Sacred sites tour fosters conversation

On Sunday, five CSB+SJU students and two ministry staff members from both the CSB and SJU campus ministries attended a Sacred Sites Tour in Minneapolis.

The Sacred Sites Tour is offered by the Minnesota Council of Churches as part of Healing Minnesota Stories’ effort to create dialogue, understanding and healing between Native and non-Native peoples.

This is the first year this tour has been offered to CSB+SJU students.

It is available for all students, regardless of major.

“These tours aim to create greater awareness and understanding of the Dakota people, the original people of this area, who too often are invisible in their homeland. The tour includes information on Dakota history, culture and sacred sites, as well as the oppression and genocide they faced, and ultimately their exile,” according to the MN Churches website.

The tour consisted of three stops, starting with the Church of St. Peter, then Fort Snelling State Park, Dakota Internment Camp following the Dakota-U.S. War and Pilot Knob Hill, a traditional burial ground.

These sites are located around confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers, what the Dakota refer to as Bdote, or “meeting place of rivers.”

The CSB+SJU group was led by native historian, oral storyteller and tour guide Jim Bear Jacobs.

Jacobs is a member of the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation, an Indigenous tribe located in central Wisconsin.

Throughout the tour, he told stories that explained and helped the students understand the importance of the sites.

“Some stories are about the places there…and discussion about what it means for today, how can we be educated, and what does it look like to take these conversations home,” said Carter Howell, tour attendee and Assistant Director of SJU Campus Ministry.

At the different stops on the tour, the group had time to explore the space and reflect on what they had learned.

“After learning about painful history, Jim Bear invited us to walk around the space. He gave us each a pinch of tobacco, saying we should open our hand and let the wind take it as an offering to wherever it needs to go. This walk allowed me to reflect on all I had heard and what it means for me as a non-indigenous person,” Ana Dailey, CSB senior, said via email.

The ministries were first introduced to the tour by Brenna Cussen and her partner Eric Anglada, who gave a presentation on her work with decolonization and the history of Minnesota and native relations.

“We were lucky enough to be able to have a meal with them, sit down, have a little bit of a meeting with them, and they talked about this program [The Sacred Sites Tours]. That was kind of the catalyst for what changed their lives and had them want to direct a lot of their effort into native relations and restorative justice modeling,” Howell said.

The ministries hope to offer the tour in the future.

“We really hope this can happen again and continue. The biggest thing that we can do to get more people to know about this is to spread it by word of mouth. If there are any students who want to be a part of this in the future, they can contact either the SJU or CSB campus ministries,” Howell said.

While she said these tours are a good start in progressing towards fixing relations, Dailey still believes there’s more to be done.

“The land acknowledgement is a good start, but we should learn more than just that. Jim Bear said that all people are genuinely welcome to come to powwow celebrations. There’s one upcoming in St. Cloud,” Dailey said via email.