AC Discussion | Beneath Our Feet: Land Transfers and Cultural Institutions
On March 2nd, Executive Director of the Minnesota Museum of American Art, Kate Beane, PhD; artists and organizers, Andrea Carlson and Lydia Cheshewalla; and president and CEO of the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center, Marisa Miakonda Cummings came together for a candid discussion about how cultural institutions that espouse a progressive politics of inclusion can meaningfully work with Native communities to acknowledge and repair the histories of violence and dispossession foundational to their formation.
Watch the full conversation, or read through the transcript below to find links to additional resources, and share your thoughts in the comments section.
Title of Discussion: Beneath Our Feet: Land Transfers and Cultural Institutions
Panelist 1: Kate Beane, PhD, Executive Director, Minnesota Museum of American Art
Panelist 2: Andrea Carlson, Artist and Co-Founder, The Center for Native Futures
Panelist 3: Marisa Miakonda Cummings, President and CEO, Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center
Moderator: Lydia Cheshewalla, Artist and Organizer
Date of Discussion: March 2nd, 2022
List of Acronyms: [KB] = Kate Beane; [AC] = Andrea Carlson; [LC] = Lydia Cheshewalla; [MC] = Marisa Miakonda Cummings; [PF] = Peter Fankhauser
Transcript
[PF] Welcome everybody. I think we’re going to go ahead and get started. It’s great to have you all here for tonight’s Alternate Currents panel discussion, Beneath Our Feet: Land Transfers and Cultural Institutions with Dr. Kate Beane, Andrea Carlson, Lydia Cheshewalla, and Marisa Cummings. This is such an incredible group of panelists and I want to thank them for so generously agreeing to share their time and experiences with us. I also want to thank the Sherwood Foundation whose support makes programs like this possible.
My name is Peter and I’m the program director at Amplify Arts. For anyone who’s new to Amplify, our mission is to support unity, progress, and innovation in the cultural sector and Alternate Currents is a program that helps us do that by providing context for national and international conversations in the arts with responses from people working at the ground level.
I’m speaking to you from a place we currently call Omaha, NE but what will always be the homelands of the Umoⁿhoⁿ, Ponca, Pawnee, Otoe, Missouria, and Ioway people. And this conversation stems directly from a discussion we hosted in 2021 about Land Acknowledgements. Marisa contributed to that discussion, a video and transcript of which are up on our website, and she was instrumental in keeping that conversation going and thinking through what it means as far as next steps for cultural organizations committed to restorative justice.
Amplify’s position in these discussions as a nonprofit organization that’s directly benefited from the displacement of Native communities and the ecological injustices that follow is one of humility. We’re here to listen, learn and implement meaningful changes within our organization at a structural level. We hope representatives from other arts orgs and cultural institutions joining us tonight approach this conversation with a similar intention.
Panelists will be in conversation with each other for 40 or 45 minutes before we open the floor to questions, but the Q&A and chat functions will be active throughout so please feel free to share thoughts or questions anytime.
I also want to mention that a video and transcript of tonight’s discussion with links to additional articles and more resources will be posted to the Alternate Currents Blog in a couple weeks so you can revisit it there, leave your thoughts in the comments section and help us keep this conversation going. Go to our website anytime--amplify arts.org--and click on the Alternate Currents tab to read, watch, and listen to more conversations like this one.
Thank you all again for being here. We really appreciate your support and participation in critical discussions like this and with that, I will pass it over to Lydia.
[LC] Hi. My name is Lydia Cheshewalla, and I am a member of the Osage Nation, the Wazhazhe people. I am also descended from the Dakota Nation, the Cherokee Nation, and the Modoc Nation. I am also Chicana. I am speaking to you right now from what is currently known as Tulsa, Oklahoma, otherwise known as the Muskogee Creek Reservation. It is also the land of forced removal for many tribes who have ended up here and is the ancestral lands of the Osage people, the Caddo people, the Wichita people. Currently, it’s home to many nations.
I’m speaking honestly from a place of curiosity and learning. I’m an artist. I consider my practice transdisciplinary because I research in science, I research and indigenous epistemologies and I research in relationality and kinship practices, particularly with land. I come from the tallgrass prairie from the Pawhuska district in Oklahoma of the Osage Nation. I’m passionate about learning about this ecosystem. It's an ecosystem that my people really have grown up on through many centuries. It's also an ecosystem that my people, and several peoples of the plains, helped to maintain, helped to create. I value this ecosystem and this land because it's a beautiful renewing place of biodiversity. We see some of the greatest biodiversity on the prairie. It is also an excellent carbon sink which becomes increasingly more important as we face climate change.
So, I have done my research here on the prairie of Oklahoma. I have researched briefly the prairie in Kansas through the Matfield Green Tallgrass Artist Residency. Last summer, I did land management work with the Lincoln Parks and Rec Department in Nebraska, and I’ll soon be moving to Chicago to creep on that prairie and learn about it. I’m very loving of land and in a place of learning more about land always and learning the legalities around land and Native Law. Thank you all for having me. I’m excited to be in this discussion with everyone and to learn from each of you. So, I will pass off to uh Marisa. Could you please introduce yourself?
[MC] [Marisa introduces herself in her language.]
Hello everyone. I’m glad you're all here and my name is Miakonda. my English name is Marisa Cummings. I am Umoⁿhoⁿ and I belong to the Buffalo Tail Clan of the Sky People, which is also a kinship relationship. I am currently the President and CEO of the Minnesota Indian Women's Resource Center and located just north of Minneapolis, MN. Without taking too much time, I’ll end there and say I’m really honored to be here and I’m thankful to be in community with these amazing Indigenous women.
