Minnesota, the state of my birth and upbringing, is famously populated by people renowned for being "nice" — courteous, self-deprecating, and given to understatement.  The North Star State never tolerated slavery and enthusiastically enlisted in the Union cause during the Civil War.  Lacking any traces of guilt over slavery, the Left has seized upon the cause of Native Americans, who arrived earlier than white people in the territory constituting the state.  Instead of celebrating the 19th-century spread of a civilization that brought with it longer lifespans and an incomparably higher standard of living to people stuck in a Neolithic stage of civilization, the progs want to instill guilt in the populace over their existence and continually hector them that they should feel guilt.

Our friends at Powerline noted a recent manifestation of guilt-tripping as virtue-signaling at the renowned Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis.  John Hinderaker writes:

Our friend Kathy Kersten attended a performance of "A Christmas Carol" at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis last night. She was astonished to find that the theater's program included a lengthy "land acknowledgement" of the sort that is being promoted by a handful of Native American activists in Minnesota.

(Photographs via Powerline.)

This is the Native American version of the 1619 Project — a perverted retelling of American history in which everything is extinguished except racism, slavery and oppression. Kathy, who writes for Center of the American Experiment, exposed the phenomenon here.  Thus, one of the activists writes in the Guthrie program:

Colonization, history and racism cast a deep shadow over our perspective of land, life, culture and people. We have been exiled to a place of extinction.

"Colonization" means you and me.

As John Hinderaker notes, the real history of the Native Tribes that occupied the land was far from idyllic, and the Dakotas' claims on the land are recent, based on warfare, and of shorter duration than the dominion of Americans in Minnesota.

The Guthrie's land acknowledgement says that "we gather on the traditional land of the Dakota People," and includes a casual reference to "the Ojibwe and other Indigenous nations." In fact, the Dakota (Sioux) and Ojibwe (Chippewa) were bitter enemies, and southern Minnesota became a "traditional land of the Dakota People" only recently — the early 18th century — when the Dakota were driven here by the Ojibwe. Warfare between the Dakota and Ojibwe continued well into the 19th century, and keeping the peace between the warring tribes was one of the missions of the soldiers at Fort Snelling.

This is far from the first example of overturning the narrative of Minnesota's founding and development from heroic to shameful.  Beautiful Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis (named for a pro-slavery Southerner because as secretary of war, John C. Calhoun authorized the U.S. Army to survey the territory and build Fort Snelling, the first outpost of the United States in the region) was renamed the unpronounceable Bde Maka Ska, only to run into a buzz saw of public and judicial opposition.  At the moment, the U.S. Board of Geographic Names recognizes the Dakota name, though signage at the lake uses both names.

Lake Calhoun in 2017 (photo credit: August Schwedfeger).

Note that the pavilion seen in the center of this photograph was burned down this summer, and a man named Nouh Omar Elmi (which doesn't sound very Scandinavian, the ethnic group that predominates in Minnesota) has been charged with accidental arson.  Note that most media articles on the arson omit the name Lake Calhoun in favor of Bde Maka Ska.

Teaching Americans to hate their own country, to regard it as irredeemable, a stain on the planet, is the perverse and largely successful goal of progressives.  If Americans love their country and appreciate that it is the first nation in history to hold that legitimate governments exist only by the consent of the governed and that our rights derive from the Creator and Natural Law, they will not submit to the commands of the ruling class.  That is anathema to those who believe that human nature can be perfected if only we surrender to the benevolent guidance of our betters who run the government.

Thus, we have the remarkable success of the Left in capturing the educational, media, and cultural sectors of our society and enlisting them in the project of making guilt over our civilization a hallmark of enlightened superiority.

It is disgusting and, in the long run, fatal to our civilization.  Who would want to defend the United States in warfare if our civilization is nothing but a source of shame?