How to say Lake Calhoun’s Dakota name: ‘Bdé Makhá Ská’

Signs at Lake Calhoun have been changed to include the lake's Dakota name, Bde Maka Ska. The new signs were approved by the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. The signs updated on Oct. 2, 2015. Peter Cox | MPR News
Signs at Lake Calhoun have been changed to include the lake's Dakota name, Bde Maka Ska. The new signs were approved by the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. The signs updated on Oct. 2, 2015. Peter Cox | MPR News

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.