[LC] Andrea, could you please introduce yourself?
[AC] [Andrea introduces herself in her language.]
My name is Andrea Carlson. I’m Turtle Clan. I’m Grand Portage Ojibwe, and I’m speaking to you from Bentonville, Arkansas right now—Caddo, Quapaw, and Osage land—but I currently reside in Chicago. I am an artist as well, like Lydia, and in my work, when I’ve been able to do work publicly, I like to often comment on the land that my artwork is on. I think it's really important when you make public art, when you put it outside, that it has that context. That's where I come into this conversation. Thank you so much for inviting me and I’ll hand it over to Kate.
[KB] [Kate introduces herself in her language.]
Hello my relatives. I’m happy to see you all here today. My name is Kate Beane and I am both Mdewakanton and Wahpetonwan Dakota and a citizen of Flandreau Santee Sioux Dakota Nation currently in South Dakota but originally from the lands where I live here in south Minneapolis, Minnesota, Mni Sota Makoce. I come from Black Dog Village as well as Ḣeyate Otuŋwe, Bde Maka Ska, which is one of the largest lakes in south Minneapolis. So, I come from this place. I’m also Muskogee Creek so I’m happy to hear of that representation here as well. It makes me feel at home. For the last six and a half years, I served as the Director of American Initiatives at the Minnesota Historical Society, but currently, I’m now in my third month serving as Executive Director of the Minnesota Museum of American Art in downtown St Paul or Imnizaska, as we call it. So, I work at a museum that is renting space in a building called the Pioneer Building in downtown St Paul. The Dakota are now occupying the Pioneer Building.
When I was at the Minnesota Historical Society, I was involved in a in a multi-year project where we were trying to return lands to Dakota people, to the Cansa’yapi, the Lower Sioux Nation in Minnesota. There was 114 acres and talks started in 2004, so it took a very long time, and it was very long process, and I learned a lot in that process in terms of returning lands to Native people as a cultural organization and being able to advocate for that in my position there. I worked with Tribal Historic Preservation Officers. I worked with tribes. I worked National Park Service. I worked with the State. Some of the barriers and the things that came up along the way were things that we never anticipated and some of those things need to change. I’m happy to share that experience with you all here today as well.
[LC] Thank you all for sharing. Last year, Marisa, you were part of a discussion that about land acknowledgments. You contributed to the discussion and talked about broken treaties, sanctioned US government policies that severed many Indigenous people's ties to their ancestral homelands. Can you build on that discussion and talk more about university land grants and the Morrill Act of 1862 for listeners who might not be familiar with it?
[MC] Absolutely. I actually want to reserve some of this conversation for Dr. Beane because I think she has a lot of important content that she can speak to.
I am actually not a fan of land acknowledgements at all. I understand where they came from, and I understand why they were established in Canada where the population wasn't forced into removal the same way we were. Populations didn't move the same way there that we had to move here with our migration patterns after the invasion. Oftentimes it's like, what year are we acknowledging? Is this 200 years, 500 years, is it at the point of contact? What time frame are we using and then are we really acknowledging all of the people that were part of sharing territory? So, I feel like we can get stuck in this colonial mindset of reservations and settler-imposed boundaries and in our communities, we had alliances, we had war, but we also worked together, and we had vast trade networks that went all the way into what's now South America. For that to happen we had to have alliances, agreements, treaties with one another. I feel like we lose sight of that. I was at a conference at Pittsburgh where they did a land acknowledgement for the Osage and I was like, “huh?” I just really think that there's a lot more conversation that needs to happen.
The Minnesota Indian Affairs Council which consists of the 11 federally recognized tribes in Minnesota, that share a boundary with the state of Minnesota, I should say—they aren't in Minnesota, they share a boundary—issued a resolution to address the Morrill Act and establish a truth commission. That's work that's happening here right now to try and rectify the damage that was done. I’m going to hand it over to Kate to talk a little bit more in depth about the act and the impact it's had on her community specifically.
[KB] I think it's interesting when we think about land-grant universities and that history, the bill that that passed in the 1850s for that act was passed by Abraham Lincoln. It was signed into law in 1862, which was the same year that Dakota people were removed from the state of Minnesota, the same time period in which my family was forcefully removed under military guard and my grandparents were put into prison. When we think about the history of how these schools started and what their intentions were and the impacts on our communities, we can learn a lot about where we are today and why we're in the situations we are in. I think that it's important for people to understand the histories of not only our cities and our states and our lakes and our buildings, but also our educational institutions. I understand the ways in which land theft and treaty language impact how and when people are educated, in particular the promises that were historically made to support Native students that were not upheld and have not been adequately supported.
There's been a lot of talk over the last few years around land-grant universities and about the history of some of these schools that were originally created to educate Native people. Our land was taken from us to create these places of learning which excluded us. One of the things we often talk about when talk about land acknowledgements—and I’m right with you there. I have a hard time with land acknowledgments as a person who lives in my own territory. Am I supposed to start an event and say, “I’m home?” It's one of those things where I understand the tools, I understand it as a resource, as a starting point, as a way to be self-reflective, but we have to really think about the direct action that can take place. Part of that direct action is understanding the history of our relationships, the genealogy and the acknowledgement of our relationships with Indigenous people, whether it's as schools, as organizations, as museums, to acknowledge that history, put it out there, and then get past acknowledgement.
