The Baum Festival went on as planned in the summer of 1997. Because of conflicting opinions, the Apology and Pledge, were, in the end, not part of the program that took place in the town of Aberdeen.

JS Dill, March 11, 1998

He was a devoted family man, apparently a sensitive and kind individual, and he wrote books that were forerunners of today's concerns with diversity. But in his newspaper he twice advocated genocide of Native Americans. He was L. Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, acclaimed world-wide as the Great American Fairy Tale.

From 1888 to 1891, nine years before he published the first of his fourteen Oz books, Baum lived in Aberdeen, South Dakota. He edited a newspaper during the terrible time of anti-Indian feeling leading up to the killing of Sitting Bull and the massacre at Wounded Knee. He twice wrote editorials calling for the extermination of the entire Sioux Nation. Baum was not alone in his horrifying calls for genocide. Many historians believe that it was newspaper-induced hysteria that led to the massacre.

Baum's books are a sharp contrast to this call of genocide. Difference is valued in his stories; he describes groups of creatures with different characteristics and beliefs who work out the logistics of living together in respect and harmony. Oz is a multicultural kingdom. How could someone with such a vision have called for the mass murder of an entire group of people?

The fabric of Oz is love, the emotional connection, life-form to life-form, that creates respect, recognition and acceptance. Baum didn't practice that with the Lakota. Instead he abstracted these people, stripped away their humanness, and turned them into a concept, a "vanishing race", thereby setting up the conditions to think them out of existence.

The gift that Baum gives us is the mirroring of ourselves. Genocide happens not only because of the action of evil people, but also because of the inaction of the good-hearted. Baum knee-jerked the "right," acceptable, normal, main-stream reaction during the fabricated Indian scare of 1890, and was, thereby, one more agent of the genocide. Had he stood up to the government, had he questioned, as a good journalist should, the reports of "Indian uprisings," and had he been joined by journalists around the state and country, the massacre might never have happened.

There were some who stood up, but because they were few, their voices were ignored, invalidated or silenced. General Nelson A. Miles, the Commander of the Army in the West, for example, tried three times (unsuccessfully) to court-martial the officer in charge at the time of the massacre. Any hopes he entertained for a bid at the Presidency were dashed by his stand for justice.

L. Frank Baum did not stand for justice at the time of Wounded Knee. He stood with the majority of whites: with government officials, with military authorities, with settlers, with other members of the press and with representatives of Christian churches. He stood publicly on the popular side, the side of injustice.

Today we also need to make a stand. We who live in Aberdeen, or in other parts of South Dakota, or outside the state, would like to attend a conference dedicated to better understanding L. Frank Baum and his time in South Dakota. We recognize, however, that before we can plan to celebrate the Aberdeen days of this man, we need to acknowledge his two calls for genocide.

Whereas:

Whereas:

Whereas:

Whereas:

We take the following action:

We Apologize

We Apologize

We Pledge

We would like to see justice today for the Lakota and other Native American people. In view of the Candy Rough Surface murder case in Mobridge which went unsolved for fifteen years, and the two unsolved murders of Native American women in Aberdeen, we need to shine the light on these issues of the 1990's. Let us not slide back to the 1890's when the slaughter of Native American men, women and children was accepted and, in the case of the Wounded Knee massacre, rewarded with medals of honor.

Aberdeen Opens Attack on Dr. Wagner and First Nations Site

Baum Petition Responses

Rescind the medals of dis-Honor

Dr. Wagner's Testimony Regarding the Massacre at Wounded Knee

Wounded Knee Home Page

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