Minnesota not so nice

when my granddaughter went to college in Minnesota, I teased her that the locals are very polite: So polite that there is a phrase "Minnesota nice".

And don't forget Lake Wobegon, "where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average."

Minneapolis welcomed Somalis and Hmong refugees, but yes there is a lot of prejudice: and a lot of it is against the Ojibwa who live among them: and we had to be careful where we referred our patients because of this subtle prejudice.

Subtle because often the educated don't know any Amerindians, and see them as stereotypes. And subtle because often the patients, especially the elders, would not make eye contact or respond directly to questions etc.

some, usually college educated people, are seeking a revival of the old ways: a lot of Marxism is in their push, alas, seeing the white folks who tried to educate them to fit into the modern world as evil (with an overlap of modern medicine of course being heartless, just ignore the real killers, like alcoholism, TB and diabetes) and the churches, who converted them often before there was a USA, as evil,, because of new age trendy ideas.

Given the weak Catholic bishops in northern Minnesota when I was there, I don't really blame them. But some of the older priests (Anglican and Catholic) were allowed to visit those with traditional beliefs by the local medicine men in the area: Because they didn't proselytize but only preached the love of God and comforted them in the sufferings of the walk of life that the Deity was requiring them to walk.

Yet the traditional folks never lost their beliefs and most Catholics mixed their traditions with the traditional beliefs and did attend ceremonies for illnesses, and the use of sweats to cure was going on, and used by many of our patients.



AlJazerah has a nice article about the problem LINK