I teach Native Studies at the University of Minnesota. We work so hard just teaching people who we are and educating people about the fact that we're human beings and that we're still alive today and we have consistently been trying to get past that that moment of recognition, of acknowledgement, to get to where there's actually recourse, reparations, and a direct action. That's where I think these conversations around returning land, and the LANDBACK movement, can be really helpful. I’m interested in the illegality of how some of these lands were taken, the fact that they're not being purposed how they were meant to be purposed, the legal recourse of that, and what you can do as a response.
[AC] Yeah, I can't speak to the Morrill Act or land-grant / land-grab universities. I have definitely been a beneficiary of various institutions land grant-institutions. I’ve spoken at these schools, and I went you know to one in particular, but there are schools that a lot of people don't even think of as having a mandate, or a charter to serve Native students, like Harvard. People are suing each other over who’s given access due to legacy versus race and that kind of thing, but that school was founded to serve Native students. I think that often when we have conversations about resources and access, Natives are saying, “Can we have some space?” There's a layer of irony when it comes to Native artists who are making art on their homelands and don't have access to institutional spaces. We don't have access to walls. We have to make our own spaces.
I’m really curious Kate, to know more about the process of returning that acreage. I recently sold some work to the Whitney Museum and then it created a market for my artwork, for my painting. I amassed a small bundle of money and was able to buy the land adjacent to my grandma's land. I'm going to buy her land too. It's about four acres on Lake Superior. My husband and I don't have children so there's no one to inherit this land and it's part of the 1854 Treaty of La Pointe, ceded land. So, I talked to the President, the Tribal Chair of Grand Portage and we're going to, as soon as I have it paid off, we're going to land back that property. But it's complicated because there's things like taxes. It's off reservation tribal trust land. There's maintenance. I’m a true believer in LANDBACK and I want to make my money work for the tribe, make my accomplishments work for Grand Portage, but I’m also very cautious about the fact that I’m on Dakota land as an Ojibwe person. One of the things over the years that I have really learned about the spaces I occupy, and the places that I’ve lived, is to walk on the land with humility. I think that living on Dakota land for so long has really taught me that. Now that I’m based in Chicago, it's Potawatomi land. They're Anishinaabe. I feel like it's okay to have a big banner that says you're on Potawatomi land in Chicago and not feel personally disenfranchised because when the Potawatomi do well, I do well. So when land goes back, it might not be shared between Ojibwe, Ottawa, and Potawatomi people. It might have to go back to a nation because we're in this colonial condition. I and we have to figure out how to be humble when it comes to the territories of other nations. That's something that I’m learning for myself.
[MC] To circle back quickly to the Morrill Act—I want to give an example. The Umoⁿhoⁿ people were traditionally woodland people. During the migration, we were in this area, and we always had really good relationships with our Dakota relatives. We signed the Fourth Treaty of Prairie du Chien, which um gave us a piece of land that encompasses both Lincoln, Nebraska and Omaha. Omaha means, ‘the people who went upstream.’ Nebraska means, ‘land of the flat waters’ and both are Umoⁿhoⁿ words, obviously. So, it's important to point out that treaties had to be signed in order for statehood to be established. At some point when the Morrill Act and the land-grab was happening, we were being displaced as Kate said. It's important also to understand the role the Dawes Act played in greatly reducing Umoⁿhoⁿ treaty lands to a very small portion of what we once had.
The University of Nebraska, once it was established a year or two after statehood, then became the place where the bones of our people that were dug up were taken. I know that's the case at the University of Iowa, Iowa State University, University of Minnesota, and I could go on and on. They all held the bones of our people as well as black market ceremonial items that they still hold today, even though NAGPRA was passed in 1993. They still hold those items and have not reached out to Tribal people, the descendants of those items. They're not just items. We believe they have spirits; they're living.
In my family's case, my grandfather took our bundles to the museum in 1964 because it was still illegal to practice our way of life. I repatriated, or rematriated, my family's bundles and I take care of them in our home now. I was the first one to do that, so no one knew what to do. The university didn't know what to do. It was a new process that had to be established. I say that also to talk about kinship, relationship, and our views of creation and our connectedness to creation. When we talk about land, it's not dirt. It's not mud. It's living. Our ancestors are in the land. She's living; she is our mother. It's not just a thought, or something we throw out there—"mother earth.” No. She's literally our mother. The moon is literally our grandmother. I wanted to point that out because for me, it's hard to say I have ownership, or I have any type of hierarchy over a relation that I know is going to outlive me. I think about it that way. I feel blessed and thankful and grateful to our other relatives who allow us into their spaces. I don't just go walking onto somebody else's reservation like I own the place. It's like walking into somebody's home. We acknowledge and we're thankful and grateful for being welcomed into these communities and that's how I feel being here in Minneapolis because it's not my community. It's a feeling of gratitude.
I wanted to point that out and point out that statehood again would not have been established without treaties. Those treaty obligations have flipped in a way where we are begging for our way of life every day. The universities are part of that system of oppression, and it hasn't ended because they still hold our cultural and spiritual items and our people in those spaces.
[KB] I appreciate everything that that my sister here just mentioned. What's interesting when you think about treaty history is that you have to flip the script. I teach a lot of young white students at the university. Of course, sometimes my courses can be more diverse but this semester, they’re not. I don't know why. It's interesting. I always ask my students, “Who do you think is impacted by this?” They don't realize that every single one of them is. It's not that we gained rights. We retained rights. If anything, we extended some rights to the United States. You have to flip that script.
