Sara Černe (PhD candidate in English, Northwestern
As someone born and raised in Central Europe, I came to the Mississippi River via music: roots rock at first, the blues only later—a backwards trajectory for sure. I associated the river with the vastness of America; with Mark Twain and antebellum steamboats; with African American musical traditions; and with Tina Turner’s cover of “Proud Mary,” of course. Neither Native Americans nor the Upper Mississippi figured in that vision. Writing my dissertation on environmental justice in twentieth- and twenty-first-century literature and culture along the Mississippi at Northwestern University, I have now gone beyond the pop culture understanding of the river, but until recently, the Upper River and Indigenous populations remained conspicuously absent from my research.
In other words, I came to the Humanities Without Walls-sponsored research trip to Minnesota for a collaborative project on Indigenous art and activism in the Mississippi River Valley with very little background in American Indian Studies. I left with a much better understanding of the Dakota and Ojibwe history and present and the importance of the spaces we visited to Indigenous communities native to the area, humbled by the experience.
Wild rice and reflected skies at Lake Itasca, MN—Minnesota’s name is derived from the Dakota phrase ‘Mni Sota Makoce,’ translated as ‘land where the waters reflect the clouds.’
In taking photographs of these places—Lake Itasca in Northern Minnesota; Indian Mounds Park and Wakan Tipi in St. Paul; and the Bdote, the confluence of the Mni Sota Wakpa and the Hahawakpa rivers, the Minnesota and the Mississippi, on the edges of the Twin Cities metro area—I looked for ways in which Native presence, historically as well as presently, is seen, felt, and experienced. Instead of fixating on the myriad ways the US state has worked to disenfranchise and erase Indigenous populations, I wanted to focus on the many acts of perseverance I was witnessing all along the Upper Mississippi.
My first tobacco offering to the Mississippi River at the Headwaters, beginning its 90-day journey to the Gulf of Mexico
The various educators’ and activists’ efforts at regenerating, revitalizing, and reclaiming Native spaces establish firmly Indigenous presents as well as futures. Such actions include cleaning up sacred sites that had been reduced to toxic waste grounds; leading Nibi Walks for water; teaching about the places along the river from an Indigenous point of view using American Indian languages and place names; and marking the areas with Indigenous art.
Grant participants Prof. Jacki Rand (University of Iowa) and Agléška Cohen-Rencountre (University of Minnesota) wading in the Mississippi Headwaters at Itasca, MN.
The Sacred Dish by Duane Goodwin At Indian Mounds Park, St. Paul, MN.
In this last category of public art, I would like to highlight two sculptures of Native women—standing rocks, so to speak—that mark their respective spaces as Indigenous even when no one else is around. The first is the 2005 bronze Headwaters—Caretaker Woman by Jeff Savage, a member of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, at Itasca; the second is the 2006 dolomitic limestone The Sacred Dish by Duane “Dewey” Goodwin, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, in Indian Mounds Park.
Emphasizing Native American feminine cosmology in which women are seen as the custodians of water and earth, the two sculptures pay tribute to the ancestors and speak to the importance of traditional knowledge and practices for the health of the planet and future generations. They also serve as beautiful and unequivocal reminders that these places I was lucky enough to visit are Indigenous—yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
Headwaters—Caretaker Woman by Jeff Savage in Itasca State Park, MN .
