Category: Father Hennepin

When the painting “Father Hennepin Discovering the Falls of St. Anthony” (1905), along with another painting depicting the 1851 Treaty of Traverse des Sioux, was removed from its central position in the Governor’s Reception Room of the Capitol to an out-of-the-way meeting space on the third floor, it was an attempt to recast Minnesota history as one born in white supremacy (with the coming of Christianity supposedly a part of that legacy) to tell instead a new story about the diverse state we are today.