Learning from Place

Look at the loose timeline below. White settlers acquired the land of the Cowling Arboretum from the Mdewakanton people through the Treaties (For more infromation on Treaties, refer to an empowering exhibit  Why Treaties Matter ). Carleton College was founded in 1866 right after the Dakota War, which ended with the public hanging of 38 Dakota people in Mankato (60 miles south-west from Carleton).

Unfortunately, these history of the land we stand now and the unethical treatments of the Indigenous people by the White settlers had not been well-known or visible until recently. Presenting relevant physical sites in Carleton and surrounding areas as examples, this exhibit aims to tell the honest stories of what’s been remembered/forgotten about the history of the land, and what’s been recently done for the better improvement. This exhibit consists of four sections:

• Absence of Indigenous History
• Ongoing Artifacts of Dakota Community
• Recent and Current Efforts at Carleton College
• Further Questions, Readings

We hope that this exhibit will inspire and encourage you to ponder the history of and ongoing efforts, issues revolving around the land we occupy.

Let’s return to Carleton College and look at how Carleton’s attitude toward Indigenous history/people has changed over time and its recent efforts for understanding of the Indigenous history and their persisting significance. Four oral history interviews with Carleton community members, including faculty members and Indigenous alum, reveal that there are main three stages that Carleton has gone through:

1. No recognition of Indigenouse history/people
2. Gradual scholarly attention to Indigenous history, but not so much in the campus community
3. Land Acknowledgement and ongoing efforts of relationship-building

There’d been almost no (explicit) recognition of Indigenous presence and the history of dispossession in the Carleton community until recently. In her oral history interview, Nancy Braker, a Carleton alum class of 1981 and a current director of the Cowling Arboretum, recounts the college experience of talking about history of the land at Carleton:

So [I] did not talk about… Carleton's early history or the White European early history of Northfield never really came up, I would say with my… my friends at Carleton. (Nancy Braker)

( full transcript ;  full audio recording )

The turn of the milleanium saw an increase in academic interest in Indigenous culture. Take it from Carleton's Linguistics professor Mike Flynn, who led the Dakota Language Institute at the Lake Traverse Reservation.

This was never discussed… it was only maybe 20 years ago or so that… the consciousness of the community has dramatically increased. (Mike Flynn)

( full transcript  ;   full audio recording  )

The representation of Indigenous members of the campus community lagged behind the academic interest in Indigenous studies. Take it from Broderick '09:

I always wondered why there were religious spaces carved up for everyone from A to Z, but there wasn't really any spaces for indigenous people... But you know, like going out into the Arb and there being a Druid circle... I don't see a space for me to practice any of my ceremonies unless I take over someone else's space. The fact that the church... you can take down crosses but that doesn't take away the fact that there's still a symbol of oppression for my people, right in the middle of campus. (Broderick Dressen)

(  full transcript  ;  full audio recording  )

At the turn of the millennium, academia including Carleton came to pay attention to Indigenous communities. Indeed, practice of land acknowledgement has been performed since the 1970s originating in Canada, and became more common since the early 2000s. (It was not until 2020 when Carleton officially anonunced its Land Acknowledgement.)

Mike Flynn, who is a linguistics professor and conducted a Dakota Language Project, explains how much attention and recognition of Indigenous communities among the Carleton community members has increased in the last decades.

… it's only been in the last maybe four or five years or so, that Carleton has been much more involved in the Dakota culture. … now I think it's much more generally known what happened here than it was 20 years ago. … at least lots and lots of people are much more aware of what happened here and why it happened. (Mike Flynn)

(  full transcript   ;    full audio recording   )

Part of Carleton’s institutional efforts to acknowledge the significant Indigenous presence on the land Carleton stands is the  Land Acknowledgement . Joe Hargis, one of the stuff members who involved in the installation, recounts the experience witnessing the historical moment:

President Buck and members of the Prairie Island Indian community were here for Indigenous Peoples Day. It was just fantastic. It was probably honestly, that's one of the highlights of my career here, seeing that happen. It was fantastic. (Joe Hargis)

( full transcript  ;  full audio recording  )

Imagine you’re visiting Indigenous-related physical sites as part of the New Student Week.

The following are the thought-provoking questions that failitate meaningful conversation among your peers.

1. What drew your visual/auditory/osmic attention first in this place?
2. What do you see?
   1. The history of the place on the panel? When is the starting point of the “history” on the panel? on the place? Whose perspective do you think the narrative is told from? (Who gets to speak in telling the history on the panel?)
   2. Is there anything that may have not changed from the time before the settler colonialism? What do you think has changed over time in terms of the landscape of this place?
3. What did you hear? What would be the elements of the experience of being at this place that you may be sharing with the people back in time before colonialism? Is there anything that may have not changed from the time before the settler colonialism?  
4. Being at this place, was there any feeling/emotion/personal anecdotes evoked in your mind?
   1. How do you interact with the place?

Reading and more

•  Mni Sota Makoce: The Land of the Dakota  by Gwen Westerman and Bruce White
•  What does justice look like? : the struggle for liberation in Dakota homeland  by Waziyatawin