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As some prepare our homes for inbound guests, set the table for family meals, shovel drives or walkways others are memorializing these upcoming days in a different way. Instead of driving across town for last minute gifts, others are riding on horseback for 325 miles to Minnesota. While some wake up Christmas morning to a tree adorned with presents flowing out from below, others are waking up to the bitter cold for the last full day of their Memorial Ride.

On December 26, not far from Winona County, the Dakota 38 + 2 Memorial Riders will arrive at Mankato, MN in the morning riding up to Land of Memories Park-Reconciliation Park at 10 a.m. The Winona-Dakota Unity Alliance (WDUA) urges our community to understand this event clearly. This will help us better know our friends who visit for the Great Dakota Gathering every second weekend in September here in their homelands.

Please, acknowledge our shared history despite being unpleasant truths. The executioner of the largest mass hanging perpetrated by the US military, the Dakota 38 + 2, lived in Winona County prior to the Dakota War. He entered the service to fight against the Dakota on September 10, 1862 and helped build the gallows the Dakota would face the day after Christmas that year. Dakota were removed; Winona grew.