Remembering With Dignity

Remembering With Dignity is a coalition of disability rights organizations. We are working to honor people who lived and died in Minnesota's state institutions.

Since 1994, Remembering with Dignity has been:

  • Marking graves in institution cemeteries. Currently Minnesota has over 13,000 graves marked by only a numbered cement block – or with no marker at all. These must be given a marker with the person’s name, date of birth and date of death.
  • Gathering life stories of people with disabilities, particularly those who have lived in institutions.
  • Changing society by organizing people with disabilities to ensure full integration in community life and to prevent a return to institutionalization.
  • Raising public awareness about people with developmental disabilities.
  • Demanding an apology from the State of Minnesota for its treatment of people with disabilities kept in institutions.

Almost half done:
Since 1994, we have honored 5000 Minnesota graves with proper markers. Now we need to do the other 7000 that are still unmarked.