Mendota tribe over the years, and now her days are mostly spent trying to organize this fall’s pow wow. She wrote “Stolen Culture, Traditions, and Heritage,” a shared history of the Mendota Dakota tribe, in 2023 to preserve the tribe’s stories for future generations.

Her ultimate goal is to once again have a piece of earth for her people.

“I don’t know when the Creator is going to come to get me. I just want to see a community center before I leave this world. That’s my dream,” Lennartson said.

Mendota Mdewakanton 27th annual Wacipi (Pow Wow)

What: Dancing, programs and a celebration of the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota tribe, which will formally announce its application for federal acknowledgment as a Native American tribe. The tribe is also kicking off a donation campaign for creation of a tribal community center. They recently celebrated the 30th anniversary of opening their Mendota office.
When: Friday, Sept. 13; Saturday, Sept. 14; and Sunday, Sept. 15.
Where: St. Peter’s Church Grounds, 1405 Sibley Memorial Highway, Mendota, Minn.
Information: www.mendotadakota.com.