'In the North' – Minnesota’s first independent Indigenous museum opens in an 'ironic' location
Winona LaDuke recalls “Salsa Tuesdays” outside the old Carnegie Library in Park Rapids. In 2021, water protector activists and members of the community would dance — salsa, macarena — in protest against Enbridge, the building’s then occupant, the Canadian conglomerate behind the controversial Line 3 pipeline.
“We would stand out there with little signs that said, ‘Water is life, protect the water, stop Line 3,’” LaDuke says. “We would always look at the building and hope that one day something would be different there.”
On Thursday, Giiwedinong: The Anishinaabe Museum of Treaties and Culture opened on the spot. The museum sits just off the main drag of a downtown lined with candy shops, bars and an old cinema.
Now, the stone building, built in 1908, is striped with red, white, yellow and black, the medicine wheel colors representing the four directions. It is the first museum in Minnesota devoted to the Indigenous perspective on treaty rights, environmental justice and culture.
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“This is not a tribal museum,” explains LaDuke, a member of the Mississippi Band of Ashinaabeg. “This is an Indigenous museum, but it is off the reservation. It received no state funding, it's entirely independent. We think of ourselves as the little museum that could.”
In Oct. 2022, the building was purchased for the museum by Akiing, an Anishinaabe community nonprofit based on the nearby White Earth Indian Reservation.
“It’s being put in a place that’s so ironic,” says Frank Bibeau, a museum board member and the Akiing executive director.
Bibeau is an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe at White Earth and a treaty rights attorney. Park Rapids is in the heart of ceded treaty territory, explains Bibeau. Enbridge placed the Line 3 pipeline across Northern Minnesota despite public opposition.
Water protector activists, including Native and climate advocates, warned it could pollute waterways. With the museum, Bibeau says they are correcting the actions of the building’s past occupants, Carnegie and Enbridge.
“So, the imperialist who took and raped our land and resources created that building in Park Rapids,” Bibeau says. “The next round of imperialists also were there, and so we're taking that space, and we're saying that's not the proper use of this space. That's been harmful to our area.”
At the museum are interim executive director Jerry Lee Chilton, a member of the White Earth Band, and museum organizer Mary Crystal Goggleye, who is Anishinaabe and Pueblo. They stand in the entry, surrounded by a freshly painted mural. In jewel tones, Red Lake artist Brian Dow painted animals representing many Anishinaabe clans.
“Giiwedinong” is Anishinaabe for “in the north,” says Chilton, who is also the executive director of the Anishinaabe Agricultural Institute.
“It’s a lot of cool artifacts, a lot of cool heritage,” Chilton says. He points to the ground and cites the 1855 Treaty. “This was all reservation at one point. So, we're just bringing that to light,” Chilton says.
Goggleye walks among the maps and photographs.
“We are fighting for our history to be told,” Goggleye says. “We are in society, you see us in society, and we will revitalize our own history.”
The intimate galleries of Giiwedinong unfold with historical photos, treaty maps, and documents. Displays outline ceded territories defined by the Treaties of 1837, 1854, 1855 and 1867.
They also show the rights to hunt, fish and gather in these territories, and tell the stories about how these rights have been breached. More displays depict agreements the Anishinaabe had with other indigenous nations, like One Dish One Spoon, the treaty about shared hunting rights that dates back to the 12th century.
“It’s a new concept, an important concept,” says museum board member Travis Zimmerman, a descendent of the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. Zimmerman is also the site manager for the Mille Lacs Indian Museum and Trading Post, which is run by the Minnesota Historical Society. Giiwedinong is different, he says.
“A museum run by an American Indian organization, having American Indian curators, and really having that Native voice come out, is something that you don't really see much of, anywhere really, much less in Minnesota.”
The museum is an educational resource for Native and non-Native folk alike, Zimmerman says.
“The thing that's really behind treaties, it's all about sovereignty, and I think that's what people don't realize and struggle with, that American Indians are sovereign nations,” Zimmerman says. “We always have been, and we always will be.”
Giiwedinong also puts these treaty rights into a contemporary context. A special exhibit features photos and stories from the Line 3 protests, and the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock.
A photo on display by Sarah (Miskwaa-ens Migiziwigwan) Kalmanson includes water protector activist Tania Aubid at Standing Rock in North Dakota. In September, Aitkin County judge Leslie Metzen dismissed charges related to a Line 3 protest against Aubid, LaDuke and fellow activist Dawn Goodwin.
Metzen reasoned, “We moved them by force and power and violence off the land where they lived for thousands of years. To make peace, we signed treaties with them that promised many things they never received.”
Kalmanson, an Anishinaabekwe descendant of White Earth, photographed many of these protests. She is also a curator and marketing director for the museum.
“We had tens of thousands of people at Standing Rock. I was there. And I want to honor that. There were a lot of atrocities that happened,” she says.
Curating the museum has been healing, she says.
“It was pretty brutal, what we all went through, and I just feel really energized and I'm so happy to share and carry this on,” Kalmanson says. “I'm really excited to have folks come in and see how beautiful we are.”
LaDuke says there will be another dance party at the opening tonight.