As a Dakota person, all our treaties were declared null and void after we were kicked out of the state and removed under the Removal Acts of 1863. For us, as Dakota people here in Minnesota, if we come from a tribe that was once a part of the community that was removed, we're treated differently. We don't have representation within the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council. We don't have representation within the state. We don't have representation within the tribes here, other than personal relationships and working that as families. It's a divide and conquer strategy. It's a way to keep us divided from each other and to keep these borders between us. The University of Minnesota recently announced that they were going to offer in-state tuition, or free tuition, for Native students. It was this big news but the majority of Dakota students who attend the University of Minnesota are from tribes outside of Minnesota. Yes, there are still a lot that go are from Lower Sioux, Shakopee, Prairie Island, and Upper Sioux but the majority of Dakota people were removed from the state. Unless you come from a tribe that is still in the state of Minnesota, you can't take advantage of it. So, even though I went to university of Minnesota for 10 years and I teach there, I would have never, and I still can't receive that benefit. My children won't. A lot of Dakota people won’t receive that benefit because our tribes are from outside of the state. Again, they're looking at a response within their own colonial structures and not what works for us.
With the LANDBACK movement, some of the work we did we did at the Minnesota Historical Society to return land to the Lower Sioux, it was barrier after barrier. A lock-on status was put on a parcel of land to keep it accessible to the public forever. If the tribe was going to take on the land, they wanted to put it into trust. Legally, they could not put it into trust if lock-on status was there. So, we had to get the lock-on status removed.
There were things like legislative amendments, legislative work that had to happen. We wanted to transfer 140 acres, as well as the Lower Sioux Agency building, which is a historic site and very important to the history of the Dakota people and what happened during the Dakota war. We wanted to return that building to the community. We weren't able to return the building. We could only return the land because bonding bill money had been used to update the HVAC system 10 or 20 years so it would require legislative approvals to return those buildings. So, the buildings still have not been returned, even though the organization desperately wanted to return the buildings. Again, there's barrier after barrier and often those barriers are imposed without thinking about what works for us. Then you have the backlash from the community who says, “We want to be able to visit these lands still. They're going to put a casino on it.” You know, all this stereotypical, racist stuff. In reality, the Tribe is like, “Yeah, we want it to be accessible for everyone too. It's our story. Let us tell it.” You see time and time again this colonial structure of let us tell you what's best for you. We know what's best for us. Our communities know what's best for us and we know how to do it. We know how we work. We know how we operate. If we were allowed to engage with one another and not have to worry about what the repercussions across political borders when one tribe receives the benefit of something and the other tribe doesn't. Those are the colonial systems that have been put into place from the beginning and we’re continuing that same path forward unless we change the way things are done.
[LC] I think that leads to a natural question, which is, how do we start? How do we make these changes? We see that it's not it's not just like somebody wants to transfer the land, and so we do. But maybe sometimes that does go off seemingly without a hitch. In 2020 the Yale Union transferred their building in their land to the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation in Portland. I went to that building right before the transfer happened. It’s amazing that transfer happened. I guess the question is, how do we change the mindset? It seemed that transfer came from a mindset shift. How do we start having these conversations with cultural institutions? I think my personal question is, is it worth it? What do we get in taking these institutions back? Is it just about the land? Is it about the whole institution? Is it about changing who is in the institution? I’m wondering how we get there.
[AC] I don't think that that's LANDBACK though. I think for land to go back, it needs to go to a reservation. It needs to go to a sovereign nation. I think giving it to from one non-profit to another is different. That's not land back. We need sovereignty and that's why I'm like, “Kate, tell me more.” I’m thinking about my own personal land back project. Sometimes you get a gift and sometimes a gift is really expensive, so I’m thinking if land goes back, does it need an endowment to take care of that land? What happens when it comes to taxes? Is it sustainable land back? I totally agree that land should be given back so we can have sovereignty. I don't think that giving a building or a parcel to a native nonprofit is what we mean by land back. I can see Kate shaking her head. I think she was going to say the same thing.
[KB] I agree completely. I think we also have to remember that our governments sometimes represent the people, and sometimes they don't, depending on where we're at and what time period we're in. There have been cases in the Black Hills and other spaces where land has been returned to the tribes. That's something I wanted to do with a parcel of land at a previous employer I will not name because the project wasn’t finished. I still hope to advocate for it. You know, there are possibilities. Returning tribes to consortiums of tribes, where the tribes come together and work together to manage in the land, for example.
I'll mention too, one of the things I learned throughout the process is that oftentimes when you're working within these legal structures, people who understand realty law don't understand tribal law. They're not one in the same. Most of these organizations have their own law firms but they don't understand tribal law. So, you run into all of these issues. We're lucky enough here in the Twin Cities to have a fabulous Ojibwe women-run law firm that knows both tribal law and realty law. I am happy to share that information with you. They would be able to answer those questions and they actually know how to get it done. They helped us with the with the Minnesota Historical Society process.
[MC] I want to co-sign on what you said there, Dr. Beane. Tribal law or even federal Indian policy is not commonly taught in law school, nor is it commonly taught in higher education. You have to seek out knowledge and understanding about federal Indian policy.
