Across all of North America, a rich array of indigenous nations and communities inhabited the landscape before Europeans came. Many places retain traces of these older cultures in their place-names; others show the impacts of continuing inhabitation by indigenous people through efforts to re-name features of the landscape with the language the land once knew. Bdé Makhá Ská, a lake in Minneapolis that formerly held the name of a 19th century defender of slavery, is but one example of this emerging trend. Bdé Makhá Ská is located just 5 miles west of the Mississippi River, a feature that is itself named in a derivation from indigenous terms.
How to say Lake Calhoun’s Dakota name: ‘Bdé Makhá Ská’
