Burial Grounds and Bob’s Sports Cafe: Negative Stereotyping of Indigenous Spirituality in Minnesota Ghost Stories

• In Event: Sovereign Stories: Indigenous Medias and Narratives

Abstract

Minnesota is often referred to as the “Land of 10,000 Lakes,” the “North Star State,” and for residents being “Minnesota nice.” Yet, before and since its establishment as a state in 1858, the land has been a place of white settler colonial violence against Indigenous Peoples. The government scalped, expelled, and hung Indigenous Peoples. Officials have also participated in relocation policies and boarding schools. By 2019, Indigenous Peoples were incarcerated fourteen times the rate of white people. State violence is made sensible through representation, including in ghost stories. Indeed, Minnesota is rife with ghost stories, often published by white authors whom speak of Indigenous ghosts, particularly of the Dakota and Ojibwe. How do white authors depict Indigenous Peoples in Minnesota ghost stories? How do these depictions reinforce or challenge dominant stereotypes? In this research, I conduct a qualitative content analysis of twenty Minnesota ghost books, which span over one hundred ghost stories. Dates range from 1995 to 2025. I explore themes that relate to spirituality and religion. As someone who has white settler heritage in Minnesota, some of this work, too, involves auto-ethnographic reflection. Overall, I find that Minnesota ghost stories tend to represent Indigenous Peoples through several tropes, including the “traditional Native,” “cursed burial grounds,” and “deadly Native spirits." These tropes caricaturize Indigenous spiritual beliefs, which are certainly not monolithic, for thrill and entertainment. By contrast, Christianity is viewed in the ghost stories as a foundational belief system, which obscures the institution’s role in assimilationist programming and land takeover. Such tropes have had a hand historically and today in mobilizing state violence and for the erasure of Indigenous Peoples.

Author

• Kevin D Revier, SUNY Cortland