I also want to say, think about what we're talking about here. We're talking about having to weave and interact and in this system that we didn't create, in this governance system that was forced upon us. We're talking about being sovereign and most of us haven't gone through constitutional reform. I know the Osages have. You guys are awesome. But a lot of us are still operating on Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) constitutions. We're operating within this colonial structure that is systemically corrupt. It is not our traditional governance model where we look at clanship. Our whole system has been flipped upside down. Then we have to talk about land and taxes and that's all feudal. That comes from Europe. That's not ours but it's been forced upon us. Even with ICWA (Indian Child Welfare Act) being heard by the Supreme Court, we're constantly having to fight for our rights to be alive in a system that we didn't create and has been forced upon us. I want to point that out because it's confusing for most people, in general, but it's really confusing when we talk about sovereignty. That's not our word. We don't have a translation in our language for a sovereign. That's a European word. We are inherently sovereign beings. Even though we operate within kinship networks, we're inherently sovereign. That's our teachings. We have free will. I wanted to point that out because I feel like we don't get enough credit for all the damn fighting we have to do all day every day.
I also really appreciate what you said, Dr. Beane, about settler-imposed boundaries. Where I grew up, we were very close to Isanti people and knowing their story, even when I drive by Fort Snelling, I get sick to my stomach. I get this weird feeling of fear and anxiety and sadness. Sometimes I’ll even start crying. I’m like, “What the heck—those weren’t even my people.” But I know those stories from people who survived the violence inflicted upon them.
So, you know, when we think of space and land and what it carries, it also carries the trauma that's been inflicted on it. I know that there are other original people of this land who go by that space and feel the same thing I feel. What I see in my head is a camp. What I see in my head is people getting put on steamboats. That's what is in my head and in my heart. Land has emotion tied to it. It has it's a spirit and it carries that. When we talk about LANDBACK, also look at the Prairie Island people who have a nuclear plant on their land 70 yards from a housing development. Their babies are growing up next to a nuclear plant. That's the land they're going to get back. In my head I’m like, “That's what they're going to do. They're going to give us this poisoned land back and we can't do anything for her.” The reality is that all federal policy has targeted our access to our land and our resources. They want our land. They want our resources. Once that's used up, they don't care about it. I’m going to stop now because I think I’m on a tangent.
[KB] I’ll just mentioned my brother-in-law lives in Prairie Island right down from the nuclear power plant and he has struggled with his health and cancer, and these are realities. My nieces grew up not being able to drink the tap water, but that was home. It will always be home. You see these land acknowledgements that say, “this was once the home of the…” No. It's still our home and it always will be. You can't take that away. When you talk about healing, I remember with the Lower Sioux transfer, Tribal President Robert ‘Deuce’ Larson mentioned that when he got the news, the first thing he did was go down there to that site and put down tobacco when he prayed. This was something that his father had started working on. What he was saying is, “Now we can heal,” not just as a people, but for the land. That land had so much healing to do. Atrocities happened there that have impacted us for generations. There are people with stories to share that have never been shared. There is a lot of connection there that needs to happen between us, our lands, and how we protect and care for the lands. We get stuck because of all these barriers and the legalities of how to work through these things when all we want to do is heal and take care of one another and take care of the land and help the land take care of us.
[LC] That was perfectly said. That needs to be the quote for the evening. I don't think we can expand any better than that. Thank you.
We are approaching the last few minutes of this conversation. If anybody who is attending has questions, I’d really like to open up the Q&A.
[AC] Maybe while we're waiting for questions to come in, there's another observation that I think might play into this conversation, which is that idea of public land. When Kate was talking about lock-on status where land is viewed and held to serve public interest, that's a thing that sounds really good. “Hey, it's for the public!” It sounds so nice on its surface but it's also how the National Park System circumvented treaties. Like, “We're using the land, so it doesn't have to be returned.” This idea of public land has been weaponized against Native people, but it sounds so good. We often hear about DEAI (Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion) work and equity and inclusion and things like that and it's like, equality for such an imbalance feels like ‘all lives matter’ to us when we actually need a boost. I think whenever you hear about public lands, you need to question it because it is often weaponized against Indigenous people. I feel like that belongs somewhere in this conversation.
[MC] I'm so glad you said that. Faith Spotted Eagle posted today a conversation about Yellowstone and that's exactly what they were talking about—Yellowstone National Park, how it was formed, and the treaties that were not acknowledged in that process. I appreciate you bringing that up because it made me think about Blood Run National Historic Landmark, a bi-state park in South Dakota and Iowa. Our people lived there with the Otoe the Ioway. We were in very good relation with our relatives. It was a huge trade network, trade site. I remember being part of that process. It was so heartbreaking to see what was done, what was built, where the things were built. We just had no say on the South Dakota side. On the Iowa side, they were like, “You just tell us what you want.” It was like two totally contrasting experiences. Whenever I go home, I go by there because that place is so meaningful to me. I know what's under the ground there and those mounds that are there linked to Jeffers Petroglyphs up here. These sites are so linked if you know that history and those migration patterns. It’s heartbreaking to me to see how states take possession of land, or how the National Parks Service takes possession of land, and then we don't have full access to the medicines, to the ceremonial sites that are there. So, thank you for bringing that up.
[LC] I see that have a few questions in the chat. I’ll read these aloud and anyone who would like to answer, please answer. The first question is:
“Did the appointment of Secretary of the Interior Deb Haadland make a significant difference in the way that we're able to approach land restitution and land back work? What would you recommend for further learning about the conversation tonight?”
