By SHELLEY BUCK – Tinta Wita (Prairie Island Indian Community), president of Owámniyomni Okhódayapi
For many Minnesota relatives, preservation of our natural resources is woven into our lives. It’s something we are proud of.
For me as a Dakota winyan, a Dakota woman, preservation goes beyond that general sense of preserving a landscape. It means protecting the language, culture and lands of the Dakota people so they continue to exist for future generations. This is something I have dedicated my life to.
To do so, I have to walk between two worlds — the white world and Indian Country — and the differences between our world views are vast. One world is rooted in Dakota teachings that have guided our people for countless generations. The other is the modern systems of government, planning, engineering and law that shape nearly every decision about land today.
Those two worldviews often approach the same place in profoundly different ways.
One of our foundational Dakota teachings is Mitákuye Owas’iƞ — we are all relatives. Rivers, trees, birds, fish, medicines, land, plants and people are not separate from one another. They are relatives and living beings.
Contrast that with the white or western worldview that has dominated much of the development we see in our country. Land, water, and everything natural around us are seen as resources to be extracted. This has permeated every aspect of our modern world, including the legislation, institutions, policies and practices that guide how we ‘preserve’ meaningful places.
The place where the Dakota-led nonprofit Owámniyomni Okhódayapi works illustrates this collision of worldviews perhaps better than anywhere else in Minnesota. Colonizers called the waterfall, located in downtown Minneapolis, St. Anthony Falls, after the patron saint St. Anthony of Padua. Most Minnesotans today call the falls by this name and don’t know any differently.
To Dakota people, the area is known as Owámniyomni, which in our language represents the turbulent, churning waters at the bottom of the falls. Long before the city of Minneapolis existed, this was a sacred gathering place for Dakota people. It was — and is — a place of power, where families and tribes would meet and trade, where people can be close to their ancestors, where the veil between life and death is thin.
History books often celebrate this site as the birthplace of Minneapolis. They tell the story of flour mills, industry, commerce and economic growth. Those stories are true. But they are incomplete. A sacred Dakota site was desecrated, and the true and complete history of this place was intentionally erased. Nearly 200 years later, we are working to restore our connection to Owámniyomni and make Dakota people visible in their homelands once again.
So, when you find yourself in community discussing preservation or redevelopment work in the future, challenge yourself to ask the hard questions. What relationships are we preserving? What histories remain invisible? Who has been missing from the conversation?
These questions will help us move beyond preservation into greater impact: restoration.
Restoration of ecosystems. Restoration of language. Restoration of truth. Restoration of relationships. And ultimately, restoration of our shared humanity.
