Minneapolis festival along Mississippi River celebrates its Indigenous past and present
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The Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board, in partnership with the St. Anthony Falls Heritage Board, hosted its 10th annual celebration of Indigenous Minnesota cultures with the Owámni Falling Water Festival on Saturday.
Owámni means “whirling or falling water” in the Dakota language. Beyond being the name of a highly acclaimed, riverfront restaurant, it’s what the Dakota named the area around St. Anthony Falls.
The festival featured Native performers, artists and vendors at sites on both sides of the Mississippi River, at Mill Ruins Park and Father Hennepin Bluff Park. Jada Brown and Jackie Bird were among the headliners.
Deanna StandingCloud, a citizen of Red Lake Nation of Anishinaabe, got involved with emceeing and later planning the festival at the invitation of an early organizer of the festival, Denise Nelson. She explained it’s fitting to celebrate Indigenous history and culture at the Mississippi, which is “like the garden of Eden for Dakota people,” central to many of their creation stories.
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“Being here and having presence and celebrating with art and food and music is a perfect way to kind of honor and celebrate just our legacy,” StandingCloud said.
“This celebration is showing that Native people are thriving in 2023 and beyond that,” she added later.
The Owámni festival is one of the most popular events at Minneapolis parks, according to Tom Godfrey, an event manager with the Minneapolis parks board. He estimated more than 3,500 people attend every year.
Godfrey said the festival expanded across the Stone Arch Bridge when Owámni by The Sioux Chef opened near Mill Ruins Park in 2021.
For the first time, the festival included Canadians.
Chef Johl Whiteduck Ringuette, a food advocate from the Mink Clan of the Anishinaabe people and Nipissing First Nation, traveled from Toronto at the invitation of the Canadian government.
“Canadians are really committed to the process of reconciliation, so establishing or fostering a better nation-to-nation relationship with Indigenous people in Canada. And part of that is, for the Canadian government and the Consulate General here in Minneapolis, finding new ways to support the reclaiming of traditional Indigenous knowledge,” said Beth Richardson, consul general of Canada in Minneapolis.
Whiteduck Ringuette presented and offered a demonstration on food sovereignty at the festival, speaking on how important ceremony is to food.
He said it was exciting to be “in the heart of wild rice country” and said he looks forwards to bringing home what he has learned across his visits in Minnesota.
“We've been working so hard, where we're from, to try and bring back, to revitalize that knowledge and help our people regrow the food, Indigenous agroecology, and teaching people what all the plants do, and what people can do to help bring those food systems back. But here, I've had the privilege of going to Owamni kitchens and see that, actually, the food systems are very much alive here. The Indigenous people here, nation to nation have access to their food,” Whiteduck Ringuette said.
