Decolonizing ourselves

I now understand Smith better when she said that it is time for indigenous peoples to stop thinking as the Europeans and colonists did.  We need to recapture our history, which is oral history, and put it foremost in our way of thinking going forward.  Our little situation with Indian Heights Park has helped me to see that we ourselves as native peoples need to stop limiting ourselves with European ideas.  Indian Heights Park was used as a burial site.  We have the historical account by the early Rochester paper, the Post Bulletin to thank for that.  Now, with our oral history, we can build on that and reclaim Indian Heights Park as a sacred site for the Dakota Nation.  We did not put down "roots" as they Europeans or colonists did.  We did not construct stone houses.  We followed the seasons, the animals and summered and wintered where it would help our people.  We did not farm or homestead in the way the Europeans did and we need to stop apologizing for that.  Rochester was used as a hunting grounds and burial grounds.  It was a place that was within the ancestral lands of the Dakota and a few Ho-Chunk.  Enough said.  Absolute proof or Rankean order of historical facts does not mean the same to indigenous peoples as it does to the white man or Europeans or colonists.  Our history is rich, vibrant and alive.  It has been handed down from generation to generation in families and clans and is ours to claim and share.