Culture
Big Sandy Lake was inhabited by the Dakota Sioux until they were removed by the Ojibwa. In the Ojibwa language, the lake is known as Mitaawangaagamaa, meaning "Lake with flat, sandy beaches." The lake is home to the Sandy Lake Band of Mississippi Chippewa who are now part of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, but have been working on regaining their independent recognition restored by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
In 1798, North West Company maintained a post on on the western side of the lake; in 1830, American Fur Company established a post at the confluence of the Sandy River with the Mississippi River, a short distance west of the lake. Originally located on the north shore of Big Sandy Lake, the village of Gaa-mitaawangaagamaag was the western terminus of the Northwest Trail that connected the Mississippi River with the Saint Louis River; Savanna Portage State Park that commemorates this historic trail is located on the northeastern shore.
In 1850, the United States attempted to remove the Ojibwa population out of Michigan and Wisconsin to areas west of the Mississippi River, resulting in the Sandy Lake tragedy. A memorial commemorating the Sandy Lake tragedy was established at the United States Army Corps of Engineers Sandy Lake Dam Campgrounds. Along Minnesota State Highway 65, a rest area with a view of Sandy Lake was established, enhanced with a Historical Marker plaque to further commemorate the Sandy Lake tragedy.
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Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“To be a Negro is to participate in a culture of poverty and fear that goes far deeper than any law for or against discrimination.... After the racist statutes are all struck down, after legal equality has been achieved in the schools and in the courts, there remains the profound institutionalized and abiding wrong that white America has worked on the Negro for so long.”
—Michael Harrington (1928–1989)
“In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to detect a certain precocity. When we should still be growing children, we are already little men. Give me a culture which imports much muck from the meadows, and deepens the soil,—not that which trusts to heating manures, and improved implements, and modes of culture only!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... we’ve allowed a youth-centered culture to leave us so estranged from our future selves that, when asked about the years beyond fifty, sixty, or seventy—all part of the average human life span providing we can escape hunger, violence, and other epidemics—many people can see only a blank screen, or one on which they project fear of disease and democracy.”
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)