Dakota Sacred Places in Minneapolis/St Paul
For Minnesota Indigenous peoples, sacred places are kept, not made. Our first film tells a story of the Dakota people's resolve to keep sacred places in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro, and to maintain Dakota presence and relationship on their homelands.
Mdewakanton Dakota people regard Bdote and a network of sacred sites around it as a place of genesis, the “center of the world” where the people emerged. It is also, as Jimmy Anderson puts it, a place of “genocide:” the site of the crowded internment camp in the winter of 1862/3 where Dakota people were detained for their forced removal on barge, and the site of Fort Snelling, symbol of their attempted erasure by the U.S.
From Dakota and Anishinaabe perspectives, Minnesota is not a place whose sanctity is made but rather given. Still, forced exile and continued efforts to erase Dakota peoples have brought into relief how these places remain profoundly sacred. Empowered by the sacred, Dakota people have drawn on its rhetorical power to protect and preserve access, integrity, and recognition of these Bdote places. The Dakota teach us something about an ongoing Indigenous spiritual relationship with their Minnesota homelands.