[KB] I would say that it's going to take time to see the broader impact for the land restoration piece. I know that she's hard at work and it takes time. One of the things we have seen a direct and a quick impact around has been those Indian Boarding Schools and looking for our children's bodies. Boarding schools shouldn't have cemeteries for children and yet they do. Those schools that our grandparents went to had cemeteries attached to them. One of the ways in which Secretary Haadland has been very impressive is in making sure to get the report out in terms of finding where those children are buried and doing ground penetrating radar to locate and return those babies home to our families and communities. Last week, Sisseton community signed the documents to return some babies home. Rosebud did list last year. Other communities are bringing babies home from Carlisle and other schools. When we're talking about land back, we’re also talking about our bringing our babies back. There's a lot that needs to be done. She has a big job ahead of her and I think we will continue to see progress. That's just one thing I’ve been thinking about lately. Really thankful to her for her work.
[AC] I can't speak to Deb Haadland. I think I’m with Kate on that. I think this it's more than one person. I realize that she's building out those opportunities for Native people around her as well, but it is going to probably take some time. I hate saying that and I really hate hearing it.
At the federal level, that's where you have um things like the National Parks System, but on state level, there are some really interesting things happening. Since moving to Illinois, I have been put on the Illinois State Museum's board, which you wouldn't think would have anything to do with land back, but the way it's run under the department that it's run under, we can actually do land back. One of the museums is on a mound where this farmer/doctor—I don't really know—Dickson stripped the top off this mound to expose the bodies beneath in the positions they were buried. Then he built a structure over the top that was turned into the Dickson Mound Museum. They had almost like a Plexiglas floor where you could walk over the ancestors and look down into the grave. So, that is a really problematic museum. They closed that wing, the south wing, and they've also been skirting NAGPRA since the early 1990’s. I think that was the initial deadline to return the ancestors. But where do you return to if you've built a museum over the ancestors’ bodies?
Kate, maybe we’ll have to take this conversation off-line so I can get some advice about how to LANDBACK these mounds. How do we turn the Dickson Mound Museum into a site of conscience where either the facility is removed or, if it stays, then it becomes a place to serve Native people? That's a big, big question and it's a lot of work, but I also think that there's a lot of sharing and exchanging resources and information so we can figure out strategies to get these things done. I'm the first Native on that board, and I’m the only Native currently on it, so if you want to be on this board and you're Native, contact me because we have a position available.
[MC] In Illinois, the was a complete removal of Native People.
[AC] There are no reservations in Illinois.
[MC] So, when we think about the people buried in that mound, we have to trace that back. But my whole thing is why can't they leave the mounds alone? Because they're in private land ownership. It's the same thing we went through at [Blood Run]. All these farmers were selling land for development. That's what triggered it. They built a whole golf course on mounds. There was a gravel pit and shell-tempered pottery, bones, copper bracelets were all coming out of this gravel pit. A young boy took and stored those items all these years. His dad owned the land. He would he took those things out of it out when he was a child and those are the items that they now use to study the site. They also put the railroad right through a huge snake effigy and destroyed it. Who knows what was in the in that effigy?
If we look at Cahokia and even at Wakan Tipi, they blew up the caves underneath. We know what is in those caves. We know who lived there. We carry that type of trauma to this day. We haven't even talked about the trauma that we carry as a result of the land being violently attacked. Budweiser stored their beer in these caves for years before they blew them up to build the roads. This story has to be told so people think before they do it again, even though so much damage has already been done.
I don't really know much about LANDBACK to be honest. I’m still in the process of thinking about how we almost lost our land in Nebraska vs Parker, which was a border dispute that went to the Supreme Court. We didn't even think the Supreme Court would hear it and they did. I think about all the tribes fighting just to keep our borders. Think about Chairman Frazier and all he had to go through during Covid just to keep his community safe. There are so many things we're fighting for that land back to me just feels so far away.
We might be fighting to keep our kids with ICWA. If it’s overturned, that's an attack on sovereignty like we've never seen before. Not to mention our little ones. Minnesota is the number one state in the country for removal of Indian children. These are the battles feel overwhelming at times to talk about. That's why we need allies who will be the voice for us when we're not at the table.
[KB] Absolutely. I think back to some of the public meetings that I’ve been to for different projects. Whether it was the return of land to Lower Sioux, or when we worked to restore the name Bde Maka Ska from Lake Calhoun, the settlers who showed up with their racist rhetoric essentially pointed fingers at us and told us that we didn't belong. The political climate we're in right now, that's done a lot of damage and set us back. My father's a community organizer. He reminds me all the time that when there are tensions, when there are frustrations, it’s an opportunity. If there's a fire, you go towards it. That's where the change is going to happen. I try and hold on to that, and I try and stay positive, because I know that's an important value. But it's hard, especially right now with all that we're dealing with politically, banning books and not being able to talk about the basic truths of our histories, and having to fight to be at the table.
[LC] We're fighting holistically on every front. It's not just land back. When we talk about LANDBACK, land is an extension of body. It's an extension of culture. It supports our lives. It gives to us, and we return to it. It's not about ownership. This the place that holds me. This is the place that holds my ancestors. This is the place that will hold my children. This place is me. I am this place too.
[MC] I was just thinking Kate, as your daughter popped up, those of us from the Missouri River floodplain, which is one of the most fertile floodplains in the world, we planted after the flood. It’s almost like a woman's cycle, moon cycle. So, it would flood, then it would go down, and there was this fertile land with all the fish and turtles and everything in the land. Those were women's plots and we planted in mounds. My youngest girl, when I first started planting with traditional seeds again and had her with me, she planted in the mounds and then watered it and afterwards she said, “Oh, now it's pregnant.” She gets it because that mound carried those seeds just like we carry our children. That's our connection to land. That's our connection to the water systems. That's our connection to that spirit of life and creation which we are directly a part of. I just wanted to point that out. When we talk about land back, it's easy to talk about it in these terms of taxes and money.
