Louise Smith - tribal elder talks about greed

Types | Interviews | Grants | Legacy Amendment Digitization (2016-2017) |
Listen: Louise Smith - tribal elder talks about greed
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The eldest member of the Shakopee Mdwakanton Dakota tribe, Louise Bluestone Smith, died recently at the age of 85. In the last few years of her life, Smith received some half a million dollars a year in profits from the Mystic Lake casino -- along with the other 150 or so members of the Shakopee tribe. But until the end, Smith lived in the modest trailer in which she'd spent most of her life in poverty. She spent her last years in a tireless and unsuccessful legal effort to stop tribal chairman Stanley Crooks from enrolling new tribe members. Smith said many of the new members did not meet the tribe's requirement of one-quarter Shakopee Mdwakanton blood. Smith insisted that her fight with the tribal leadership was not about money, but about the integrity of the tribe. In an interview with Minnesota Public Radio in 1994, Louise Bluestone Smith said the casino business has brought her people dramatic wealth, but also introduced greed -- a concept that she says was foreign to the Dakota people when she was a child.

Funders

In 2008, Minnesota's voters passed the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment to the Minnesota Constitution: to protect drinking water sources; to protect, enhance, and restore wetlands, prairies, forests, and fish, game, and wildlife habitat; to preserve arts and cultural heritage; to support parks and trails; and to protect, enhance, and restore lakes, rivers, streams, and groundwater.

Efforts to digitize this initial assortment of thousands of historical audio material was made possible through the Minnesota Legacy Amendment’s Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. A wide range of Minnesota subject matter is represented within this collection.

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