A National Nature Refuge celebrates the opening of a new amphitheater that
honors the site’s Indigenous history.
Transcript
Marie Rock: I’m Marie Rock. This week on Minnesota Native News, a
national refuge celebrates the opening of a new amphitheater that
honors the site’s Indigenous history. Chandra Colvin has the story.
Chandra Colvin: Just southeast of St. Cloud, the sound of drums
under a clear blue sky gave friends and supporters of the Sherburne
Wildlife Refuge a perfect day to gather and celebrate the unveiling of a
new Amphitheater. The amphitheater, which had been in the works for
five years, incorporates Indigenous artwork to recognize the ancestral
lands of the Dakota and Anishinaabe people.
Bearpaw Shields, who is both Dakota and Nakota, is a board member
of the Friends of Sherburne Wildlife Refuge. She has been a driving
force of the project.
Bearpaw Shields: We wanted a place where we could have, whether
it's nature shows, and then I then inserted, “Well, we can also– it'd be
a good place to have powwows, or we could have some indigenous
people come on here too, as well.”
Colvin: She has been volunteering at the refuge for eight years now.
The “Friends” program is completely volunteer based and as an
educator, this was an important task to undertake.
Bearpaw Shields: I think that representation matters, and for us
native peoples in Minnesota, and I think this is the first step having
representation to let everybody know that we are here and we're
beautiful people, and we're not going to go anywhere. We're beautiful
people. This is a great place for people to learn and get educated.
Colvin: Shields says that she hopes this amphitheater will inspire
other “Friends” programs to take those steps in acknowledging the
Indigenous land they are on. The program extends across the United
States with various cohorts at national refuges and parks.
Giizh Agaton Howes from Fond du Lac and owner of Heart Berry, and
Holly Young from Standing Rock, are the artists behind the mural
engraved against the Amphitheater’s stone seating and circular center.
Agaton Howes: Holly Young and I collaborated to create a Dakota
and Ojibwe design that incorporates both the indigenous animals of
this area and the animals that we would like to be returning to the
area.
Colvin: The animals are depicted with a thunderbolt through their
bodies, which Agaton Howes says represents their life force.
According to Agaton Howes, thunder is a gift in Ojibwe culture and the
animals are gifts of life.
Agaton Howes: They’re all done in Ojibwe style, what we call “X-ray”
style. In the center is a traditional tobacco or SEMA plant that we use
for prayer, and it's oriented in the four cardinal directions to really
represent the idea of, like, sending out our good thoughts, our good
prayers, however you think of that, in all the directions.
We also wanted this space to be fun and functional, so that kids could
come here and they would like to jump on stuff and run around along
the lines, and be a space that people would feel comfortable using.
Colvin: Shields says the refuge provides educational opportunities at
its education center or in the field.
Bearpaw Shields: I think because of the atrocities that happened to
our children, I think it's important for children to use this as an
educational platform.
Colvin: Education is not the amphitheater’s only goal. Agaton Howes
says its creation is a continuation of culture.
Agaton Howes: I was super excited because I love the idea of
creating really permanent places where we're telling Ojibwe and
Dakota stories and really highlighting those stories, so I was all about
it. And I also really love that they wanted to incorporate our languages
here. They were very like “just throw us some ideas.” Which I love as
an artist – to be able to throw my ideas out there.
Colvin: For Minnesota Native News, I’m Chandra Colvin