I was listening to a country song today that said, “Just buy dirt.” Have you guys heard that? It's a country song and it's basically about building a home and a life with a woman by buying dirt. I had to listen to it three times to hear what they were saying, to try and understand. For us, we know that the land, no matter where we're at, we're connected to her. When I had family come here from New Zealand, the first thing they wanted to do was touch the water on the river. That's how we connect as Indigenous people. We know we go straight to the land and thank her and talk to her. That’s where we come from. That's how we relate to one another and how we relate to the space of creation no matter where we are in the world.
[LC] I do have another question on here that I want to grab real quick. It says:
“Do you think that The Gathering Place in Tulsa, Oklahoma falls into the public land category?”
I think that that's a convoluted issue. I think that they have tried to push it into public land, but I would suggest reading Russell Cobb's book, The Great Oklahoma Swindle to really learn more about that being allotment land taken from a Muskogee Creek man through nefarious means. So yes, I think it is currently classified as public land. It was not acquired appropriately like many institutions.
There’s another question here, it asks:
“When we're talking about LANDBACK, are there ideas for reparation for lost flora and fauna?”
I actually don't know anything about that. I don't know if, when we talk about LANDBACK, we are also building in what it takes to restore flora, what it takes to restore the microbes in the soil. What are we getting with LANDBACK exactly? Does it come with the endowment that allows us to restore the land to its rightful place? We're not talking about usability. We're talking about restoring it to health, to its natural state. I feel like I have to clarify natural state does not mean letting it go wild, but it's a relationship. A natural state is relationship. All humans, whether we like to think of it or not in this westernized world, we are not separate from nature. We are part of nature. I can't speak to those endowments or if that's happening.
[AC] White Earth reaffirmed the rights of wild rice and I think that's a really interesting tactic or strategy that Native nations can use. Reaffirm these rights and then protect these rights and fight pipelines!
[MC] I'm reading another audience question here asking about how to live with the land and oppose resource extraction. One thing that also happened with these institutions is that they hold our seeds. As a seed keeper, I love seeds. They're so beautiful. There are all kinds of really cool beans. When we think about the fact that we were we were starved out, in our Tribe's case, I can't speak for all people, but we were not allowed to hunt and the buffalo were gone and they gave us these horrible foods to eat, these government commodities, and our beautiful seeds end up in museums. And they're being sold. People sell the Umoⁿhoⁿ pumpkin seed. We don't grow that seed anymore. What does that say about the obligation that these land-grab institutions have to give those seeds back to our communities. And do they have an obligation to regrow those seeds or to provide space to regrow those seeds to feed our communities? I would say that would be a form of trying to make things right. Right now, those seeds are just sitting around. Some of them are growing after over 100 years. They're growing because we have the songs that go with them. Sometimes those songs are even recorded, and the institutions hold those as well. So, we have this dichotomy of being told your language, spirituality, way of life is illegal, but we're going to take all the information we can, hold it in theses land-grant institutions, and be the keepers of your knowledge.
[KB] When you were talking about seeds, I ran and got my Dakota corn that my daughters and I grow in our backyard. We got these seeds from our good friend Diane Wilson. These are these are Dakota from Lower Sioux. Thanks to her and thanks to our relatives, my daughters are now growing this back in our yard in South Minneapolis where we also butchered deer. I don't know that our neighbors like that. But it's a conversation about community health. There are opportunities to restore access to traditional plants and medicines within these cases, whether the land is returned, which it should be, or if it's not. With plantings and the restoration, we're seeing more and more of that in the cities, within the city parks, our people still forage for medicines. We forage for medicines in our neighborhood and oftentimes they're sprayed with pesticides and so we have to advocate for them to not get sprayed.
Our friend Debra Yepa-Pappan from the Field Museum is here, and I still remember going to visit that museum, and walking out with my husband and kids, and they had sage and sweetgrass there. She said, “Here pick some.” That made me feel so welcome and so at home in the middle of Chicago. The feeling I got was enormous and there was a huge impact to having that opportunity, thanks to her. It's thanks to those who are constantly advocating within these spaces to help provide that access to people—Lower Phalen Creek Project and the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary, Prairie Island is going to support a medicine garden, the science museum has a medicine garden. There are places that we can help provide access because our community members do still forage, and we should not be eating pesticides.
[MC] To feed off that, we make milkweed soup. Something that happens a lot is people spray milkweed and think of it as a weed. For us, there's a certain time of year that we pick it to make a soup. It's these two polar ways of thinking. There’s this weed that you spray and kill, versus something that we know is valuable and yummy and has to be cooked in a certain way otherwise it's poisonous. I think about those spaces. There's always a fear.
I’ll pick anywhere. I don't care. I’ll drive over the side of the road and just start if I see something. I’ll have my tobacco in my car, and I’ll go do it. My kids will like videotape it. They think it's the funniest thing ever, and now they're out there doing it with me, but that fear of somebody coming to tell me that I can't do this on my treaty land. Please do because you're going to get a lesson and you're going to get your feelings hurt. That's the way I’ve approached it. Even the parks, when we were working with the Blood Run site, they said, “Oh, we can let you guys come pick your medicines here.” You can let us?? We're going to do it anyway, so you can either be part of this or not. I think we have to assert ourselves. We don't have to be let to do anything when it comes to our relationship with creation itself. It's a birthright and we shouldn't have to ask.
