Brooks: How a Dakota nonprofit is working to reconnect Minneapolis to its lost history

The lost history of Minneapolis is being restored along the riverbank, step by step, seedling by seedling.

A soaring waterfall once churned the river near here. Owámniyomni, the Dakota called this place. Turbulent waters. Ten thousand years of history in 5 square acres.

Not that you would know that, standing on the Stone Arch Bridge with your face to the Minneapolis skyline, looking out over what remains of the St. Anthony Falls.

To Shelley Buck, the story of Minneapolis seemed to start when they harnessed the great waterfall to power the mills, sometime after the Dakota were forced off the land, sometime after Father Hennepin renamed the falls for the patron saint of lost things.

There was so much more to the story.

Now Buck and the Dakota-led nonprofit Owámniyomni Okhódayapi are working to restore part of the landscape we lost and the history the Dakota people have never forgotten.

“We are working to restore five acres of land at Owámniyomni, which white settlers called St. Anthony Falls, into a place where Dakota feel at home again and are visible again,” said Buck, president of the nonprofit formerly known as Friends of the Falls.

Those 5 acres surround the Upper St. Anthony lock and dam, which has been closed to navigation for almost a decade. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which maintains the site, is giving the surrounding land, long fenced off and unused, back to the public.

Buck has worked for years on a plan to restore the landscape to a space that welcomes the Dakota community and their neighbors back.

There are stories to share about the history of this place. And new stories to tell about its future.

“Most people know the history of the Mill City,” said Buck, past president of the Prairie Island Indian Community in southeast Minnesota. “Our job is to bring the complete history to the table, as well as the forgotten people — the Dakota people — and make sure they’re visible.”

There is no way to fully restore the lost landscape. The 20-foot falls have been dammed, diminished and girdled in concrete to hold them in place. The river is a fraction of its original width. Spirit Island — Wíta Wanáǧi — once rose in the middle of the river; it was so sacred that Dakota women traveled there to give birth. It was quarried for its limestone to build the mills and the city, hacked and chiseled and dredged until there was nothing left. Much of the 5-acre site featured unappealing stretches of concrete, rubble and stagnant water.

“But we’re going to do what we can to restore what we can,” Buck said.

There are plans for walking paths and flowing water and new plantings to restore the original oak savanna that once flourished here. Muskrats have been spotted returning to the area already, she said.

“We really just want to make it a place for not only our people and non-Native people to come but for our other relatives. The plants. The animals. The water ... we really want to help in any way we can to restore the health of the water,” Buck said. “Yeah, it’s a big list. But it’s one that’s important enough to us to make it work.”

It was almost Thanksgiving when Buck talked about the plans for the site. An American holiday freighted with myths and misconceptions and stories told about Native Americans, instead of by Native Americans.

“Growing up — because I grew up with my white mother — I only heard about the common story ... this friendly gathering of Pilgrims and Native Americans,” she said. It would be years before she learned the name of the tribe — or that the Wampanoag communities who vanished from our national narrative after a harvest celebration in 1621, still thrive in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

“Dakota people are still invisible in our own homelands,” she said. “So to change that narrative is really important ... We are still here.”

One of the first changes to the site was historical markers, inviting visitors to scan a code and take an audio tour narrated in Dakota and English. Dakota voices, sharing Dakota stories beside the turbulent waters once again.

Ecadan yuteca kin u kte. Soon renewal is coming.

Nahanhin Dakota makoce kin. This is still Dakota land.