As part of the East Side Freedom Library’s “What’s in a Name?” series, David Riehle and Tim O’Brien will present the results of their two-year research project on local Dahkota trails and sites. Much of this history was wiped out by European settler displacement and extermination of the Dahkota people whose footprint we live in today. That history is now beginning to be acknowledged and reclaimed.

David Riehle is a retired railroad engineer and is a member of the boards of the Ramsey County History Magazine and the St. Paul Heritage Preservation Commission. He has spent decades researching local labor and African-American, and more recently, Dahkota history. Tim )’Brien is Principal of the Roseville Adult Learning Center, with a Ph.D. in Critical Pedagogy. He worked as an archaeological field assistant for eight years beginning when he was 15, focusing on the preservation of prehistoric cultural material from the impacts of development.