[LC] This has been an awesome conversation. I’m just so thankful to each of you for everything that you've shared. It's been so powerful. My final question is, do any of you have any upcoming events that you would like to share before we go?
[KB] I don't know that I have an event. I probably do but I’m tired, so I don't remember. We are trying to reopen our museum, the Minnesota Museum of American Art in downtown St Paul. Those of you who are interested in our work, we have a wonderful website and a recent community report we put out. We’re fundraising to finish our capital campaign so that we can reopen a beautiful space where we're going to be elevating our work with Native artists and re-prioritizing some of some of those relationships. As Indigenous and Native artists within Minnesota, you belong in our museum of American art. So, stay tuned for what we have coming up.
[AC] I’ll say really quickly, and again Kate, we need to talk, Debra Yepa-Pappan, who's already been discussed in this space, her husband Chris Pappan, Monica Rickert-Bolter, and a number of other artists have come together in Chicago and we are making a space. It's in flux. It's not built out yet, but it's called the Center for Native Futures, and it's going to be a Native art space in downtown Chicago. Ground floor, 3000 square feet, it's going to be amazing. We might need Kate to curate some shows and then send them our way, please!
[MC] One thing that we have happening at MIWRC is we have a group of young women who use art to tell their stories of resistance. They just did a photo shoot, and it is amazing. I’ve just seen a few of the pictures but they are absolutely beautiful. We're hoping to have that installation done this summer.
There are always events on our website as well. A lot of them are virtual. Also, a non-Native woman who lives in Prior Lake has offered some of her land for us to do traditional gardening. We'll be going down there to start our traditional garden in May and that will be open to whoever in the community wants to plant, harvest, or attend workshops around traditional food.
[LC] I’m looking forward to connecting with you all more. I’ll see you in Chicago, Andrea! Thank you so much to each of our panelists for the discussion tonight. I definitely learned a lot and thank you to everybody who could attend! These are important conversations and this is important work. Thank you all and I hope everybody has a great rest of their evening.
*This transcript has been edited for clarity.
About the Panelists:
Kate Beane (Flandreau Santee Dakota and Muskogee Creek) holds a BA in American Indian Studies and a Ph.D. in American Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She served as a Charles A. Eastman Pre-doctoral Fellow at Dartmouth College, and as a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 2021, Kate was appointed the Executive Director of the Minnesota Museum of American Art. Prior to joining the museum, she worked as the director of Native American Initiatives at the Minnesota Historical Society. She and her family also championed the cause of restoring the Dakota name Bde Maka Ska (from Lake Calhoun) in her ancestral homeland of Bde Ota (Minneapolis). Kate believes that the dominant narrative of history should be updated and rewritten to honor the languages, lives, and legacies of its Indigenous peoples.
Andrea Carlson (b. 1979) is a visual artist currently living in Chicago, Illinois. Through painting and drawing, Carlson cites entangled cultural narratives and institutional authority relating to objects based on the merit of possession and display. Current research activities include Indigenous Futurism and assimilation metaphors in film. Her work has been acquired by institutions such as the British Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the National Gallery of Canada. Carlson was a 2008 McKnight Fellow and a 2017 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors grant recipient. In 2020, Carlson helped form the Center for Native Futures, the only Native art center in Chicago.
Lydia Cheshewalla is an Osage artist with a passion for community, social justice, and environmental activism. Over the past four years, she has led women’s circles and co-founded the art collective Holy Mother, which served to connect, encourage, and support femme-identifying creatives in Tulsa, OK. Collaborating with artists, activists, and organizations within her community, Lydia has striven to facilitate meaningful experiences and generate inclusive narratives through thoughtful art events centering community care, systems of equitable exchange, and healing practices.
She has created and taught art curriculum to children ages 4-12 with the purpose of encouraging curiosity and understanding of our unique place within the symbiotic systems of nature. Prior to the outbreak of Covid-19, she worked as a studio assistant for multiple artists within the Tulsa Artist Fellowship and led community conversations around art as remediation and responsible activism in a time of climate change. Currently she serves on the board of PostTraditional, an organization raising the visibility of Indigenous contemporary artists; curates a project called Spatial Intimacy, a responsive archive of creative ways to stay connected in a time of physical distancing; and is creating two new bodies of work exploring non-anthropocentric interdependence within a framework of borders and pandemics.
Marisa Miakonda Cummings: Marisa Cummings (Miakonda) is Umóⁿhoⁿ and belongs to the Buffalo Tail Clan of the Sky people as well as the Walker and Springer families. She is a relative to many and is constantly re-learning language, seed keeping, food systems, and re-building relationships with human and non-human relatives. She has worked in higher education for over 15 years and is dedicated to indigenous models of governance, education, food systems, ceremonies, and sovereignty. She studies and teaches knowledge rooted in matriarchy and advocates for dismantling systems of oppression that impact our Native communities, including resource extraction and personal violence. Currently, Marisa is the president and CEO of the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center in Minneapolis, MN.
Marisa holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in American Studies from the University of Iowa and a certificate in American Indian/Native Studies and a minor in African American World Studies. She recently earned her Masters in Tribal Administration and Governance from the University of Minnesota Duluth. Prior to her work at the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center, Marisa served as the Director of Native Student Services at the University of South Dakota. She has also served as the Chief of Tribal Operations for the Omaha Tribe of Nebraska and Iowa.